Development Neanderthals Need to Know the Real Meaning of ‘CAVE’

If you read the propaganda in today’s St. Louis Business Journal on development you might think the term CAVE is “Citizens Against Virtually Everything.” Instead, it is actually Citizens Against Vulgar Environments. And vulgar is what we often get from the developers complaining in the journal.

In the face of hundreds of millions of dollars of redevelopment activity in the St. Louis area in recent years, a vehemence against commercial development has risen to new levels.

Just in the last month,

Paul McKee Jr. has been accused of planning to “bulldoze the ghetto,” and Chris Goodson’s site for a new development on downtown’s edge was picketed on the same day plans were unveiled. Gundaker Commercial Group’s Mike Hejna denounced the new force in development: “CAVE” men, or “Citizens Against Virtually Everything.”

Hejna made the comments to a group of real estate brokers Feb. 6 after detailing the several-years-long process of getting his and Duke Realty’s $750 million Premier 370 business park approved in St. Peters.

Read the above again, it is all about the money. Dollar signs are all they see. If millions of dollars are being “invested” it must therefore be good. The developers like McKee and Hejna can’t have a discussion about pedestrian-friendly design, planning for various modes of transportation, and sustainable development. Lisa Brown continues:

Anti-development sentiment has risen to a level beyond civil discourse, to a point where developers have received threats at their homes. And this opposition is harder to overcome with the Internet as a tool — it’s hard to fight an opponent you can’t see or identify.

“Because of the blogosphere, it exaggerates things,” said Stephen Acree, president of the Regional Housing and Community Development Alliance (RHCDA). “The folks that are most vocal on the blogs are not necessarily part of the neighborhood organizations that are working in the community to build it.”

Many of the blogs, such as mine, are well identified. In fact, we are often more identifiable than the Limited Liability Companies (LLCs) these developers employ to keep their identities hidden from public scrutiny. We wouldn’t want our prominent citizens being connected to a string of properties being left open to vandals, arsonists, homeless and the elements.

And Mr. Acree, you are correct. Many of the bloggers such as myself are not part of the neighborhood organizations. Why? As an example, when I tried to get my neighborhood organization to help save a historic building they refused to act because their funding is tied to the alderman that was in favor of demolition. This is St. Louis you know and politicos can be be spiteful if crossed. Acting outside the organization you can, in my view, have a bigger inpact. By the way, the building was saved (despite claims it could not) and is being converted to condos.

Fears over eminent domain and the proliferation of blogs on the Internet have created a difficult environment for developers, said Marian Nunn, chief operating officer of St. Louis-based THF Realty, one of the largest private commercial developers in the country.

“There seems to be heightened alertness on the part of the public when you need to tear anything down, even if it has to be torn down,” Nunn said. “The Internet has really created a whole new venue for people who are misinformed to communicate on a large scale. It’s very mean spirited, and they don’t have to do it face to face or face rebuttal.”

You want a face to face rebuttal? Name the time and place and I will be there. Shall we have that face to face meeting in the massive wasteland THF calls Maplewood Commons? Or we could debate the value of the development THF placed in the flood zone in the Chesterfield Valley? Talk about “mean spirited” — these developments are absolutely horrid in every possible category. Would I have stopped those projects dead in their tracks if I could have? Yes!

[Update 2/16/2007 @ 11:35am — I just left a voice message for Ms. Nunn inviting her and her developer friends to a face to face discussion on development practices. If she accepts, I will arrange for a meeting room at St. Louis University where the public can be invited.]

Trust me Ms. Nunn, I am not at all “misinformed” on development. It is the likes of you and others that are clearly misinformed about good design, sustainable development and anything remotely resembling a true walkable community. The interesting thing is most of you are all members of organizations such as the ULI (Urban Land Institute). You must get the monthly manazine and simply toss it in your lobby. I’ve got a suggestion — open it up and actually read the articles. Attend the workshops, not just sponsor them. Once you’ve managed that perhaps actually buying some of the books published by them and the APA (American Planning Assocaition). Same goes for Ms. Brown and the others at the Business Journal — who knows you might actually learn why that big ugly parking garage next to your office is not a good thing for the long term future of St. Louis.

Of course, these developers are not in it for the long haul. Sure, they may retain all their “projects” but that is all they are to them. They boil it down to so many leasable square feet and how much it cost to build. When it gets old they either sell it or return to the local government and hold out their hand for more tax money to retrofit the now-obsolete project.

Myself and others are not anti-commercial development as this article attempts to paint us. I happen to be very pro-development, but not any development just for the sake of development. Unlike these wealthy developers who are complaining about being challenged on their projects, some of us actually know the difference between good and bad design. We know what makes an area sustainable in the long term which is a different goal than short term profits. But the whole issue of good vs. bad development is not agreed upon by everyone so it is time to have that civilized discussion about what constitutes good design for our community.

This is where the developers and people like Mayor Slay’s staff (Barb Giesman & Jeff Rainford) go running. For decades development has happened in a vacuum, with little oversight into the process. Today, in 2007, the situation is different. People, believe it or not, actually care about their physical environment. Yes, we live in a city or suburb for a reason. I did not move to a city consisting of gridded urban streets to have it change into low density sprawl like Ballwin. If I would have wanted that I would have moved there. So we are standing up for what we want, the choice is yours. Either sit down at the table now and lets work through some good zoning for the city (tossing aside our 60-year old auto-centric codes) or be prepared to see an escalation in the level of opposition at every turn.

Jeff Rainford, the Mayor’s Chief of Staff:

We simply have to stand up to the very small number of people who are fighting progress for their own financial or political gain.

Boy, that is rich! Who is seeking financial or political gain here? The funny thing is any population gains the city might be seeing are from people who want to actually live in a city, not the city re-made into some bad suburb. Once again, politicians define “progress” as so many millions of dollars being spent. A wonderful dense urban neighborhood could be built at Pruitt-Igoe but if a medical waste facility were to cost another $10 million they’d probably consider that more progress and go that direction. We need people at the top that actually have a clue. After all, good urban design is not rocket science, even a caveman could do it.

We, the Citizens Against Vulgar Environments (CAVE), need to stand up against a very small number of small-minded people who are, through their prehistoric development practices and political positions, holding back the true potential of the City of St. Louis and the St. Louis Region.

Reed Campaign Uses Crime Report with “Questionable Methodology” Against Shrewsbury

The Reed campaign postcard I just received blames Jim Shrewsbury for being “ranked as the worst city for crime in the country.” No reference is given to which ranking but I assume it is the controversial one from Morgan Quitno. Here is what MayorSlay.com had to say about that report:

Every year, a guy in the Kansas City suburbs publishes a list that points out St. Louis as one of the most dangerous cities in the country. He isn’t an FBI agent, a former police chief, or a criminologist. He’s just a publisher with a good gimmick, a readable press release, and some questionable methodology.

St. Louis is not a dangerous city. There are certainly some high-crime neighborhoods – just like in every city. But, the vast majority of St. Louis neighborhoods are safe places to live, work, and raise families.

There are plenty of other cities in the country with the same amount of crime within a similar area. Every city has high-crime neighborhoods. But, unlike most other cities, St. Louis is locked into the 19th century borders that separate us on the charts (but not in any real sense) from places like Clayton, Webster Groves, Maplewood, University City, and Shrewsbury. If these nearby communities were added to the City, we’d be one of the safest cities in the country – with no change in the patterns of local crime.

But, putting a thoughtlessly designed list into perspective isn’t my final word. Crime is up in some City neighborhoods and that does require a response. While most City neighborhoods are safe, a few are not.

Although the deployment of the police force is not in local control, I have found Chief Joe Mokwa to be responsive to our concerns. City voters recently approved an increase in the graduated business license fees that will help pay for more police officers on the Most Dangerous Offenders unit. The same revenue will also create a Career Criminal unit in Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce’s office to beef up her ability to prosecute repeat- and multiple-offenders; and it will expand the problem property and nuisance crime strike force. In addition, new state and federal grants we sought and received are aimed at reducing the number of paroled criminals who return to lives of crime.

I actually thought the report had some validity and that we should address crime in a more direct manner. Here is how I finished my post at the time:

St. Louis may well be the most dangerous city in America. I can accept that and work to change the underlying causes. When you vote Tuesday keep that in mind, are you voting for more of the same? When filing opens at the end of this month for half the seats in the Board of Aldermen & two seats on the school board will you sit back and assume that others will solve these issues or will you step forward to chart a new course for the city? Our entrenched leadership has gotten us where we are today — the top of the most dangerous city list. It is now up to us to work to change that reality. If we do not, we cannot bitch about remaining on top in the years to come.

In my post I outlined causes dating back nearly a hundred years. The root causes of our crime issues pre-date anyone currently in office or working for the police force.

I’m not a fan of political postcards that make bold statements yet fail to provide the necessary information to validate the claims. If you want to make reference to items then let me know what those are.

I looked up the archives of the Post-Dispatch and found no such headline. The headline on October 31st ran as; “City fears fallout from crime ranking ‘This thing is bogus,’ chief of staff for Mayor Slay says.” I reviewed several articles and columnist stories and not only did I not find such a headline I did not even find such a combination of words. Basically, it appears the Reed campaign has attempted to give the impression the Post-Dispatch ran such a headline. [Update 2/15/2007 @ 9:30pm — I was wrong in the above statement — the St. Louis Post-Dispatch did indeed run the above headline for a article on page B4 on 10/30/2006. My apologies for anyone damaged by my research error.]

The backside is even harder to verify. What was the legislation on which Shrewsbury said no to additional revenue? Was that part of a bigger budget — I don’t think he has any sort of line item veto power. Also, MayorSlay.com indicated above that we the voters approved additional revenues for prosecutors. What is the real story?

And this letter signed by “every prosecutor” in the city? Did that relate directly to Shrewsbury as this is hinting or was it a general plea for more funds — which they will be receiving due to our vote to increase business licenses fees.

I think we do have crime issues to address but it seems to me that Mr. Reed and the majority of aldermen backing him have more than enough votes to pass whatever legislation they see fit to improve the situation in St. Louis. It is Mayor Slay that seems to be the one indicating crime is not as big of a deal as this “bogus” report makes it out to be.

To my knowledge this is postcard is the first such swing by either candidate in this race. If one or both are going to go this route they need to back up their claims with names, dates, and places so the information can be verified. Without such verification, I do not give much credibility to these types of statements. And for the record, I have not spoken with either the Shrewsbury or Reed campaigns about this postcard — it came in the mail this afternoon and I knew I needed a post for today.

Update 2/16/2007 @ 10:15pm — An update has been posted at LewisReed.net regarding this postcard. Included in a PDF copy of the letter signed by prosecutors requesting additional funds from E&A. Like BJC, the motion failed to get a second. All the blame is being laid on Jim Shrewsbury while Darlene Green is getting none of the blame. This seems unfair. Why not call out Darlene Green as well?

Update 2/20/2007 @ 9:40am — From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on 6/16/2005 – the day after the E&A did not approve Joyce’s request:

With nearly two dozen prosecutors watching, top city officials reached a compromise Wednesday that will give St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce some of the extra money her office was seeking.

The Estimate Board voted to allow Joyce to spend an additional $60,000 on salaries but denied an earlier request for about twice as much money.

Mayor Francis Slay wanted the higher amount.

“It’s a step in the right direction but an extremely small step,” said Slay, whose motion to inject $123,111 for prosecutor pay raises died without a second.

The Estimate Board, which must approve the city’s budget, is composed of Slay, Board of Aldermen President Jim Shrewsbury and Comptroller Darlene Green. Joyce, with many of her employees crowded behind her, asked the board for a larger budget to help retain senior attorneys and recruit new ones.

She said that she was disappointed in the Estimate Board’s decision — that it does not put any new money into the budget, but only allows money previously dedicated to unfilled positions to be spent on existing personnel.

So Joyce moved unused money from her budget to give some raises to some attorney’s on her staff.  Oh wait, the postcard didn’t mention that?  I for one think the prosecutors deserve fair compensation for their work, especially relative to the City Counselors office but I don’t for a moment think if the E&A had approved the extra funds for their budget that somehow we’d not appear in the top five of that annual report.  The day before the vote the Post-Dispatch wrote:

Mayor Francis Slay has come out in favor of the money for Joyce’s office. James Shrewsbury, president of the Board of Aldermen, said Tuesday that he’s unlikely to support the request. The final member of the Estimate Board, Comptroller Darlene Green, is said to be on the fence.

Joyce’s effort falls in a year in which cases handled by her office created some political tension in City Hall.

In February, for example, Green had to testify in the trial of Operation Big Vote founder Nonaresa Montgomery, who was found guilty of perjury for lying about whether she could track fraudulent voter registration cards. Part of the trial centered on what was said during a meeting in Green’s campaign office although she was not accused of any wrongdoing.

It seems to me that if people want to be upset it is both with Green & Shrewsbury.  The above postcard makes it out as though Shrewsbury killed it on his own.  And that if he hadn’t, we would not have been named the worse city for crime some 15 months later.

Helping You Submit “Open Records” Requests

Ever considered submitting your own request for public records but didn’t know how to go about the process? Well, the first step is to review the excellent ‘Missouri Sunshine Law’ webpage from the Missouri Attorney General. This resource is well organized and informative. To get you started it even includes sample language.

The next step is to know who to submit your request to. With so many departments and agencies it can get confusing. To make life easier, I requested a complete list of the “custodians of record” for the City of St. Louis. I took the 7-page Word document and put it in columns to that it wouldn’t be so paper consuming. You can download the 4-page PDF file here. So now you’ll know, based on which department has the records you are seeking, who you should contact. Sadly, the list prepared in December and just received by me last week is already out of date. A first step before mailing/faxing/emailing off your request for records would be to call that department and confirm the person listed is still the current custodian of record.

Maybe if the city receives enough requests for rumored projects we’ll start to see them being more forthcoming rather than wait until the week the legislation is being introduced? Yeah, I know, probably not but one needs to attempt to be optimistic every so often.

‘Roger & Me’ Raises Old Questions That Are Still With Us.

In class on Saturday we watched the classic Michael Moore documentary, Roger & Me. You may recall this was Moore’s first film and it focused on his hometown of Flint Michigan. The topics covered are wide-ranging from corporate greed (GM was making a big profit in those days), outsourcing jobs, a community’s heavy reliance on a single employer, and the costs to lure tourists to town.  A short sequel, called Pets or Meat, is online.
Flint, located an hour or so from Detroit, was the auto capital of the world at one time and was closely tied with General Motors. Between GM and associated suppliers the auto industry was the employment base. The town, like so many, had a downtown that had seen better days. Hoping to bring new life, in 1981 they opened a luxury Hyatt Regency Hotel w/convention center and a “festival marketplace” known as Water Street Pavilion. In 1984 they opened a theme park called AutoWorld which, I kid you not, had a reproduction of their old main street. All were intended to bring in droves of tourists.

The $100 million AutoWorld theme park wasn’t even open a year. The hotel & marketplace both eneded up closing within a decade. All three were internally focused projects with little relationship to each other or the real city. Instead of returning their main street (Saginaw St. btw) to its former glory they went for the big splash projects popular in the times.

Around this same time St. Louis had followed much of the same formula. We already had our convention center in place in the 1970s but we’d see new hotel projects and expansions of the center on the boards in the 80s. We also went crazy with two competing shopping destinations downtown; St. Louis Union Station and St. Louis Centre.

Each time our convention facilities failed to produce the desired revenue, the answer was to expand. Either we needed more floor space to attract larger and larger conventions or the answer was a dedicated convention hotel. Many conventions I have seen both in town and in other cities fit comfortably within the context of a hotel — the days of the mega convention are coming to an end. In reality, the convention route for tourist dollars may never have been as hyped. Here is the executive summary from a 2005 Brookings report titled ‘Space Available: The Realities of Convention Centers as Economic Development Strategy:’

To cities the lure of the convention business has long been the prospect of visitors emptying their wallets on meals, lodging, and entertainment, helping to rejuvenate ailing downtowns.

However, an examination of the convention business and city and state spending on host venues finds that:

• The overall convention marketplace is declining in a manner that suggests that a recovery or turnaround is unlikely to yield much increased business for any given community, contrary to repeated industry projections. Moreover this decline began prior to the disruptions of 9-11 and is exacerbated by advances in communications technology. Currently, overall attendance at the 200 largest tradeshow events languishes at 1993 levels.

• Nonetheless, localities, sometimes with state assistance, have continued a type of arms race with competing cities to host these events, investing massive amounts of capital in new convention center construction and expansion of existing facilities. Over the past decade alone, public capital spending on convention centers has doubled to $2.4 billion annually, increasing convention space by over 50 percent since 1990. Nationwide, 44 new or expanded convention centers are now in planning or construction.

• Faced with increased competition, many cities spend more money on additional convention amenities, like publicly-financed hotels to serve as convention “headquarters.” Another competitive response has been to offer deep discounts to tradeshow groups. Despite dedicated taxes to pay off the public bonds issued to build convention centers, many—including Washington, D.C and St. Louis—operate at a loss.

This analysis should give local leaders pause as they consider calls for ever more public investment into the convention business, while weighing simultaneously where else scarce public funds could be spent to boost the urban economy.

The full report is worth the read because several pages focuses on St. Louis as a case study. It goes through all the history from the 1970s through to a few years ago. Concluding with:

St. Louis used the vast bulk of its $130 million in federal empowerment bonds authorization, fully 75 percent, in pursuit of its convention hotel dream. It also took on the obligation to repay another $50 million backed by its HUD community development block
grant funds. The commitment to the hotel, rather than some other form of job creation or economic development, thus represents a substantial opportunity cost. Now, with the hotel failing to meet its operating costs or debt service, the city of St. Louis will be forced to use $500,000 in federal aid to meet the debt service cost this year.

But the bill for the convention center and headquarters hotel in a highly competitive market does not stop there. The Moody’s assessment of the hotel’s financial prospects argued that its future success “will depend in part on continued redevelopment of down-
town,” with the city seeking to “fast track certain downtown redevelopment efforts.” The likelihood is that St. Louis and the state of Missouri will continue to pour public capital investment and tax subsidies into the downtown area and convention competition, despite
the limited returns. The city is thus regularly subsidizing the convention center at the expense of other public services or other revitalization strategies.

So when you are wondering why we don’t have money to maintain Forest Park just keep failed projects like the $90 million St. Louis Centre (now with a new round of funding backed by the city), St. Louis Marketplace (costing us $1 million a year) and the convention center fiasco. Elected officials continue to pour money into mega projects with promises of big returns.

French & Patterson on KDHX’s Collateral Damage Tonight, 7pm

Not to be confused with the British comedy team, French & Saunders, but Antonio French of PubDef.net and myself will be guests tonight on KDHX’s Collateral Damage program hosted by DJ Wilson and Fred Hessel.  With only a half hour program we certainly won’t be able to touch on all the items in the news of late.  Tune in at 7pm, 88.1FM.