St. Louis to Participate in National Park(ing) Day on Friday September 21, 2007

The City of Saint Louis is joining numerous other cities this year in promoting the National Land Trust’s “National Park(ing) Day 2007.” I received the following statement from St. Louis’ Director of Planning & Urban Design, Rollin Stanley:

National parking day is being celebrated in cities around the world including 23 in the U.S. Groups are invited to “adopt” a parking space on Chestnut Street just north of City Hall, between Tucker and 15th Street (to 17th if needed), or contact your local business association to participate along a commercial street. This event “greens” street parking spaces. Your group can simply lay tarp, sod, provide some potted trees and a park bench, or be more creative.

A sod lounger perhaps. A small water element. Be creative. Bring your “green” materials onto Chestnut Street and select a parking space. Feed the meter just as you would if you were parking your car. Then prepare your space for the day or part of the day. When you are finished, pack up your materials and leave the space as you found it.

If you have questions, please contact Rollin Stanley at the City of St. Louis Planning & Urban Design Agency at 259-3426.

Mr. Stanley indicates they’ve had a good response including, “some artists; a college group; local architects.” Stanley asks that efforts not start until after 8:30am as building inspectors are parked there before then. Unfortunately Mr. Stanley will not be present on Friday as he will be speaking at an event in New Orleans.

OK, I’ve done my civic duty to help spread the word about this potentially good event. However, the intent behind the effort is to create park space where it is needed. So St. Louis’ choice of Chestnut — bordered on both sides by park space — seems foolish at best. Furthermore, most of Chestnut at this area is angled parking which may look a bit odd and potentially hidden between two larger vehicles. You’d think they would have picked something more logical — a street surrounded by buildings on both sides — like Washington Ave for example.

For more information check out a video from the 2006 event in San Francisco as well as http://www.parkingday.org. I’d like to see more of these “parks” spring up throughout the city although it may be a challenge to get something organized this late. Maybe something along Euclid? South Grand? St. Louis Avenue next to Crown Candy? Cherokee? Washington Avenue in front of Copia?

Maybe next year. Artists and gardeners, mark your calendars for September 2008.

UPDATE 9/19/2007 @ 2:35pm:

I just checked the website of the Downtown St. Louis Partnership and I found no mention of this event at all.  Their calendar of events lists a music event on Thursday at Union Station as well as the Taste of St. Louis this weekend but nothing about this or the meeting on MetroLink Thursday afternoon.   The City’s own Calendar of Events fails to mention this as well, although it does include the meetings on MetroLink and the Taste of St. Louis as well as the concert at Union Station. The city’s press release website also doesn’t show any announcement of this event — I went back as far as May 1st looking for a call for participants or an announcement of the event but found nothing.  Ditto for Mayor Slay’s campaign site — the place where much information that should be announced through the city’s own press release system ends up.

Final Public Open Houses for MetroLink North & South Routes

Earlier today was the first of three open houses regarding routes for the future expansion of our MetroLink light rail system. That meeting was held at the Fifth Missionary Baptist Church on Natural Bridge. Additional open houses will be held on Wednesday & Thursday. From the notice:

We need your opinion! Come to one of the final public open houses in September on expanding MetroLink in the City of St. Louis. You will be able to review the evaluation results of the different routes being considered and tell us what you think.
The same information will be presented at each meeting.

Southside
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
5:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Meramec Elementary School • Gymnasium
2745 Meramec Street • St. Louis, MO 63118
Presentations at 5:30 & 6:30 p.m.

Downtown
Thursday, September 20, 2007
3:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Regional Collaboration Center • 12th Floor
One Metropolitan Square • St. Louis, MO 63102
Presentation at 4:00 & 5:00 p.m.

This is the final round of public meetings on the current study. Keep in mind, there is no funding source to actually build anything. For more information see www.northsouthstudy.org

City Needs To Follow Ordinance Regarding Posting of Signs on Trees

The ordinance regarding the respect for street trees is pretty clear:

22.48.100 Attaching items to trees.

No person shall attach or place any rope, wire, sign, poster, handbill or other thing on any tree or shrub now or hereafter growing in any street or public highway of the city, nor on any guard or protection of such tree or shrub. (Ord. 49772 § 2 (36), 1960: 1960 C. § 242.060.)

Yet I see violations all the time — from the city itself!

The above would be a public street tree with a public notice stapled to it.

Getting in closer we see it is a notice about a zoning conditional use hearing — for Larry Rice’s “Alternative Energy Center.” I’ll write more about this situation prior to Thursday so I don’t want comments to be about Rice and all that associated baggage.

No, this is about street trees and making sure they are properly cared for. It is clear from this and many others that the city doesn’t respect its own trees. I presume someone posting about a garage sale could be cited for such an offense so why shouldn’t the offending city department?

The fine for removing the sign is $500 but what is the fine for posting the sign on a tree?

Demolition Derby Spectators Hurt, Think Derby Should be Shut Down

Over the weekend four people watching a demolition derby at the Potosi fairgrounds were injured when one vehicle shoved another against the stands.  One spectator, who’s mother suffered a broken leg and cuts/scratches, thinks they should shut down the annual fundraising event.  The KSDK report indicates the event raises $5,000-$7,000 annually which clearly demonstrates a demand to watch people driving cars into each other on a muddy field.  This is not unlike the spectators that got injured by a monster truck event near Chicago last month (see related post).

Perhaps it is time people took up watching safer events like tennis or chili cook offs.  Even a hockey game seems relatively safer.  Just once I’d like to see a report about people watching an underground dog fight getting seriously injured or killed from the dogs turning on them.  They probably have more safety precautions for illegal dog fights than legal demo derbys and monster truck events.

A ‘Rural Renewal’ Program Would Provide Habitat for Deer and other Wildlife

The tony collection of McMansion subdivisions known as Town & Country, MO is back on the issue of Deer overpopulation. It seems their 1-3 acre lots amongst the natural woods are overrun with deer. The reality is that our natural environment is overrun with low-density and often tacky housing that requires an SUV to go anywhere. From a KSDK report:

“Deer like the suburbs that we build,” said Erin Shank, a Missouri Department of Conservation urban wildlife biologist. “They like that broken forest interspersed with meadow-like lawns. That’s really ideal for them, so their populations have really grown over the last several decades.”

Wow, it seems they have managed to design an environment ideally suited to the main deer population but only a small segment of the human population. A number of years ago Town & Country engaged in a horrible plan to relocate the deer but many perished due to shock (see Grim Harvest). Some municipalities allow hunting using bows to avoid shooting some VP from shooting a lawyer friend in the face. Town & Country, however, does not yet permit hunting. Some are advocating traps where they are instantly killed via a bolt to the brain. Ick. Others say the deer are fine and simply plant other vegetation that deer don’t like, a logical solution in my view.

But I have some other ideas as well. We could start by banning vegetation all together. These people with their 4-bedroom/4-car garage houses on an acre of land like the illusion of country living but we know they really are not. So I say we prohibit them from growing any sort of plants outdoors — at least the ones known to attract deer. Hey, if they don’t like it they can always move much easier than the deer. I don’t think this is going far enough though. Those brick front houses look bad enough as it is but without vegetation it would be a horrible sight. The kids there already suffer from not being able to walk or bike anywhere so they really shouldn’t have to live without hostas and ferns.

I say we hire PGAV or Development Strategies to do a blighting study on the area. We argue that all of Town & Country and everything else in St. Louis County outside of the I-270 highway loop is Ecologically Obsolete. With places like Creve Coeur, Chesterfield and Dardenne Prairie all working on town centers to create walkable destinations we can justify that others are old fashioned and obsolete forms of development. New Urbanism represented by New Town at Charles or even old urbanism represented by original city development as well as the older ring of suburban development such as downtown Ferguson, Maplewood, Webster Groves and such is more ecologically sustainable.

So much like the maps of the 40s & 50s that justified razing entire sections of the city because a percentage of the structures lacked indoor plumbing, we can create maps of the region where the obsolete development pattern is too low to sustain a walk-to town center & transit. Everything below a certain threshold would be targeted. I call it Rural Renewal. St. Louis County would identify areas for land clearance, returning the land to nature with wildlife and vegetation taking over former manicured lawns. The deer population would once again be controlled with bobcats and other natural predators. Of course we’d need to use eminent domain to take all the homes, strip shopping centers and fast food joints. We’d need to clear thousands of acres at a time.

This could all be justified, of course, based economic development for the region. By returning an area to nature we’d force residents into existing areas, assuming we also limited fringe development. People living in an $800K house in Town and Country could do wonders with a $500 house owned by the LRA! Think of the economic benefits of such a renewal plan — one that could easily past muster after the Kelo decision on eminent domain. We’d see a surge in new construction within the I-270 highway loop giving new vitality to both the city and older areas of St. Louis County. Low density areas in the county, but within the I-270 loop, would be targeted for redevelopment to accommodate those displaced for the new rural areas. Rail transit (commuter, light rail) and quality localized service via bus and/or streetcar would be far more feasible than currently. We’d naturally eliminate some of the 91 municipalities in St. Louis County as well as excessive school districts, fire districts and so on. These new large ‘rural renewal’ areas would become wonderful natural areas again — attracting tourists to our area. This could become a model program for other regions to follow.

It would, of course, be difficult on those being displaced but they really shouldn’t stand in the way of progress and that which is beneficial to the larger region. The environment and the economy both outweigh their private land interests. We’ve been through large scale land clearance projects before and the suburbanites always seemed supportive of such efforts.