Work is progressing on the construction of new storefronts at the former Board of Education building located at 901 Locust St. Last November I posted about the historic Art Deco storefronts being removed, they weren’t original to the building.
Modern aluminum frames for new storefronts, these are facing 9th Street
I personally love the contrast between old architecture and crisp modern storefronts so I’m excited to see how this will turn out. I’m especially curious to know how they plan to deal with ADA access on 9th Street. It appears vaults are under part of the public sidewalk, making the task of building a ramp more difficult.
The old 9th Street storefronts were tiny and not wheelchair accessible
It would’ve been impossible to make the old storefronts ADA compliant, sadly, they had to go. Originally the building had wood storefronts, not the best choice for retailing in the 21st Century, hopefully the aluminum will turn out nice, attracting a good tenant(s).
The store is now closed. I’ve been reviewing materials on revitalizing low-income areas and one theme is repeated: JOBS! Critics would correctly point out it would take a lot to convince an employer to move their business to a depressed low-income area, that’s why the business and jobs must be created from within.
Anchor institutions—hospitals, colleges, and other institutions deeply rooted in their communities—are a form of commons that is viewed as crucial to revitalizing low-income neighborhoods. Besides being major employers and big customers for local businesses, they have an intrinsic stake in making sure their neighborhoods thrive. Your local hospital, for instance, is not going to pack up its beds and move to Mexico.
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An initiative in Cleveland aims to help local residents become owners of new businesses that serve a cluster of hospitals, universities and cultural institutions on the city’s struggling East Side, including the famed Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University. The Cleveland Foundation teamed up with Ted Howard of the Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland to launch the Evergreen Cooperatives: 1) Evergreen Cooperative Laundry, an environmentally conscious employee-owned firm with a contract to clean linens and scrubs for local hospitals; 2) Green City Grower Cooperatives, an employee-owned 3.25 acre greenhouse that produces greens year-round for hospitals and the university; and 3) Evergreen Energy Solutions, where worker-owners install photovoltaic panels and make weatherization improvements for anchor institutions and local residents. (source)
The Evergreen Cooperatives of Cleveland, Ohio are pioneering innovative models of job creation, wealth building, and sustainability. Evergreen’s employee-owned, for-profit companies are based locally and hire locally. They create meaningful green jobs and keep precious financial resources within the Greater University Circle neighborhoods. Worker-owners at Evergreen earn a living wage and build equity in the firms as owners of the business.
The strategic pillars on which the Initiative is built are: (1) leveraging a portion of the multi-billion dollar annual business expenditures of anchor institutions into the surrounding neighborhoods; (2) establishing a robust network of Evergreen Cooperative enterprises based on community wealth building and ownership models designed to service these institutional needs; (3) building on the growing momentum to create environmentally sustainable energy and green collar jobs (and, concurrently, support area anchor institutions in achieving their own environmental goals to shrink their carbon footprints); (4) linking the entire effort to expanding sectors of the economy (e.g., health care, our aging population, local food, and sustainable energy), many of which are recipients of large-scale public investment; and (5) developing the financing and management capacities that can take this effort to scale (that is, to move beyond a few boutique projects or models to have significant municipal impact).
In the 2nd post, above, I listed the major institutions in the area. Between them they hire out for many goods & services. It’ll take a lot of effort to do what Cleveland has done, but I don’t think we have a choice in the matter. There’s no guarantee this will work, it certainly isn’t a magic bullet to solve all the ills. If you’ve got another idea I’d love to hear it.
The franchised auto dealership sales model has been around for decades, and a legal requirement to sell cars in the U.S. According to the National Automobile Dealers Association the number of dealerships peaked in 1949 at 49,200, but by 2012 that number was down to 17,540.
The motor vehicle industry began with hundreds of manufacturers, but by the end of the 1920s it was dominated by three large companies: General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler. (Wikipedia)
Quite a drop in the number of manufacturers and dealers!
The Tesla Motors sales & service center located at 8664 Olive opened last year
Early in the evolution of the auto industry direct manufacturer sales to consumers were not uncommon. At that time, production processes had not yet been standardized and industry sales volumes were low. Introduction by Ford of the assembly line technique early in the twentieth century enabled high-volume production and ushered in the era of mass-market sales in the United States. Ever since then manufacturers have sold cars through franchised dealerships.
Selling through dealerships has offered several benefits to manufacturers historically. Auto production is a capital-intensive business and a franchise system allowed manufacturers to concentrate their resources upstream while accessing capital through franchise fees from independent entrepreneurs at the retail level. Economies of scale in auto production also required having relatively few, large manufacturing operations located near essential supplies like steel. This contrasted with the nationwide distribution network needed to reach consumers, who could be more effectively served through local dealerships in a better position to assess demand in particular markets and to provide service and repairs.
Since running a dealership can require making a substantial investment in real estate and assets like showrooms and service facilities, the franchise system also had to offer terms that would make it attractive to dealers. This was accomplished voluntarily by contract, through franchise agreements, even prior to enactment of state franchise laws. Typically such franchise agreements give a dealer exclusive rights to a particular geographic sales territory of a manufacturer. This type of arrangement allows dealers to realize a return on their investment while giving them incentives to undertake advertising and promotional activities and to provide services, like showroom displays, test drives and other types of consumer information, valuable to manufacturers in marketing their vehicles.
With the advent of the internet, some of the mutually beneficial nature of the franchise system for manufacturers and dealers has diminished, as information and access to services historically provided primarily by dealers has become more readily available. Online buying services are an obvious example. In addition, a variety of auto information, including pricing data and reviews, can be found online from sites like Edmunds and Consumer Reports. This raises the prospect of disintermediation, broadly defined as direct-to-consumer sales through reduction or elimination of the role of retailers. With respect to autos, unlike the situation with books and CDs, most customers probably will continue to want some hands-on contact with the product before purchasing, likely implying a continuing, though possibly changed, role for dealers. Since the internet can potentially provide manufacturers with better information on consumer preferences than the traditional local franchised dealer, direct manufacturer sales may be one way through which that changed dynamic occurs.
When the DOJ recognized how the internet changed the car buying process electric car maker Tesla Motors had only been selling the Roadster for a year, and had introduced the new Model S sedan just two months before. The odds were stacked against Tesla Motors before 2009, one auto site even had a Tesla Death Watch. In 2009 fortunes turned around:
Tesla Motors turned profitable for the first time in July, when the electric car manufacturer shipped a record 109 vehicles, the company said Friday. <snip> In June, privately owned Tesla borrowed $465 million from the Department of Energy to fund development of an all-electric sedan called the Model S — slated to sell for $49,900, or about half the price of the Roadster. (CNN/Money)
Wow, a “record 109 vehicles”!! But the Model S was a hit, from August 2013:
Upstart automaker Tesla Motors won’t sell as many cars this year as Chevrolet sells in 3 days, but its early success with the all-electric Model S sedan is already keeping the competition up at night. An examination of sales data from across the U.S. and in California for the first half of 2013 paints a picture of just why that is. While Tesla delivered right around 10,000 cars through two quarters, those sales appear to be coming at the expense of BMW, Mercedes, Lexus and Porsche. And Tesla’s sales are remarkably — though perhaps not surprisingly — concentrated in California thus far, with nearly half winding up in the Golden State. As the automaker continues to open new sales and service locations across the country while simultaneously growing its network of high-speed Supercharger stations, things are likely to get a bit worse for the imports. (Forbes)
The manufactures responded with new models, the franchised dealers responded with challenges to Tesla’s direct sales model. From October 2012:
Dealers across the country, perhaps afraid money-losing Tesla is somehow a threat, are trying to get the company’s stores knocked down as illegally operating outside the cartel-like, protectionist franchise system they helped put in place.
They may have a point, Tesla’s stores could be illegal factory operations under many state laws, but these are stupid laws and Tesla isn’t wrong for trying to get around them.
This is an issue that comes up occasionally, most recently when Chrysler was forced by its own dealers to sell a factory-owned store in Los Angeles. The argument dealers make (after years of political donations got them cushy deals) is that stores owned by the company that builds the car provides unfair competition. (Jalopnik)
But dealerships want to protect their industry, which depends on very high volumes:
For the third year in a row, net profit in the new-vehicle department remained positive in 2013. During 2006-2010, net profit in the new- vehicle department was negative each year. But while net profit in the new-vehicle department was positive in 2013, the profit per-new-vehicle retailed fell to $69 from $111 the previous year. (NADA)
The dealership industry already knows that all auto manufacturer websites now include a “build your own (model)” feature where customers can pick out the model, colors, options, etc and see the price online. In this regard Tesla Motors is no different than all the big manufacturers, except they don’t have inventory sitting around on dealer lots to sell. Dealers also aren’t a fan of electrics, to sell them effectively they’d need to bash the gasoline vehicles that keeps their lights on.
The push towards EVs is being driven largely by the Obama Administration, which is requiring automakers to double their aggregate fuel economy by 2025. Putting EVs in the mix is one way to skew the average. Car buyers also get a federal credit of $7,500 when they purchase an EV.
Even if dealers agree in principle with EVs, they aren’t great for the bottom line. “Dealers want to move metal, plain and simple,” Kiley says. “There is more education and selling required for EVs than gasoline cars. As long as gasoline remains under $4 a gallon in most of the country, sales of EVs and plug-ins like the Chevy Volt and Ford C-max Energi are going to have steep hills to climb — because the infrastructure to support them is still lagging.” (Mashable)
If manufacturers had a direct sales model they could offer low & high volume models, though they’d prefer to sell higher profit models. Last weekend we visited the model Tesla Motors store and service center to check out the process, even though the used 2007 Honda we recently bought is the limit our budget. I wanted a better understanding, there I saw several serious buyers. One was sitting at an Apple iMac working on their order, others were outside.
Potential buyers looking at demonstrators
The Tesla Motors website indicates a Model S ordered now is estimated for delivery in late September.
When I posted this poll last week I knew, based on my research, that most would favor allowing manufactures to sell direct. I just didn’t know bow much, but the poll here is non-scientific:
Q: How should auto manufacturers sell new vehicles?
All auto manufacturers should be able to sell directly to customers without going through franchised dealers 55 [70.51%]
Low volume auto manufacturers should be able to sell directly to customers without going through franchised dealers 12 [15.38%]
Unsure/no opinion 7 [8.97%]
All auto manufacturers should be required to go through franchised dealers to sell vehicles to customers 4 [5.13%]
Wow, just over 5% think all manufacturers should be required to use the franchised dealer sales model. The attempt by auto dealers to force out Tesla in Missouri is over for this year, but I expect they’ll be back again next year. But the public isn’t on their side, nor is the Federal Trade Commission:
For decades, local laws in many states have required consumers to purchase their cars solely from local, independent auto dealers. Removing these regulatory impediments may be essential to allow consumers access to new ways of shopping that have become available in many other industries.
This very question has been raised across the country, as a still-young car manufacturer, Tesla, pursues a direct-to-consumer sales strategy that does not rely on local, independent dealers.
In this case and others, many state and local regulators have eliminated the direct purchasing option for consumers, by taking steps to protect existing middlemen from new competition. We believe this is bad policy for a number of reasons.
It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out over the coming years. Disclosure: we have stock in General Motors (GM).
St. Louis is rich with history from many immigrant groups over the last 250 years, including Germans. A century ago they unveiled a sculpture in the Compton Hill Reservoir Park:
The statue called “The Naked Truth,” designated a city landmark in 1969, was controversial before it was even built. It is a memorial to Dr. Emil Preetorius, Carl Schurz and Carl Daenzer, German-American editors of the St. Louis Westliche Post. Adolphus Busch was the major donor, giving $20,000 of the $31,000 cost.
A jury selected a design by sculptor Wilhelm Wandschneider of Berlin. Busch was appalled by the jury’s selection and the controversy over the nudity in the statue prompted great debates. The sculptor refused Busch’s request that the figure be draped.
The jury voted 14 to 12 to accept the original design but said the nude figure should be made of a material other than white marble, to de-emphasize the nudity. The figure is made of bronze.
The statue is a nude figure of a woman seated on a stone bench with arms outstretched, holding torches. The figure symbolizes “Truth” and the torches are for the “enlightenment of Germany and the United States.” The figure of Truth is of bronze in heroic size. The eyes are painted as in some bronze figures of the Greeks and as in many modern German statues. The inscription on the back of the shaft in incised lettering expressing the devotion of German-American citizens to the country of their adoption. This inscription is repeated in German.
The memorial was a gift to St Louis by the German-American Alliance and was unveiled on May 27, 1914.
On the right is “The Naked Truth” sculpture, unveiled 100 years ago today. Photo date May 19, 2012
Behind the sculpture is the water tower, one of three in St. Louis, one of seven in the county. The tower is open for tours ($5) on the following dates:
2014 Saturday Openings are scheduled:
Open from Noon to 4pm
The Wednesday before the Memorial Day weekend in 1954 was the grand opening of a new drive-in movie theater in St. Louis, at 4300 South Broadway. As you can see below, it was billed as “the only drive-in theater in the city limits of St. Louis.”
The 1954 ad announcing the grand opening, click image to view sourceEight years later, in 1962, the theater building, screen, and lot were razed for the construction of a new interstate highway, I-55. The blue lines mark the approximate outline of the theater site. Click image to view 1958 aerial
I began to wonder what was on this site before the 1954 theater. Sanborn Maps from October 1908 show H.H. Schweer Brick Company located east of Broadway and south of Chariton (See here & here), Brick by Chance and Fortune filmmaker Bill Streeter hadn’t heard of this company. The first linked Sanborn Map shows the St. Louis Workhouse across Chariton St from the theater. In 1908 a bowling/dance hall was north of Meramec (view map). In 1908 & 1958 Chariton & Meramec streets continued east of Broadway, these were likely closed after the highway was started in 1962. Interstate 55 had a big impact on this area.
i When I lived a few blocks away the building at 4330 South Broadway was a Big Lots store, Universal Foods opened in March this year after being vacant for several years. I was glad to see the yellow paint indicating a pedestrian route. Anyone know what grocery store built this building in 1968?O’Reilly Auto Parts lists the address as 4266 S, Broadway, but city records indicate the parcel address is 4300 S. Broadway. This was built in 2008.
In the coming weeks I’ll take a look at the commercial development along this stretch of Broadway and share my concept for an urban redevelopment. Have a great Memorial Day!
AARP Livibility Index
The Livability Index scores neighborhoods and communities across the U.S. for the services and amenities that impact your life the most
Built St. Louis
historic architecture of St. Louis, Missouri – mourning the losses, celebrating the survivors.
Geo St. Louis
a guide to geospatial data about the City of St. Louis
