The 9th/10th One-Way Couplet Needs To Return To Two-Way ASAP

More than six decades ago 9th & 10th streets were changed from two-way to one-way in the opposite directions — a one-way couplet. This still exists from Clark Ave on the south to Cass Ave on the north — a distance of 1.2 miles. The north end used to continue past Cass to connect to I-70, but it was shortened when construction on the newest bridge over the Mississippi River began approximately 15 years ago. The south end still connects to I-64 ramps.

The purpose of one-way streets decades ago was to quickly get cars into downtown in the morning, then back out after work. They did their job…a little too well. Downtown was so quick to empty out nobody stuck around for shopping, dinner, or a show. There many reasons why downtowns emptied out, but one-way streets were a major contributor. To make downtown St. Louis enjoyable as a place to live, work, and visit all the one-way streets need to return to two-way traffic eventually. When Locust Street west of 14th switched back to two-way a dozen years ago it made a huge difference.

For nearly 50 years  9th & 10th extended north of Cass Ave to connect to I-70, but that ended with the 2010 start of a new bridge over the Mississippi River, later named the Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge. But downtown 9th & 10th weren’t the original couplet of paired opposite direction one-way streets.

Let’s look at the original one-way couplets in the downtown central business district (Arch to 12th/Tucker):

1. Northbound 4th & southbound Broadway (aka 5th)
2. Southbound 6th & northbound 7th
3. Southbound 8th & northbound 9th
4. Southbound 10th & northbound 11th

The first still exists today, the rest have all been changed to the point they no longer function as original intended. Three streets lots blocks to the convention center & dome: 6th, 7th, 8th. Ninth will soon be added to that list.  Sixth street lost blocks to Kiener Plaza & the hotel south of Market. Both sixth & seventh streets lost blocks to the original downtown Busch Stadium (now Ballpark Village), and the current Busch Stadium. And finally northbound 9th Street is closed for one block between Market & Chestnut because the designers of Citygarden didn’t think about a pedestrian signal at 9th & Market. D’oh!

I’ve posted about changing these opposite one-way streets back to two-way traffic numerous times, but now it’s urgent. When the convention center expansion begins a couple of blocks of 9th will be closed, but that’s not the urgent reason for restoring two-way traffic. The vacant AT&T Tower downtown at 909 Chestnut (bordered by 9th, Chestnut, 10th, and Pine) is why these streets need to revert to two-way traffic. Why?

The entrance and exit to the small underground garage was designed with the one-way streets in mind, the entrance was off northbound 9th and the exit was onto southbound 10th. The 44-story building has been vacant since 2017, but eventually someone will renovate it. When they do it would be easy to switch the entrance and exit. If the building is renovated while 9th & 10th are still one-way it’ll be impossible to make them two-way in the future.

Since built, exiting traffic has come out southbound just before Chestnut. Switching the exit from 10th to 9th wouldn’t change this potential conflict point.

The building has lost value and changed hands numerous times, eventually someone is going to renovate it. 

The 1.4 million-square-foot, 44-story office building on Chestnut Street is the largest office building by square-footage in the region, and the 1986 structure built for a single tenant has posed a vexing challenge amid a downtown market already struggling with the highest office vacancy rate in the metro area. 

AT&T vacated its lease in September 2017 and about 2,000 of the company’s employees relocated nearby in buildings at 801 Chestnut and 1010 Pine streets. (Post-Dispatch, May 2019)

For comparison here are some other large vacant buildings downtown

• Railway Exchange, almost 1.2 million square feet.
• Butler Brothers warehouse, I’d estimate at 500,000-600,000 square feet.

Since 909 Chestnut was built as a headquarters it was connected to buildings to the east & west. Another block west was a large company parking garage. The garage under 909 Chestnut is small, was built for service vehicles and company executives. A MetroLink light rail station is only a block away, but parking obsessed assumes everyone has a car.

The building footprint is too small to ramp up to use some upper floors for parking. A car elevator or automated system are the only options to get cars up higher, but they’re very costly.

Eventually someone will figure it out. When they do 9th & 10th should be two-way traffic.

— Steve Patterson

Dead Sidewalks Won’t Come Back To Life With Overhead Walkways Gone

Enclosed walkways over public sidewalks are generally a bad idea — removing pedestrians from the public realm. However, with these elevated walkways often comes the real culprits to killing sidewalk life: blank walls, inward focus, etc.

A prime example of what not to do in a downtown was downtown St. Louis’ St. Louis Centre indoor mall.

It was 8 years ago today that a big event was held to begin the removal of the very oppressive walkway from over Washington Ave — the first step in transforming the inward-focused mall into outward-facing MX retail with the interior becoming a parking garage.

See:

• 2010: Undoing a huge mistake from the 1980s
• 2012: MX Rises From Former St. Louis Centre, Pi Now Open

Two other walkways have been removed in the last year, one on each side of the former Southwestern Bell headquarters, later an AT&T building on Chestnut between 9th & 10th. The walkways connected the now vacant tower, now longer owned by AT&T with an older Bell building to the West and a 90s data center to the East.

These walkways were very different than those at the former St. Louis Centre — up high, small, transparent, These allowed employees to walk to/from all 3 buildings without having to keep going through security. With AT&T’s significant reduction in the number of downtown employees the center towner became unnecessary. The tower’s new owners needed to reconfigure the tower from a single-occupany headquarters into a multi-tenant building. For them and AT&T that meant disconnecting the three buildings.

The exteriors are all repaired now, though all three buildings are lifeless at the sidewalk level. This us by design. The removal of these two walkways won’t have the dramatic results we’ve seen at MX.

St. Louis has systematically killed street life block by block, neighborhoods by neighborhood. Attempting to bring back vibrant sidewalks for more than a few blocks here or there is likely a waste of time at this point.

— Steve Patterson

Idea: Retail Retrofit To AT&T’s Parking Garage

Today parking garages are built with retail on the first floor so they are have potential activity at the sidewalk level. Unfortunately, we still have many garages built in earlier times when no provisions were made for anything other than the storage of cars. Some, like the 1960s stadium garages, can’t easily be retrofitted, see Fixes For Stadium West, Stadium East.  The AT&T parking garage at 1101 Chestnut, built in 1985, can be retrofitted with retail.

Before anyone says something like ‘the city has bigger problems for its limited resources’ let me state this post is about trying to repair one small section our city by showing a way a corporate citizen can help out by modifying their private property . Why would they? Because they like to be seen as a good corporate citizen.

Any need?

Yes, anyone that has ever had jury duty across the street knows finding a place for lunch isn’t too easy close by. Saint Louis University Law School will soon be located in the building adjacent to the west end of the garage.

This wouldn’t require 100% of the ground floor, although most of the south side facing Chestnut would be a good concentration facing the courthouse.  The small area facing 11th and the long area facing Pine could be done later as demand increases.

Again, I’m not advocating public monies be spent on this effort. I also don’t think AT&T is going to start work on implementing this idea right away, or ever.  It’s an idea I thought I’d stare because I think it could have a positive impact on the activity level in the area.

— Steve Patterson

AT&T Quietly Reduced Workforce In Downtown St. Louis

When most people see the AT&T office towers at 1010 Pine and 909 Chestnut St. they assume many people work there. The Pine tower is from 1925 and the Chestnut tower was built as the corporate headquarters of Southwestern Bell in 1985, both have just a fraction of the number of employees of even just 5 years ago.

Two issues: how AT&T reduced the workforce without public layoff notices and the implication for other downtown St. Louis businesses nearby.

Former and current employees tell the same story about how AT&T avoided having to issue layoff notices as required by the 1988 WARN Act. From one source:

AT&T has done a number of outsourcings since 2006-ish to different companies include Accenture, IBM and Amdocs. I was part of a 1,000 person division in IT which was outsourced to Amdocs in 2008.

We were given a very last minute notice about a mandatory meeting in February, 2008 in the Data Center auditorium where we were told we were being outsourced to Amdocs. Our pay & benefits (health insurance, vacation, etc.) were kept the same, with the exception of our pension as Amdocs did not have a pension plan. Instead, we were given an additional 5% match to our 401k. We still worked for the same boss (the outsourcing went up to the VP level, in my instance), at the same desk, doing the same work. The only difference is that our paycheck was coming from Amdocs.

In early February 2009, we received another mandatory meeting invite for the employees in my group. In the data center auditorium, an Amdocs manager (from a different division, located in Champaign, who none of us had ever met) read a prepared statement stating that layoffs were necessary because the amount of work assigned to our group was falling short of what was anticipated at the time of the outsourcing. We should return to our desks and those employees being let go would receive an email while those not being let go would not. About an hour later, I received an email indicating I would be laid off on February 26, 2009. Approximately 500 of the 1000 people in my group were laid off in total.

The significance of that date? It was one year and one day after we had been outsourced to Amdocs. The contract between Amdocs and AT&T specified any employees laid off in the year following the outsourcing would be given severance at the AT&T rate (4% of salary per year of employment). After that date, severance would be paid at the Amdocs rate (1 week per year of employment). To rub salt in the wound, our final paychecks contained pay for 72 hours as we were let go on a Thursday and worked only 9 days out of the 10 day pay period (rather than the usual 86 2/3rs hours as salaried employees).

My source indicated Amdocs issued WARN Act notices in California, where they have stricter requirements, but AT&T and contractors avoided having to announce reductions in St. Louis.

In August 2009 our downtown grocer, Culinaria, opened for business. A year later businesses on the one block of 9th between AT&T and Culinaria  were closing due to lack of customers. Culinaria was blamed but one person I spoke with says this was the height of the reductions.

To make matters worse for nearby businesses, many of the remaining employees telecommute from home rather than come into the office.  Reduced property taxes is another issue:

Inland’s affiliate, MB St. Louis, convinced St. Louis assessor Ed Bushmeyer that the AT&T tower is now worth just $135 million – about $70 million less than what it sold for in 2006.

Jerome Wallach, an attorney for MB St. Louis, argues that the building’s value plummeted because AT&T has slashed the size of its workforce there, and low occupancy cuts the building’s market value. The owner would have difficulty selling the half-full building for an attractive price when AT&T’s lease expires in 2017, he added.

But the building is not for sale now, Wallach acknowledged, nor has MB St. Louis given AT&T any rent breaks on the property because of its diminished presence. Wallach argues the rent shouldn’t factor into assessed value, which should be based on what it might sell for now in its half-full state. (stltoday.com from April 2012)

No doubt AT&T plans to completely vacate the 909 Chestnut building after their lease expires, in the meantime the numbers of employees at both buildings will continue to dwindle.

— Steve Patterson