Thoughts on NGA West’s Upcoming $10 Million Dollar Landscaping Project

The new NGA West campus , Jefferson & Cass, has been under construction for a few years now.

Next NGA West is a large-scale construction project that will build a new facility for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in St. Louis, Missouri.

This $1.7B project is managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and executed by McCarthy HITT Joint Venture, with oversight by NGA and the U.S. Air Force. The 97-acre project site is located in the historic St. Louis Place neighborhood at the intersection of Jefferson and Cass avenues.

When complete, the campus will include a 700,000-square-foot office building, two parking garages, a visitor center, a delivery inspection facility and secure entrance/exit points. The staff of 3,150 will move from their current Soulard, St. Louis, location to the Next NGA West in 2026.

NGA

The primary structures on the site (main, two parking garages, visitors center) are now clearly visible from outside the perimeter. For security reasons the main building is in the very center of the site, far away from the fence on each side. This is a military facility with security you’d expect at any military base.

One of the four remaining contracts on this project is for landscaping, here’s the summary:

More than $10,000,000 — Anticipated award Fall 2023

As one of the set-aside projects to the large NGA N2W design-build (D-B) project, this design-bid-build (D-B-B) project will provide site-wide landscaping, including site plantings, site furnishings, landscape lighting, and irrigation. There is no demarcation zone established for landscaping as it encompasses the entire site. The main D-B contractor will provide a master plan and concept landscape design; this project will use this information to develop the planting, irrigation, landscape lighting, and site furnishings design for procurement and installation.

Approved for Public Release #20-749

NGA West Business Opportunities

Don’t expect this to look like a Chesterfield office park, there won’t be large swaths of perfectly manicured turf grass with stripes. Thankfully they’re going for a more sustainable landscape, with natives instead of useless turf grass.

The NGA site plan includes a walking path around the main building, so the landscape should create a nice environment for NGA’s employees. It should also attract pollinators while not making the urban heat island effect any worse — perhaps even reducing.

The security fence is set back from the three adjacent roads (Cass, Jefferson/Parnell, and 22nd Street) so there will street trees, tree lawns and such. Plus the corner of Jefferson & Cass includes a small green space outside the secured area. Hopefully these areas along streets won’t be filled with turf grass due to its high maintenance.

Landscape maintenance will be one of many future service contracts at NGA West. Unfortunately, most/all of our existing landscape maintenance firms are set up for large areas of turf grass, edged & mowed with noisy high pollution equipment.

Experts say lawn and garden equipment represents about 85% of all SOREs [small off road engines] in operation today nationally, and those engines are typically manufactured without the pollution controls used on cars.

Virtually all small engines are two-stroke, which burn a dirtier fuel mix than vehicles do. Advocates say that in addition to the climate-changing emissions released by the engines, workers are exposed directly to their exhaust and rarely wear filters to protect their lungs.

Other people complain about the noise they make, especially when so many suburban residents now work from home.

USA Today: “Gas leaf blowers and lawn mowers are shockingly bad for the planet. Bans are beginning to spread.”

I personally love the idea of banning gas lawn equipment, but it would be nice to see professional landscape maintenance companies move in that direction voluntarily. I can see a firm that uses all electric equipment (including electric trucks) getting the lucrative maintenance contract ar NGA West. Better for NGA’s employees and those doing the actual landscape maintenance work!

Interested? One place to start:

Our mission is to transition landscape maintenance to low noise, zero emissions practices with positive solutions to protect the health of workers, children, the public, and the environment. We provide research, education, outreach, and solutions, working collaboratively with communities, businesses, schools, and government agencies.

Quiet Communities: Quiet Landcare

Manicured turf grass lawns are great in few places, such as ballfields. Otherwise, not so much. Traditional lawn care equipment is very noisy — every week at our apartment you’ve got the edger, mower, and leaf blower. It’s expensive, dirty, and noisy.

— Steve
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St. Louis urban planning, policy, and politics @ UrbanReviewSTL since October 31, 2004. For additional content please consider following on Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, and/or X (Twitter).

Racially Restrictive Covenants Ruled Unenforceable 75 Years Ago Today

At the beginning of the 20th century racism was thriving, though it took different forms in different places. The south had harsh ”Jim Crow” laws, lynchings, etc. Cities like St. Louis were less overt, but were still very racially segregated.

In 1916, St. Louisans voted on a “reform” ordinance that would prevent anyone from buying a home in a neighborhood more than 75 percent occupied by another race. Civic leaders opposed the initiative, but it passed with a two-thirds majority and became the first referendum in the nation to impose racial segregation on housing. After a U.S. Supreme Court decision, Buchanan v. Warley, made the ordinance illegal the following year, some St. Louisans reverted to racial covenants, asking every family on a block or in a subdivision to sign a legal document promising to never sell to an African-American. Not until 1948 were such covenants made illegal, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Shelley v. Kraemer, a case originating in St. Louis.

— St. Louis Magazine

Here’s a summary of the two cases the U.S. Supreme Court consolidated, the namesake is from St. Louis.

In 1945, an African-American family by the name of Shelley purchased a house in St. Louis, Missouri. At the time of purchase, they were unaware that a restrictive covenant had been in place on the property since 1911. The restrictive covenant prevented “people of the Negro or Mongolian Race” from occupying the property. Louis Kraemer, who lived ten blocks away, sued to prevent the Shelleys from gaining possession of the property. The Supreme Court of Missouri held that the covenant was enforceable against the purchasers because the covenant was a purely private agreement between its original parties. As such, it “ran with the land” and was enforceable against subsequent owners. Moreover, since it ran in favor of an estate rather than merely a person, it could be enforced against a third party. A similar scenario occurred in the companion case McGhee v. Sipes from Detroit, Michigan, where the McGhees purchased property that was subject to a similar restrictive covenant. In that case, the Supreme Court of Michigan also held the covenants enforceable.

— Wikipedia

Interesting the state courts in both Missouri & Michigan found the covenants enforceable. The local civil court ruled against the neighbors…on a technically. Not enough property owners had signed on to enact it.

On October 9, 1945, respondents, as owners of other property subject to the terms of the restrictive covenant, brought suit in the Circuit Court of the city of St. Louis praying that petitioners Shelley be restrained from taking possession of the property and that judgment be entered divesting title out of petitioners Shelley and revesting title in the immediate grantor or in such other person as the court should direct. The trial court denied the requested relief on the ground that the restrictive agreement, upon which respondents based their action, had never become final and complete because it was the intention of the parties to that agreement that it was not to become effective until signed by all property owners in the district, and signatures of all the owners had never been obtained.

Justia

With this 1948 decision many whites decided to leave north city for north county.

— Steve
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St. Louis urban planning, policy, and politics @ UrbanReviewSTL since October 31, 2004. For additional content please consider following on Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, and/or Twitter.

St. Louis Roots: Andy Cohen

This Friday, May 5th 2023, St. Louis native Andy Cohen will get a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame:

The late-night TV talk show host and executive producer will be inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame at 5 p.m. Friday, May 5. A live ragtime band will begin performing at 4:30 p.m. 

The ceremony is free to the public and will take place in front of the Moonrise Hotel at 6177 Delmar in The Loop.

Cohen was born and raised in St. Louis and graduated from Clayton High School in 1986. He is best known as the host and executive producer of Bravo TV’s “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen.” He was also an executive producer for “The Real Housewives” franchise and hosted numerous specials. 

KSDK

Cohen’s roots in St. Louis go back a very long time, as detailed in January 2021 on PBS’ program Finding Your Roots (Against all Odds, S7E2). NPR’s Nina Totenburg was the other guest.

If you missed this episode, or want to watch it again, it will be shown again tonight on Finding Your Roots, 9.1 7pm CST in St. Louis.

In the above clip Cohen reads about a paternal great great grandfather, Russian peddler Simon Kruvant, injured in a horse/carriage accident in 1889 at South Broadway & Koeln Avenue. We also learned Kruvant and his wife lived at 1122 N. 7th Street.

Given that Kruvant was a peddler a commercial space with room for goods, cart, and horse makes sense. This wasn’t in the Post-Dispatch archives so it must’ve been another newspaper.

To see this map page in detail click here.

This area was known as Near North for a long time, but officially it is part of Columbus Square. Before Neighborhoods Gardens and Cochran Gardens were built the neighborhood contained the highest concentration of tenements in the city.

This neighborhood welcomed the poorest immigrants, including: Irish, Jewish, Italian, and blacks escaping the Jim Crow south.

See Andy Cohen tonight on Finding Your Roots and receiving his star Friday in front of the Moonrise Hotel.

— Steve
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St. Louis urban planning, policy, and politics @ UrbanReviewSTL since October 31, 2004. For additional content please consider following on Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, and/or Twitter.

My Zip Code Has the Lowest Average Credit Scores in the St. Louis Region

A new database uses average credit scores as a measure of a community’s financial wellbeing:

The Financial Wellness Index dashboard and mapping – created in partnership with Experian – provides a unique snapshot of a community’s financial health as measured by the average credit scores of its residents. Credit scores are important because they affect residents’ ability to borrow, the likelihood they can be resilient during difficult times, and their ability to achieve financial goals like purchasing a home or starting a business. — Operation Hope

I checked the zip codes for both sides of the Mississippi River and my zip code (63106) was the lowest of all, hence the worst in terms of financial health. There’s a direct correlation between primarily using currency instead of credit cards and having lower credit scores.

Before going further a brief credit score 101 is necessary:
We don’t have just one credit score, we have numerous. There are 3 major credit bureaus (TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian). Each maintains a file on our loans, credit cards, payments, etc. Each will vary slightly from the others, even without errors.
Credit scores are calculated based on information from one of the three credit bureaus, but there are two major formulas used currently: FICO8 and VantageScore 3.0. Both scoring methods use a range of 300-850.

The credit bureaus collect information voluntarily reported to them. Many payments such as utilities, rent, handshake loans, etc haven’t been reported because it involves extra work to do so. When I was a landlord I don’t think there was a way to report payments/delinquencies by my tenants — but technology is changing to allow more into the files.

Ok, end of credit scores lesson.

The Operation Hope database uses Experian data and the VantageScore 3.0 formula. The national average was 698, Missouri & Illinois averaged 694 & 702, respectively. The City of St. Louis had an average of 681. My zip code (63106), just north of downtown & downtown west was just 589.

Downtown (63101) & downtown west (63103) both averaged 645. This is low, but it’s nearly 60 points higher than the adjacent zip code of 63106.

The 7 city zip codes mostly north of Delmar average 604, the highest is 63112 (646)– which includes the Debaliviere & Debaliviere Place neighborhoods. Credit scores in five of the seven north side zip codes are between 589-601. In the rest of the city the lowest average is 619 (63111), the highest is 714 (63139).

What do these numbers mean?

VantageScore rates them as such:
300-499: Very Poor
500-600: Poor
601-660: Fair
661-780: Good
781+ Excellent

Again the average score (Experian/VantageScore 3.0) for my zip code of 11k people is 589. Individually that’s a Poor score. What about from a community perspective? I think the same classifications apply. If the average is 589, what are the low and high scores? After decades of low scores, mine have all been in the classification for over three years now.

Poor credit scores prevent people from getting loans altogether, or at least without paying through the nose interest rates. This might look like buying an overpriced well-use car at a ”we finance anyone” place to get wheels to get to work. The high rate of interest means the payments are steep. The dealer doesn’t care if you pay in full because they can repo and resell to someone else.

While a prospective employer or landlord can’t see your specific score, they can ask your permission to see your credit report. A lack of credit history, or bad history, can mean a person needs to keep looking for a job or apartment.

What does this have to do with cash, printed currency? A lot!

Today, roughly four-in-ten Americans (41%) say none of their purchases in a typical week are paid for using cash, up from 29% in 2018 and 24% in 2015, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

Pew Research

I’m in that ”none” group. I use cash only for the occasional lottery ticket or very rare medical cannabis purchase. But many are the opposite, using cash for everything. Back to Pew Research:

Americans with lower incomes continue to be more reliant on cash than those who are more affluent. Three-in-ten Americans whose household income falls below $30,000 a year say they use cash for all or almost all of their purchases in a typical week. That share drops to 20% among those in households earning $30,000 to $49,999 and 6% among those living in households earning $50,000 or more a year.

Even so, growing shares of Americans across income groups are relying less on cash than in previous years. This is especially the case among the highest earners: Roughly six-in-ten adults whose annual household income is $100,000 or more (59%) say they make none of their typical weekly purchases using cash, up from 43% in 2018 and 36% in 2015.

There are also differences by race and ethnicity in cash usage. Roughly a quarter of Black adults (26%) and 21% of Hispanic adults say that all or almost all of their purchases in a typical week are paid for using cash, compared with 12% of White adults who say the same.

Pew Research

The areas with the lowest credit scores are the same as those that use cash almost exclusively. Can’t expect a good credit score if you never/rarely use credit!

The part that stumps me is how to change the current paradigm. It’s necessary as the population increasingly goes cashless, otherwise those on the economic fringe will be even more isolated financially they are currently. Future posts on credit scores will look at how the scoring models have improved since their inception, what still needs to be done, how can the region lift scores — and how this will indirectly reduce crime.

— Steve
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St. Louis urban planning, policy, and politics @ UrbanReviewSTL since October 31, 2004. For additional content please consider following on Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, and/or X (Twitter).

19th Annual Look at the State of St. Louis’ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive Pt 2: Kingshighway to City Limits

This post continues looking at Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in St. Louis, west of Kingshighsway. For east of Kingshighway see Part 1.

From east to west MLK Dr passes through the following wards: 14, 11, and 12. It’s a boundary for the 10th ward.

North St. Louis is the least populated part of the city, so each ward is physically larger than other wards. The bad news is this means lots of problems, poverty, etc. On the plus side the solutions that should be implemented are largely big picture, not micro neighborhood by neighborhood. The latter is how we end up with nice urban infill around a renovated historic building…across the street from a gas station/convenience store (see Arlington Grove vs Mobile in Street View.

Hopefully new aldermen will be more open to urbanist planning rather than continuing the failed suburbanization of the city. I’m not optimistic.

— Steve
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St. Louis urban planning, policy, and politics @ UrbanReviewSTL since October 31, 2004. For additional content please consider following on Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, and/or X (Twitter).