Ferguson Says 'No' to CVS 2:05 AM

As recently reported by NoCoSTL.com, CVS officials have dropped plans for a CVS store at North Florissant and Hereford Avenues in the North County municipality of Ferguson.

CVS wished to demolish seven historic homes in Ferguson to shoehorn one of its generic suburban stores onto a lot conveniently located across the street from arch rival Walgreens.

We've seen this move by CVS before. The pharmacy giant built a store catty-corner to a Walgreens on Gravois in Boulevard Heights, taking several homes down with it. A proposed CVS on Lindell nearly demolished three buildings off of the landscape before being called off, more than likely due to issues with usage of the alley for the drive-through. The Walgreens on Lindell is less than a block from this site.

It's nice to see a citizens' group rise up and defeat one of these proposals to demolish sound and attractive buildings for duplicative services. Bravo, Ferguson!

Here's a Google Streetview shot of two of the homes slated for demolition:


View Larger Map

St. Louis: Let Ferguson be our guide. Historic character is more important than allowing chain pharmacies to steal away some market share from one another!

On a slightly different note: just because a CVS promises to build up to the street and screen parking, it doesn't mean the building is "urban" in format or that gestures toward urbanism justify squandering historic buildings for unneeded services. That Central West End CVS was dangerously close to being approved if it "urbanized" itself a bit more. To me, architectural diversity and pedestrian-friendliness spell urbanism. If CVS can't reuse a building, or find a vacant parcel in the city to build on and to build a new store appropriate to the urban environment, then CVS is simply not welcome.

Attention New CVS at Gravois/Germania! 12:16 PM

New CVS, have you started construction yet?

I hope not. Why? Because I know you probably think you're in a suburban enough area to go ahead and put spacious parking in the front of your store. In some ways, I even understand your logic. And I commend you for obliterating a brownfield (former gas station), even if I question the need for you, considering that nearby Walgreens.

But predictable suburban building wasn't the route of Chippewa Square at Lindenwood and Chippewa--another somewhat suburban area of the city.

They chose to build up to the street and put their parking provisions behind their collection of stores:

From Pictures

Relatively nice, huh? That's all I ask for. Oh, and minimize, if not drop altogether, destruction of homes, of which three are rumored (on Austria or Germania? I don't know). Thanks.

From Miscellaneous Items

The CVS Mess 10:47 PM

It's been confirmed recently that pharmacy giant CVS is entering the St. Louis market. One of their first stores will subsume a vacant parcel in the otherwise tidy Boulevard Heights neighborhood. The property, formerly a gas station, has been a blight on the neighborhood for years. The gas station abandoned the property in the late '90s or early 2000s, if my memory serves me correctly.

This sounds great, right? Here's the site:


View Larger Map

Of course, there's a Walgreens adjacent to this site (spin the Google Streetview Map around to see it)--not to mention the Schnucks, which carries pharmaceutical goods, right across the street.

But never mind the oversaturation of pharmacies for a moment. They're taking five homes to build this store too! God help me if they're getting any sort of incentives from the city to do so!

Look: I want competition for Walgreens. Their rampant expansion has blighted several neighborhood corners with a highly successful, but generic store that only hurts already scarce local retailers and pharmacy. See the Martin Luther King shopping center on North Grand as an example. They knock out a turn of the century commercial building (or two, or three, or four) to put up a cinderblock store with front parking--a forgettable addition to a neighborhood that needs bold change. On the south side, they built another atrocious store on the corner of Kingshighway and Chippewa--despite pleas of neighborhood residents for that corner to be reserved for architecturally interesting and urban construction after the failed K-Mart proposal in the late 1990s.


The last time I was in town, I tried to convert my parents to using local pharmacies. Guess what--they're the same price (if you have insurance) and they deliver!

Try Keller Apothecary on Brannon and Chippewa, or Lindenwood Drug at Lansdowne and Jamieson.

My point is: I have no qualms about threatening Walgreens' near monopoly on drugs and junk-peddling retail. I just don't want it to be CVS to do it! Especially not in a city like St. Louis that has shown a consistent failure to support urban storefronts and sound design. If we keep building like a suburb, we will never host walkable, urban neighborhoods. The line between suburban St. Louis and urban St. Louis will further blur until the once-grand city becomes merely a tired-looking caricature of Sunbelt Sprawl. Proper zoning (and leadership) would ensure that CVS would build urban and attractive. And it would most likely not allow the loss of homes in a stable neighborhood for such gratuitous duplication of services.

This is a Maps.Live view of at least two of the homes to be demolished. These are along Austria Avenue.

They may not be gems, but they shouldn't be torn down for a suburban-style pharmacy. That's a story St. Louis knows too well.

Luckily, to my knowledge, there are no renderings yet, and we can perhaps voice our concern that this project will clog an already busy street and should therefore be made as pedestrian-friendly as possible (not to mention well-designed aesthetically). Oh yeah...pssst...it's right across the street from a transit station...

Join me in contacting 12th Ward Alderman Fred Heitert to pass along these concerns.

Neighborhood Banners and Logos: Part I 12:48 PM

Since when is the Chain of Rocks Bridge in Baden? If you follow its city-defined boundaries, Baden has no coast line at all--it ends at Hall Street on the east.



The old Bevo 2001 symbol. Bevo actually has other neighborhood banners, most of which are now tattered. But those green banners are nice because they display the block numbers and run the entire length of the neighborhood along Gravois and Morganford. Still, some new ones are in order. The Mill and German symbolism should share space with the Bosnian immigrants that have so changed the neighborhood.



This logo is all part of the "re-branding" of McRee Town. It's shameful when we as citizens and when our policy makers can't overcome stigma to assist a downtrodden neighborhood in reshaping itself, rather than forcefully from the outside. At the very least, the overhauled neighborhood should have still sported the historical name McRee Town, in my opinion. But I know why they opted for "Botanical Heights"--free advertising for the Garden that helped take the neighborhood down. Plus, and excuse the pun, it's much more flowery.



To my knowledge, this sign was either vandalized or lost in one of the 2006 summer storms. It was a nice little entry marker to a little known neighborhood (though, with the mayor moving here, it may just be on the St. Louis City map soon!).



I really like these crests that hang on banners all over Carondelet. They memorialize that this was once an independent city, a little French and Spanish Creole settlement that retains its uniqueness despite its absorption by the city.

The Fools in St. Charles... 11:26 AM

..took the "blight" designation literally. Can you believe it?

A portion of historic downtown St. Charles known as Frenchtown was declared "blighted" a while back in order to encourage redevelopment of one of the last portions of the core to feature some vacant lots and underutilized buildings.



Well, it is blighted no longer thanks to the actions of the St. Charles City Council.

Councilman Richard Veit, Ward 1, sponsored the bill to repeal the designation because he said it unfairly punished the businesses in the area. And in two years, no developer has come forward with a redevelopment plan, he said.Most of the council members agreed with him, voting 9-1 in favor of repealing the blighting ordinance. Councilman Dave Beckering, Ward 7, voted against the move, suggesting that Veit wait longer to discuss the issue with more people.

But why remove a developmental tool just because no one took the bait in two years?


Velt "said he had heard from a real estate agent who was concerned that she might have to disclose that a home she was selling was near a blighted area. [Emphasis mine]"


Will someone please tell this real estate agent that West County is blighted too and that homes around the West County Mall seem to sell just fine amidst the decay at Manchester and 270?


TIFs are abused in this state worse than methamphetamines--and Missouri's just about the capital of that, too. Ideally, the "blight" label would be applied only when truly applicable--that is, when the market in an area has failed and infrastructure needs public/private reinvestment. After all, TIFs are designed with bringing improvements to infrastructure in mind.


A greater point is that a private developer using the blight label for eminent domain should be held more accountable to the public that is indirectly subsidizing the development. An $11 million TIF (someone correct me if I'm wrong) for Loughborough Commons is simply ludicrous--and certainly the blight label could be contested there, in middle class Carondelet and Boulevard Heights as well. And, of course, in Loughborough Commons' case, a whole row of decidedly unblighted homes was demolished for a shopping center that didn't even bother to supply a walkway to the west side of the development of which they, ironically, helped lower the property values.


Someone thank Michael Allen for documenting this hit to the built environment.


Here is a row of homes prepped for demo in 2005--most or all, of course, occupied prior to the autocentric shopping center that your tax dollars helped to construct.




Point is, St. Charles, your lack of understanding how blight works may have saved you some ridiculous megaproject, some big box or importation of chain stores on your quaint historic French section and you didn't even know it. Bravo, St. Charles, for not putting one of the last bastions of human-scale urbanism in your county at risk for "redevelopment".


Maybe I'm just too cynical, but can we start calling big boxes "TIF Queens" the way that public assistance recipients and single mothers are dubbed welfare monarchy?