St. Louis Infrastructure and Development Review 11:40 PM

I've been lax on updating lately, despite the fact that St. Louis has seen some big news as of late. So why not crunch it all into one convenient post?

First, Highway 40's open again. Interstate 64. Whatever.

I'm flabbergasted by the largely positive response to the re-opening of the highway. It provided nothing for St. Louis but more highway lanes, fewer homes in Richmond Heights, a look fresh out of 1960s Brasilia, and better-designed interchanges. For hundreds of millions? Pardon my dripping sarcasm, but grrrreeeaaaaat. Call me out for not actually having driven the highway yet (not been home since it opened), but the pictures seem to me to only highlight the project's total lack of imagination.

Where's the lush median?

Source

What about High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) Lanes? These are pretty standard on many roadways. If you don't have at least one other person in the car with you, you cannot use the lane with a symbol like the one below:

Source

HOV Lanes encourage (read: enforce) carpooling and therefore fewer smog-emitting cars on the road.

Better yet, as I've argued on this blog, why not simply end I-64/40 at McCausland/Clayton Road. At this point, there could either be an urban boulevard with a 35-40 MPH speed limit or...no roadway at all. The region survived a year or so without this segment of the interstate; it's hard to argue that it was vital to the survival of the region at this point. This would have been a great opportunity to open up Forest Park to the neighborhoods to the south and show that pedestrian traffic flow matters as much as automobiles. Oh well; another generation or two of an obtrusive interstate in a city that has far too many.

I know it's too late to complain (yet I persist), but I just am nauseated by the positive response to this large and wasteful infrastructure project when the region has so many greater needs for transportation infrastructure.

Next, the Archgrounds International Design Competition! Hearkening to the original international competition that netted Eero Saarinen's landmark Gateway Arch proposal, the National Park Service will hold another competition with an eye to reinvigorating the present grounds and forging connections with surrounding neighborhoods, including the East St. Louis riverfront. In keeping with my teeth-gnashing over Highway 40, I am absolutely thrilled that the project could see the removal of the depressed lanes of I-70 and even the elevated lanes at Laclede's Landing. This portion of the highway is set to become obsolete as I-70 is re-routed into Illinois over the new Mississippi River Bridge. Proposals must include removing this divisive eyesore from the equation if the Arch is ever to be psychologically connected to Laclede's Landing and downtown. I am beyond excited at these prospects!

Ballpark Village. I agree with blogger Rick Bonasch's (St. Louis Rising) sentiments on recent discussions of the Ballpark Village development. There's no "village" component being discussed at all! Not including residential in this high-profile parcel would be an enormous mistake, especially considering Blue Urban witnessed a nearly instant sell-out of the Ballpark Lofts development in a down economy.

The Bottle District. HRI, Inc. of New Orleans is set to redevelop the old McGuire Moving and Storage building into lofts geared toward artists. Excellent! It's great to see the Bottle District development start off on a positive, organic note. There are no contrived 700-foot skyscraper pipe dreams--just a sensible proposal to restore a historic building and inject new life into it.

Grand Center. Not to be outdone by downtown, Grand Center may soon be getting its own artist loft development in the old Metropolitan Building. Right now, this is coming to me in the form of an unsubstantiated claim on the Urban St. Louis forums, but hopefully we'll hear some sort of confirmation soon. This building was scheduled to become a hotel of the Hyatt brand, but those plans have fallen through.

As for hotels, Grand Center may soon have two. Again, Urban St. Louis forum rumormongers (a term of affection, mind you) stated that St. Louis University President Lawrence Biondi was opposed to a hotel proposal on Forest Park Avenue just south of campus, this one of the Holiday Inn chain. That one may still be going forward. But SLU is not sitting idly by. SLU is partnering with the Lawrence Group to transform the former Interiors Unlimited Building adjacent to Triumph Restaurant and the Moto Museum into a luxury hotel.

Could St. Louis be emerging from the recession?

Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark 1:17 PM

I received an email from Amy Broadway of the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts.

Excerpted from the attached press release is a description of the artist, Gordon Matta-Clark:

The artist Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978) used neglected structures slated for demolition as his raw material. He carved out sections of buildings with a power saw in order to reveal their hidden construction, to provide new ways of perceiving space, and to create metaphors for the human condition. He spoke of his work as an activity that attempted “to transform place into a state of mind by opening walls.” When wrecking balls knocked down his sculpted buildings, little remained. He took photographs and films of his interventions and kept a few of the building segments, known as "cuts."

The opening is October 30, 2009 from 5-9 p.m. Click here for more information.

Perhaps more interestingly, the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts is encouraging St. Louisans to take inspiration from their own built environment in conjunction with this exhibit.

Check out their page on "Your Saint Louis", where they will be taking submissions from the public.

You'll be able to submit a walking tour of your (or your favorite) neighborhood to encourage others to explore your section of the city, we'll invite you to share your photographs, and much more. This web page will be where we feature your St. Louis and what it means to you.

Sounds awesome. I plan to see the exhibit the next time I'm in town. You should go to the opening and report on it for me. Please?

New 100-Room Hotel Planned for Midtown 2:55 PM

Link here, via 17th Ward STL.

Central West End Midtown Development reviewed a proposal by Sasak Corp. to construct a 100-room. 5-story hotel at 3663 Forest Park Avenue. The new hotel would require demolition of the squat two-story Raffie Vending Company warehouse. This demolition would need approval from the city's Preservation Board first. The hotel itself would be of the Holiday Inn Express & Suites chain.

Behind the hotel would be a 100-space, two-level parking garage. CWEMD stated that they liked the proposal but would like to make sure the building will be built as rendered and not lose any of its architectural details in the process.

Rendering is below:



Some concerns:

-The parking garage will be too prominent from the front elevation, in my opinion. I have to wonder whether this garage (and associated large curb cut) is even needed given the monstrous (and ugly) garage constructed just to the west for the University Heights Loft Development. If not that garage, then what about St. Louis University's own ridiculously huge Laclede garage? If the parking were shared somehow, there would be a greater buildable area that could include a courtyard or some outdoor space that would be much more attractive than a parking garage.

-Is this the best location for a Midtown hotel? The city really should be working to develop a hotel in the Metropolitan Building as was originally planned (a Hyatt, I believe). With a constant flow of tourists in Grand Center, as opposed to Forest Park Avenue on what is essentially an interstate offramp, certainly both the Arts District and SLU would see benefits. Can Midtown support multiple hotels?

-Also, a minor point: why can't Grand Center have a Joe Edwards? I try to avoid chain hotels when I stay anywhere, opting for bed and breakfasts or local hotels if they're not too expensive. A unique, local hotel such as the Moonrise in the East Loop would be great for Grand Center, which has been for decades attempting to brand itself as a unique and creative destination. Somehow a Days Inn or Hyatt doesn't scream "Art" to me.

The Post-Dispatch Puts Online Some Great Shots of the Now-Gone Mill Creek Valley Neighborhood Circa 1948 1:29 PM

Click here. (I probably can't legally screen cap these, so click while you can! I'm actually thinking of buying one of them...)

These are heartrending.

I truly believe if this area were still existent today and did not experience too much demolition, St. Louis University would never have even needed to "save" Midtown. The lack of a pedestrian-scale neighborhood in the Central Corridor from the Mississippi River to about Sarah Avenue is striking and something that has held the city's revitalization back entirely.

Much of the housing seen in these photographs was built in the Civil War-era (the mansard-roofed Second Empires were likely 1870s construction). Unfortunately, Soulard and Old North are the only remaining neighborhoods with much housing left from those eras. A supremely historic city, especially being so far west in the American landscape, has very little record of its earlier history. It's especially disappointing to see the conditions of the Mill Creek homes; they look great! Sure they had outdoor restroom facilities. Was that a reason to clear dozens and dozens of solid residential blocks? Sigh.

Will developments like Art House bring a new human scale architectural dynamic to St. Louis's pockmarked Central Corridor?

At the very least, we can breathe a sigh of relief that the Locust Automotive Row (a.k.a. Midtown Alley) is picking up steam and is turning into a really cool and soon to be active business district. And Samuel Shepard just north of Locust does feature some remnants of Mill Creek-style housing (3-story Italianates and Second Empires). Maybe someday we'll see a proposal to develop sensitive infill along this stretch (unlike the cheap rowhouses with the red doors that we see currently) so that there will finally be a pedestrian link from downtown all the way to the Central West End.

The St. Louis new/proposed construction report and questionnaire 11:09 AM

SI'll start this post off by commenting on a recently completed new building that I have come to really enjoy--Park East Tower in the Central West End. I finally "get" this building now. It's not as if its contemporary take on Art Deco truly escaped me. It's just that I saw it as cheesy before. Viewed from one of the skybridges at the Washington University Medical Center, the building was striking to me. The southern approach looks great. The street level, though, could use some reconfiguring.

Along with the Park East Tower, the Park East Lofts seem to me an excellent addition to the streetscape (and might resolve some of the issues with the Tower's street level presence). It's hard to assess how the actual build-out will look, since they've only got the steel beams up right now, but renderings are promising (see below).



Let's stay within the Central West End. The new mixed-use building on Lindell between Sarah and Vandeventer (dubbed Villas of St. Louis) is the perfect scale for the street. I don't think it's any paragon of design in and of itself. But it's not offensive, in my opinion. And it might set a proper, urban precedent for massing along that de-urbanized stretch of Lindell Boulevard. Here's a picture from Steve Patterson's flickr page:



Moving out of the CWE, what's that huge, LEED-certified warehouse along Chouteau just east of Compton? I'm glad that it's billed itself as energy-efficient, but did it have to offer its window-less face to such a huge swath of Chouteau? It's so bulky and lifeless. I guess I'm disappointed because this was a great opportunity to spruce up Chouteau and maybe, someday see it as a true, urban boulevard.

Also, there's a sign up for new construction in the Gate District--near Compton and Eads. I couldn't stop (grandparents were driving at the time), but it looked like there was a name and rendering for the development. This seems significant because it's on the west side of Compton--the side that St. Louis University's medical campus has systematically dismantled. Even if the rest of Gate District construction isn't top notch by any measure, I would breathe a sigh of relief to see houses constructed on this unlikely urban prairie. Anyone have any more information on this development?

Okay. South Grand now. The new building at S. Grand and Winnebago (formerly Pyramid's senior homes, now Dominion's) is progressing nicely. While this is a much less appealing building than Villas of St. Louis, I do have to once again admire the scale and the mixed-use nature of the project in a city that practically mandates suburban design through its outdated zoning code.

Here is an earlier view of the building from the St. Louis Business Journal:



I think Vivienne on Lafayette is a great development--a wonderful adaptation of a St. Louis vernacular style. I hope they shake up the formula a bit and build more.

The down-the-street-neighbor Union Club, though, is disappointing. The inability to imitate the (oxymoronic) graceful ruddiness of Richardsonian Romanesque in the angles of the bay curvature and the brick color renders this building as odd-looking in my book.

Let's shoot up to Grand Center. Last night, I went to the reception for the Light Project. The Light Project is four installments, but, of course, the one that will grab the most attention is the burnt out church on N. Spring--its onetime roof now bedecked in lamps and lampshades of every color. It's truly a magnificent sight. It was also amazing to see people strolling casually around Grand Center in such numbers. All of this temporary urbanism made me long for some permanence. The large signs advertising the ArtHouse development made me feel a little more confident that St. Louis's "arts district" may truly materialize someday.

One last site to discuss: the new recreation center in Carondelet Park.

Here is a rendering:




I had no idea they were going to completely isolate this suburban-style building in the middle of Carondelet Park. Why not add to street life? Why remove the old-growth trees? Why take up park space? Why does this center need to be within a park? I can think of dozens of other sensible places. Why not fill in a gap along the Patch's South Broadway stretch? Or somewhere along Gravois (the overly large parking lot behind the Bevo Mill, for example)?

I am disappointed that I voted for the proposition to allow for this construction. Shouldn't residents of south St. Louis have been consulted with the placement and design of this facility?

Your thoughts?

Recontexualizing residential in Midtown/Grand Center... 10:38 AM

Often, on this blog, I speak of grave threats to St. Louis's diminished (and diminishing) urban context.

There are too few examples of sound, aesthetically pleasing infill reclaiming sections of lost urban landscape. The North Side has plenty of plots of land on which to evoke the old, dense urbanism of the past, but these opportunities have mostly been undercut with cheap construction, not enough trees, and no retail/commercial anywhere near the neighborhood. A lot of those things are understandable in such a disinvested area.

But what about a city's self-conscious Arts District?

In St. Louis, that's Grand Center/Midtown. And that district's two anchors, Grand Center Inc. and St. Louis University, have been all too happy to steward Midtown's residential (and mixed use and industrial) context off the planet.

Rather than see the scattered residential buildings as assets to redevelop the neighborhood, both entities ignored them entirely, watching them decay into convenient parking lot opportunities.

Exhibit A - The Central Apartments

Exhibit B - 3740 Lindell

Exhibit C - Wagner House

And that's only from the past year or so!

It's incredible that there was little outcry over SLU's haphazard demo's. Midtown's residential context--one that once housed upstart St. Louisans in very dense but luxurious quarters, eventually alongside the lower classes--is nearly gone.

Luckily, a new context is arising in the ArtHouse development.

Eco-friendly, attractive, contemporary, urban, dense--these are great features to add to Midtown. This development, though not affordable to anyone but an upper middle class, is definitely a start at turning Midtown around. It could once again be a residential neighborhood if this wise developer's plans catch on.



Of course, I'd like to see some diversity in the neighborhood, both of types of buildings and people, but ArtHouse is a great rallying cry for bolder design and urban intimacy, even perched on their little hill as the units are.

I look forward to one force in Midtown/Grand Center trying to restore and recontextualize rather than destroy and leave lifeless strictly utilitarian surface lots.

My latest rants: for once, in brief! 5:40 PM

#1

Why, why, why, why, why, why, why tear down more of Laclede's Landing? Did the original footprint of our once booming river city harm the City, or the Lumiere Casino, or something? In a better St. Louis, a whole intact row of Switzer buildings would stand in place of Lumiere, gleaming all the more brightly without all of the same annoying to-do.

#2

Please, Built St. Louis, no more! The Daily Dose of Blairmont series on Rob Powers' blog continues well past the century mark, now on day 108. Unfortunately, it's been about 7X that many days since the mayor or McKee himself should have addressed residents with their plans.

#3

Really, SLU, your new law school couldn't have wrapped behind the now gone Lindell manse?

This is not brain surgery, city leaders. Places that speak to a human scale are bound to be reclaimed. Why would we ever think of destroying these things when we cannot, or will not, replicate such scale?

The epicenter of post-industry breathes new life into unlikely objects 9:56 PM

How has Detroit turned these:



into this?:



Simple answer: innovation!

This is a truly brilliant take on infill in the context of the scarred, post-industrial cityscape of Detroit.

It surpasses St. Louis's best infill since its own renaissance: the elegant ArtHouse development in Grand Center.

Read more about the Detroit development here.

Demolition Alert [St. Louis University edition]: the Wagner House 2:06 PM

Unconscionable. St. Louis University continues to deface the built environment and derail the very stability they’re typically credited with bestowing upon the Midtown and Grand Center neighborhoods. The latest victim of SLU’s parking preference is the demolition of the Wagner House at 3438 Samuel Shepard, as reported first by Vanishing STL. (The photographs below are all property of Vanishing STL.)

I call it the “parking preference” because parking lots, chiefly, and garages, secondarily, receive preferential treatment among land uses by officials at St. Louis University.

The Wagner House is one of the few remaining row houses in St. Louis’s central corridor. If within a series of intact rows, this structure on Samuel Shepard would have appeared a member of a stately block more typical of urban Brooklyn than somewhat spread-out St. Louis.

But SLU has been given a pass by an unwitting or indifferent public. Typically, you will hear the remark that the university "saved" Midtown and that there's simply no saying what the neighborhood would be like without the strong institutional anchor that is SLU. Father Lawrence Biondi, S.J. (President of SLU) was even named "Citizen of the Year" in 2005 by a group of former recipients who had received the award themselves for demonstrating "concern for St. Louis' growth and vitality," presumably for redevelopment efforts and those same attributions of SLU to the health of Midtown.

Yes, there's the Moolah, the Continental Life Building, the Coronado, and the Warehouse of Fixtures that all saw rebirth either on direct or indirect account of SLU's presence. The importance of each one of these buildings cannot be overstated.

And yet, as always, it's the architectural "little guy" that's allowed to atrophy: the one that's off the beaten path; the one that's been vacant for years; the one that's stately but not imposing; the one that it takes just an ounce of vision to respect and recognize that it is vital to the future of its home block. Perhaps, more simply, the one that's on a small enough scale to easily demolish.

While I would argue the Wagner House is a profound, elegant example of a limestone faced Italianate Row House, it still appears quite forlorn as a vacant building on a street now sadly devoid of almost any residential use (one of the many of that type found in St. Louis's illustrious and almost single-use arts district, Grand Center).

The cycle takes one step further here. With each footing of urbanity lost, another demolition is justified. The loss of the Livery Stable just to the east in the burgeoning Locust Business District quite likely represented a vindictive land grab by a powerful institution with a pretty public face. The turn of the century historic building was felled for a surface parking lot--in 2007 (this century)--all to serve the rather distant new SLU sports arena on Compton. The June 20, 2007 Riverfront Times Article "Rebuilt to Suit" is an illuminating investigative piece on SLU's bullying of business district entrepreneurs in order that they might demolish the very stock of buildings that makes the district a prime candidate for reinvigoration and is the only hope of an adjacent, pedestrian-friendly retail area to serve the university.

The salt in the wound is that SLU represents a top-down planning approach inspired by the Urban Renewal mentality that awarded them half of their campus's land--an approach diametrically opposed to the smaller scale, more organic approach of the Locust Business District and its associated partners.

Thirty-seven forty Lindell, right on SLU's campus, was also lost, this time to plans for a new law school:

[Edit (3/20/08): Just drove by the site today. Woops! Didn't realize this building was still up. I'm pretty sure that SLU's plans are still to tear it down for the new law school.]

Without going into SLU's more distant past of demolitions, the case can be made that SLU is a detriment to the neighborhood in which it is situated for no greater reason than that it has effectively dismantled whatever neighborhood existed.

If the argument is whether SLU has presented an economic boon to the city, then I would argue on the side that it is very beneficial for the city. Does that mean it's been kind to its neighbors? Not at all. In fact, if SLU were in a preservation-friendly neighborhood that would have reigned in its quest to acquire land for new construction at any cost, we might have seen a mutual benefit, a kind interplay between institution and neighborhood that can prove a best case scenario. Tulane and Loyola Universities in New Orleans, while not perfect, are good examples of universities that remained sensitive and complementary to historic neighborhoods and their unrivaled amenities: historic buildings and lively public spaces.

A friend of mine here in New Orleans comes to mind. She was speaking on her neighborhood association--located in a very stable, middle class Uptown enclave--and its responsibilities. I inquired as to what major concerns the neighborhood, called Touro after its institutional anchor (a healthcare facility), has.

Bluntly, she responded, "Well, sometimes the hospital's an asshole."

As a struggling city, St. Louis must not fear to oppose its institutions, which should be lifebloods rather than bloodletters, when they are, in fact, being assholes.

And, of course, please contact 19th Ward Alderperson Marlene Davis and let her know your concerns over this demolition.

St. Louis University continues with its tradition of Jesuit humanism and defunct urbanism. 12:59 AM

I regret to inform you that, on this blog, St. Louis University will appear as a recurring villain. I can almost assure you of this given its past track record: for every Coronado saved, there's a Livery Stable. And for all the support they've poured into Grand Center, they've given equal or greater force to demolitions in adjacent neighborhoods.

The latest news (presently unverified) is that the next victim on the SLU demo chopping block is the set of "language houses" on Laclede. Laclede was a once residential street (an uncle of mine used to call a brownstone walk-up on Laclede home). Today, SLU has replaced much of the streetscape with mundane campus buildings or their trademark "greenspace" (read: deadspace). So few urban scaled residential buildings remain that, in fact, the language houses of Laclede appear out of the context they once dominated.

According to ever reliable forum members of Urban STL, these venerable buildings will soon be replaced with--who knows? Another failed coffee shop? Another statue? Another grassy knoll? Expect a follow-up report when the time comes.