Metro Can Bring Us a United Cherokee, from Lemp to Grand 8:58 AM

Post-Proposition M in November 2008, Metro's service reductions would litter streetscapes everywhere with plastic bags placed over bus stops that, we now all know too well, read: "We Regret Due to Lack of Funding Service to this Stop has been Suspended".

Sadly, St. Louis's most exciting business district--Cherokee Street--was among those areas without transit service. Vanishing St. Louis observed at the time that "Downtown St. Louis [would] be without street level transit for the first time since before the Civil War". Likewise, Cherokee Street, the South Side's downtown, would lose its historic transit service as well, present since the 1890s in the form of an electric streetcar and later, of course, as a bus.

Today, the #73 Carondelet bus serves the eastern portion of Cherokee, between Lemp and Jefferson, which is known as Antique Row. Yet Cherokee between Jefferson and Grand is without service. This is unacceptable. All great cities, and by extension all great streets, should offer the opportunity to live without a vehicle. Living on or around Cherokee Street west of Jefferson is now made more difficult without direct transit service. Even a relatively short walk to the nearest bus stop can make a commute a headache. Living in the heart of the Cherokee District, say at Nebraska Avenue, one would have to walk six blocks to the Jefferson bus (#11 Chippewa), more than seven blocks to the Gravois bus (#10 Gravois-Lindell); nine blocks to the Grand bus (#70 Grand); and four elongated blocks to the Arsenal bus (#30 Soulard). This is not an impossible journey in any of these directions; just frustrating and inconvenient. We must press for a United Cherokee!

Image borrowed from WeLoveCherokee and edited by me.

Plus, currently, Cherokee Street and Grand South Grand seem miles and eons apart. Mostly this is due to the fact that Gravois is such a wide street with high-speed traffic. Transit has a way of healing unforgiving urban environments. If I lived in Old North St. Louis, for example, I'd likely never choose to walk the roughly one and half mile distance between Crown Candy and downtown--I'd take the bus. Without this bus service, Old North would feel like a distant planet from relatively nearby downtown--and a much less attractive place to live. Luckily, though, the #30 Soulard can get me to City Hall (to apply for a building permit to renovate my row house?) in less than 10 minutes.

The #73 Carondelet should therefore cross Gravois and connect with the city's best used bus line--the #70 Grand. At that point, it would not be a stretch for St. Louis University students (and other people who live along the long and populous Grand Boulevard) to take the #70 to the "Cherokee bus" and explore the city's most bustling commercial district.

People living in Benton Park along the #73 could then use just one bus line to get to a grocery store (the South Grand Schnucks, where an influx of shoppers might finally force the management to substantially refurbish that location. That's enough of an incentive, huh?).

 The current route of the #73 Carondelet. Can you even spot the pitifully short leg on Cherokee Street?

Now, would I love this bus to become a streetcar? Of course. But let's get the transit service restored first and see what else we can do later. Who's with me? Let's make sure Metro takes its funds from the Prop A victory and reestablishes a bus line down Cherokee in its 2010 Restoration plan!

Please do any and all of the following if you support a United Cherokee, from Lemp to Grand!

Email Metro officials: restoration2010@metrostlouis.org (thanks, Paul!)


Comment on Next Stop, Metro's transit blog, indicating your support for a United Cherokee.

Contact the two alderman who could have sway over such decisions: 9th Ward Alderman Ken Ortmann and 20th Ward Alderman Craig Schmid:

Ken Ortmann
(314) 622-3287
(314) 776-0161 Additional Phone

Email here.
Craig Schmid
(314) 622-3287
Email here.
 
Tweet Metro or its orderlies (note: term of endearment) with your support!
 
Official Twitter feed for Metro: http://twitter.com/STLMetro
 
Twitter feed for Courtney Sloger, Next Stop blogger and Metro Social Media Maven: http://twitter.com/STLTransit
 
Facebook Metro and leave a wall post indicating your support for a United Cherokee. Link to official Facebook page.
 
Thanks, all, and thanks to Cherokee Street News for giving me this idea!

Property Research in the City of St. Louis 9:41 AM

While I can be a harsh critic of the lack of openness of St. Louis's government at time, I must give the city kudos on at least one project: the ever useful "Geo St. Louis".


Now, don't get me wrong. It's definitely not without its kinks. For one, I have never found it by going to the city's main website at http://stlcin.missouri.org. Where is it? This type of tool would be much more useful if it were front and center on the main website. Secondly, it tends to go offline a bit too often; certain links don't work; etc.


Yet, it's a still an immense resource. You can find out who owns a house, how many ordinance violations it has had, whether there's a demolition permit pending, what year the city believes it was built (often inaccurate, especially for older properties, but still), and even images of the property dating back several years. You can grab a property's legal description, assure that a certain parcel is inside a certain neighborhood, find out if it's listed on a historic district. The list goes on regarding the uses of the site (it even has a mini-locational analysis tool whereby you can look at aggregate income and other demographic data of the city with a customizable radius around an area of interest).


For this blog, being able to plug in any address and see whether a demolition permit has been added or whether there's an old photograph of a vacant building on the Preservation Board agenda--it's a lifesaver!


One of my favorite features of this little known site is the "Featured Image" that appears on the main page. From what I can tell, the selection is totally random. Some days we see vacant lots; usually we see vacant crumbling buildings. I always chuckle to myself that the city would "feature" its vacancy and abandonment on this semi-public website, but every once in a while a random photograph showcases the sheer beauty of a restored and revived St. Louis.


Like this home in Gravois Park on Miami:

What a great face to our city! Brick sidewalks, beautiful Second Empire architecture...what could be better?


I appreciate Geo St. Louis for what it currently does and hope the city can find the resources to make it even better. Let's not even discuss their main website, whose outdated interface is like a dingy doormat where wiping one's shoes just gets them dirtier (translation: it's not very welcoming).

New Construction (and Renovation) in Gravois Park 9:03 PM

2732 Miami (at Iowa). Yours for $240,000. Click here for the listing. It has a twin to the east.

There's no side view, but I'm willing to bet this sucker does indeed present a vinyl face to the street.

What do you think: sufficiently deferential to historic Gravois Park architecture or too stuck in the past?

Also in Gravois Park, how's this for a proposed renovation?

3523 California Before


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3523 California After

Click here for the listing. It will be excellent to see this beauty rehabbed!

Beautiful Block in Gravois Park 1:28 PM

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While Gravois Park may be more known for its early 20th century, mostly preserved streetscapes, the eastern portion of the neighborhood closest to Jefferson retains some late 19th Century charm. The above block--3700 Texas--contains quite a varied and interesting collection of vernacular St. Louis architecture dating as far back as the 1860s, perhaps.

It has several Second Empire micromansions, some vernacular Creole cottages, some simple red-brick Italianate structures, and more. Scroll the block to check it out; it's a charmer.

Why not Chippewa? 10:26 AM

In the ten blocks of Chippewa Street located between Ohio on the east and Louisiana on the west is a mostly forgotten and forlorn commercial district. (Take a Google tour yourself here. Head west with Streetview).

In a shrinking city that has more often opted for suburban style retail to compete with its suburbs, these small traditional business districts don't even get a second look.

Yet if you check out the inventory, there's a lot more there than you might expect. Imagine if some of St. Louis's star mega-entrepreneurs decided to buy up the stretch and market it aggressively (think the Gills with Skinker-DeBaliviere and the Grove or Joe Edwards with the Loop). Chippewa is not the kindest of areas in the city right now, being colloquially located near the epicenter of South Side crime. Yet if circa 2000s Manchester can turn around, I have faith Chippewa can too.

The picture above is the south side of the 2700 block of Chippewa. St. Louis streetcar suburbs (such as this Dutchtown-Gravois Park borderline once was) featured 5 or so primarily north-south residential blocks before interrupting the rows of doubles and 4-families with an east-west mostly-commercial street. See Arsenal, then Cherokee, then Chippewa, then Meramec, Bates, etc.

What is important for re-establishing a neighborhood business district today is the presence of not just corner commercial units (which have often been converted to residential-only anyway) but also mid-block mixed use buildings. These are the buildings that encourage people to continue their journey afoot, convinced that more such beacons of commerce exist farther that way.

Chippewa doesn't have a ton of these, but, as the picture shows above, they're there.

Here's a nice corner commercial building at Chippewa and Ohio. After a little renovation, this could really shine.

Here's a unique corner commercial unit just a block west of those previously shown. Again, a bit of a storefront makeover would go a long way in sprucing up this handsome building (although it might be sad to see those kitchy and in no way appropriate Georgian-style ogee arches over the door disappear).

Hopefully, I'll be able to put together a little map of available properties, since the city seems to have a picture of nearly everything on Chippewa. It has a great stock of both residential and mixed use properties that are simply a little worse for the wear. I'd hate to see it get to the point where more properties are demolished. There's already a large vacant lot in the district as well as an autocentric corner at Compton/Chippewa. Luckily, though, this area is now in the Gravois-Jefferson Historic Streetcar Suburb National Register District, which means that any owner seeking a demolition permit must go through Cultural Resources and the Preservation Board first.

With any luck, this old business district could reconnect with the cluster at Chippewa/Broadway/Jefferson, which has been autocentricized, but not, perhaps, to the point of death. A fine row of commercial buildings, the subject of much controversy due to Alderman Schmid's liquor license restrictions, sits on the east side of Broadway just south of Chippewa awaiting full occupancy.

Amazing renovation on California at Cherokee 1:00 AM

I am officially jealous of the mofo who gets to live in this stunningly rehabbed unit, right off of St. Louis's most urban and diverse and interesting commercial spine.

It's 3409 California. Here's the Craigslist posting.




Pre-Renovation Google Streetview Capture.

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20th Ward still witnessing alcohol-sales showdown 1:28 PM

Another interesting piece from the South Side Journal -- 20th Ward Alderman Craig Schmid has budged a bit on his "Dry Ward" stance. Instead of the original 50 percent food-sales requirement in order to serve alcohol, he now supports a 35 percent rule.

A lot of the present controversy erupted when Steve Smith, owner of the popular Royale bar on Kingshighway, wished to open another bar--this time, no food to be served at all--on a stretch of Cherokee Street within the 20th Ward. Schmid's ordinance prohibited it, and he would not budge, much to the chagrin of the St. Louis community who a) likes to drink, b) likes to drink in interesting settings, and c) likes activity and believes "eyes on the street" will enliven and make the host block more safe.

Critics contended drunks import trash, noise, vandalism, and violence into a neighborhood that does not need any more of those things.

I think Schmid's heart is in the right place, but I also think it's time to let this area mature. Schmid hasn't updated his views on Cherokee Street since the 1980s, when its decline began. Today, Cherokee is a dynamic, but struggling district that needs investment like that which Steve Smith is willing to pour in. The new bill sponsored by Schmid is a start.

I do wonder what the actual neighborhood concensus is, however.

What are your thoughts?

Miami and Louisiana - a remarkable intersection 11:41 PM

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[You can play around with this map, by the way. It's not a screen capture!]

Using Google's Streetview option, I was gliding through Gravois Park when I stopped at this intersection. An immediate nostalgia for old south St. Louis swept over me. Here, at the southwest corner of Gravois Park, stand three intact storefront buildings (though none of them seems commercial anymore). The neighborhood around them, though down at the heels, is also mostly physically present. Just west on Miami looms the South Side National Bank Building (or SouthSide Tower), providing an excellent terminal vista for the street.

Not the park, not any one of the three buildings, and very few of the surrounding residential units seem masterfully designed, worthy of any awards or other recognition. And yet, in many ways, they are just right. I don't mean that in a "Three Bears" sense. I mean, the streetscape, the park, they're simply...correct. How things should be built: to the street, with individuality and uniqueness and yet humility, offering mixed uses and more shelf life, sturdy and sensitive all at once.

Our present built heritage represents enormous potential. It's an intersection like this one--which hopefully will not see demolitions anytime soon--that restores my faith in St. Louis's potential as a functioning, healthy city.

I had to do this post out of my severe depression over Ecology of Absence's devastating 1985 photos of North Florissant.

(Another great thing about this intersection? Dad's Cookies is juuuust down the road! Yummy!)