A Digest 3:48 PM

It's been a busy semester and a sparse blog as of late.

I have a lot to catch up on, and thought I would do so in rapidfire fashion:

First, the Mayor's inauguration speech. Impressive. No, really. He actually engendered a bit of civic confidence and pride. A couple standouts, though, were his calls to hire more young professionals to staff Planning and Urban Design (as well as IT and the Citizens Service Bureau), his confidence in the revitalization of North City (via Paul McKee, Jr.?), his threats against MODOT to start considering public transit, and, of course, the call to reenter St. Louis City into the County.

My suggestions? Give Planning real power in city government and then seek the professionals. Who wants to work in an "advisory" agency that has real little power? Well, okay, I would love the job, but would be extremely frustrated at the limitations of the office. Rollin Stanley surely was. The city will continue to lose these talented and energetic people if the process of government is designed to exclude them.

Re: North City, it's rumored that the Blairmont Master Plan will be introduced to the Board of Aldermen shortly...

Re: MODOT, bravo, Mayor Slay! Just think: if St. Louis City joins the County, Metro will have an easier time passing transit funding bills.

Which brings me to the next point: yes, St. Louis City entering the County is the conservative solution to undoing the Great Divorce of 1876. But it's a necessary first step, really, to the healing of a fractured regional psyche. If the City and County showed a dedication to work together to solve urban problems within both, the region could shift the dynamic away from the growing western fringes and back toward the center.

Next Up: the Walgreens coming to Lafayette just west of Tucker. Urban STL forumers who attended a recent public meeting have said that Walgreens will actually build up to the street and will add a faux-second story to better fit in with the surroundings. The new store will even attempt to match the detailing of the Georgian across the street. While I'm sure this will turn out laughable, think of the alternative: the beige or white box with way too much parking surrounding it on three sides. No thanks. I am happy to hear this news!

Next: Various local business news.

It appears that Five Bistro is moving to 5100 Daggett on the Hill (formerly Pizzeria del Piazza), leaving its Grove location empty. Yet I hear from a friend that the former El Mundo Latino restaurant at the northwest corner of Manchester and Tower Grove may be getting rehabbed as we speak. Putting that corner back in use would be a major shot in the arm to the still-struggling western end of the Grove District along Manchester.

As reported by Sauce Magazine, this nifty building in Benton Park will be host to a wine bar called Ernesto's. Check out the Streetview from 2007 and then look at the massive rehaul the building underwent.


Photo Source: St. Louis Investment Realty

Now, did I call the Patch neighborhood's coolness or what? The Post-Dispatch is reporting that a partnership between Steins Broadway, Inc. and Rothschild Development may transform the former Coca Cola Syrup Factory into 77 new lofts and the home of Lemp Beer! Awesome news.

Lastly, the Kiel Opera House is coming back to life, finally (well, I suppose we should wait and see, but it appears a done deal). This is nearly 100 percent positive news--except the parking situation. The talks are that the adjacent Abrams Building will be hollowed out and turned into a parking structure. It's time the city showed leadership on this issue. Not every development should receive its own garage. Surely the city's new Tucker/Clark garage could service most able-bodied patrons; the rest could benefit from set-asides from the Scottrade Center attached garage.

That's it for now.

Mayor Slay Comments on Blairmont! New mixed-use community? 5:45 PM

On developer Paul McKee’s Blairmont project, which is buying up hundreds of properties in north St. Louis with plans to build a new mixed-use community: Slay said he supports the effort, but that McKee would have to go through the same city approval process as anyone else. He welcomed McKee’s private investment and big plans. “What Paul McKee is doing is he’s putting his own money in, completely at risk. … He’s buying up properties that, in the vast majority of cases, no one else wanted. This is a real opportunity for an area that has been starving for private investment for a long, long time.”

Source.

Notes:

A new mixed-use community? Does the Post-Dispatch know something the public doesn't? Sure there's been speculation of a "Winghaven East," but with the downturn in the economy, I thought everyone was now expecting a huge industrial park a la Northpark.

And Mayor Slay: how hypocritical! You talk of your progress in getting problem property owners prosecuted (see Toby Weiss's commentary on those dubious claims), yet you're supportive of a (still secretive) development that has skirted almost all nuisance ordinances on the books! Yikes. Residents of St. Louis deserve some dialog in these "big" projects.

At least we know exactly where Mayor Slay stands now. Should help me (and others) in the voting process come March 3, 2009.

Kudos to the Post-Dispatch for making Slay speak on Blairmont!

EDIT: Might I add that the Distressed Areas Land Assemblage Tax Credit renders the statement that McKee's finances are "completely at risk" a little ridiculous.

A quote from our fair Mayor re: biking 11:18 AM

I don’t have the kind of daily schedule that would let me bike to work. But, if the weather stays this nice a while longer, you might find me along the River Des Peres Trail on a Saturday morning soon. I’ll have a helmet on.

From yesterday's MayorSlay.com blog post.

Personally, I'd like to see him rearrange his schedule to include biking to city hall. It's a major boost for cyclists and urbanists when your city's figurehead bucks the personal automobile in transporting him or herself.

The very act screams, "I am the mayor of an urban area. And I am one of you."

Is that thinking too much into it?

Portland, Oregon's mayor-elect rides his bike to City Hall.

Mayor's Chief of Staff indirectly reveals that Blairmont has "major plans" 11:19 PM

"This is the first guy who's gone up there with major plans in fifty years."

That is KMOX's Charlie Brennan quoting Mayor Slay's chief of staff Jeff Rainford, defending McKee's activities on the near North Side.

The broadcast is a couple days old, so this isn't news per se, but the quote bears repeating.

This is the first official (albeit secondhand) announcement that McKee actually has plans for the area. Now, we all expected the same. And they are apparently, as we also imagined, "major". But is it not the worst smack in the face to hear that the Mayor indeed has known McKee's plans for some time but has not said so much as a sentence to ease the minds of his worried constituents?

This is poor, conservative leadership in a city that needs bolder change.

Simply applying for whatever awards come up for "redeveloping cities" and aggressively campaigning for these PR opportunities is not enough, Mayor Slay. The citizens of St. Louis deserve to know what McKee's plans are and to be included. Our built environment should never have been so intentionally chipped away at.

Ironically, the whole to-do over the World Leadership Forum's award to St. Louis for "urban renewal" was predicated on rehabilitation of historic buildings. Former lead St. Louis Planner Rollin Stanley entitled the presentation "From Vacancy to Vibrancy". Both Slay and Stanley seemed to suggest their leadership brought about all the new rehabber activity in the city of St. Louis. It wasn't mentioned that the Mayor had nothing to do with the writing of the historic tax credit act in the late 1990s (pre-Slay) that is the actual reason for the newfound "vibrancy". It was also not mentioned that Slay and/or the Board of Aldermen not only presided over but had a major role in the dismantling of Gaslight Square, McRee Town, Bohemian Hill, the Century Building, and now the Blairmont neighborhoods.

That's a lot of neighborhoods to have joined the lengthy list of demolished neighborhoods in the relatively short span of Slay's two terms. And yet, he's at it again, promoting St. Louis's being named a finalist in the 2008 All-America City Award (dubbed the "'Oscar' of Community Recognition"). Interestingly, the "St. Louis Region" is up for an award typically given to cities, and occasionally to counties. Still, Slay is willing to accept credit for regional innovations such as the Great River Ring.

All I can say is I am happy I kept my voter registration in Missouri!

When Credit is Due... 2:29 PM

I have to hand it to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at times. Just when I'm ready to write it off as a tabloid unconcerned with St. Louis's myriad urban issues, it produces an article of journalistic excellence.

A previous such article is "A Tax-Credit Bill for One Man?" by Jake Wagman (written on my birthday in 2007 (June 17)--a present just for me?). Wagman's article was so balanced (perhaps even biased towards the beleaguered Blairmont-afflicted neighborhoods) that it drew fire from Mayor Slay. In a city where Mr. Slay was able to recruit the National Trust for Historic Preservation to supply a fluff piece about the "unfortunate need" to demolish the Century Building in that same newspaper, Wagman's criticism of the deathly silence at City Hall was astonishing.

The latest gold star for the P-D comes in the form of "Charles Lee 'Cookie' Thornton: Behind the smile". The shootings at the Kirkwood City Hall back in February of this year by "Cookie" shocked the nation. But the article seems to indicate that the city of Kirkwood had become inured to Cookie's explosive behavior, watching his deterioration without wondering why.

My point is not to exonerate Cookie. What happened at City Hall is inexcusable. But the article does display the bitter irony of Negro Removal that I hinted at in my previous post, which also mentioned Cookie's Meacham Park neighborhood.

Poor African American neighborhoods are often so neglected that, when they do get any sort of attention, even if the form of urban renewal, the residents are often complicit in the plans. City leaders can then point to residents' willingness to sell their homes as evidence that there's no will or way to salvage these neighborhoods.

Truly, the burden of proof should be on the municipalities who neglected the neighborhoods, who ushered in or failed to halt the decline in the first place.

Instead, they become humanitarians--givers of fresh new housing, destroyers of dilapidated old housing; bringers of Wal-Mart and Target, takers of hopelessness and blight.

State of the City 2008 11:18 AM

Mayor Slay delivered his State of the City address on April 25, 2008.

Conspicuously absent topics?

Blairmont. What's coming?

Transit. What's next?

Pyramid. What now?

That the Mayor has made only one official reference to Paul McKee Jr. and Blairmont is simply inexcusable. This is an issue that deserves attention.

We all know, however, that when Mr. McKee announces Winghaven East on top of St. Louis Place and JeffVanderLou, it will contain townhouse units urban enough to win the mayor's support. He'll be nothing but shocked when the development is announced, of course, because he knows nothing of McKee's plans for over 600 parcels in north St. Louis (which qualify for the new Distressed Areas Land Assemblage Tax Credit).

We all know that when the city sells the former Pruitt-Igoe site to McKee for a NorthPark East, city officials including the Mayor himself will be tickled at all of the new jobs brought to the city in this traditional industrial park layout.

Why not take this opportunity, Mr. Slay, to ease our minds and let us know what is ultimately planned to subsume over a century's worthy of architectural heritage?

Or when/if we'll see a new Metrolink expansion? Or what will happen with that damned Skybridge at St. Louis Centre!?

I want to lease a space in Slay's "world-class" office park, a.k.a. Ballpark Village 9:03 PM

By now, all St. Louisans are aware that, if Ballpark Village even gets off the ground, Centene Corp. won't be moving from its Clayton abode to a front row seat to Cardinals' games.

That's okay, though, because Mayor Slay doesn't mind a bit of a change of plans, per today's mayorslay.com blog post:

First, I want a world-class development built. What will it be? The Cardinals want to shift from condos to office space. I am fine with that. Downtown needs more office space and more jobs.

All right. So those seeking a mixed use "neighborhood" to fill the current crater (some jokester has changed the name of the Village on its wikipedia page to "Crater Village") should be resigned to "Officepark Village"? I guess City Hall thinks so.


Wait--village? Doesn't that suggest a residential community? Ballpark Business District sound more fitting, Mayor Slay? That better include some world-class Class A office space!


It's probably for the better. Ambitious redevelopments backed by Slay tend to have some nasty strings attached:



Century Building demolition photo courtesy of Built St. Louis