40 Broadway 8:19 PM

In my absence from posting, my St. Louis excursions to blog about kept piling up to the point where the heap became incredibly intimidating. While they continue to accumulate, I thought I'd take a night off and post about one of the more recent ones--my trip to Badenfest, in North City, via the #40 Broadway bus.

St. Louis has plenty of amazing bus lines--ones that casually weave through our city's storied urban fabric and allow a passenger a finer look into our city than if he is driving himself. Take the #73 Carondelet, for instance, which offers glimpses into Lafayette Square, Benton Park, Dutchtown, and, of course, Carondelet.

Besides a short a jaunt over to the Anheuser Busch tourist center, the #40 is not a bus I'd recommend a visitor to our city hop aboard for some sight-seeing. It mostly sticks to Broadway itself, which, north of downtown, can be less than visually stellar. Even so, this is St. Louis, and even the most forlorn and neglected parts of town have an amazing backstory. While Rob Powers can show you each and every surviving house left in this now-mostly industrial district, I can only offer you what's visible from the bus.

Here are a few captures from my bus ride from downtown to the Baden neighborhood in North City.

Now arriving in Baden:

The Baden business district, seen above, is one of the city's most intact and attractive commercial corridors. The wide street made crowds seem a bit sparse at Badenfest this past Saturday, but the mood was lively and the smells wafting from barbecue pits were irresistible.

If you're ever hankering for an adventure on a Saturday or Sunday morning, there's really no better way to do it than to hop on a bus that you don't know very well (or at all!) and see where it takes you. See something interesting? Pull the chord and stop there!

Just as an FYI to all current and potential transit users: Metro is restoring yet more service on August 30. So before I send you to bus schedules, be forewarned that they're nearly all about to change. For more information on Restoration 2010, Round Two, click here. Soon, you'll have less of an excuse not to hop a more frequent bus to exotic parts of our city and region.

The NorthSider 7:46 PM

If you visit the city's official website and click the link to its 79 official neighborhoods, you'll witness the digital divide right before your eyes.

Well-to-do and well-known neighborhoods like St. Louis Hills and Soulard have attractive, contemporary websites. Neighborhoods less on the radar are not likely to have much of a web presence. Many of these historic neighborhoods are faced with a city-designed website that dates to the mid-1990s--and hasn't been updated since.

But it's not just a matter of flashiness and neighborhood pride--neighborhood websites can be a great place to disseminate information out to residents. Other than Old North St. Louis, not a single other North Side neighborhood had much in the way of an online presence. Now, several of them have something even better--a neighborhood/ward newspaper that has both a physical and online copy, the NorthSider.

The NorthSider is a project of 21st Ward Alderman Antonio French. The neighborhood newspaper lists its constituent neighborhoods underneath its title: Penrose, O'Fallon, the Greater Ville, Mark Twain, and Kingsway East.

In its first edition are stories regarding the North Side Recreation Center to be constructed in O'Fallon Park:

and new housing on North Newstead:

The NorthSider fills a tremendous gap in coverage of the goings-on and development news across a wide swath of the North Side. South Siders and Central Corridor-ians better take note of the NorthSider's covered neighborhoods--they're true architectural stars of which we should all be proud.

June Preservation Board Agenda Online 10:37 PM

The temporary agenda is accessible here.

On the agenda are:
-A preliminary review of lighting at Aloe Plaza
-A preliminary review to extend an existing roof deck in Lafayette Square.
-A preliminary review to renovate 6120 Delmar (blogged here) in the East Loop, while demolishing a non-contributing addition.
-Review of proposal to install an illuminated ground sign with reader board at St. Francis DeSales Catholic Church.
-An appeal of staff denial of an application to replace third floor front window in the Central West End.
-An appeal of staff denial to retain 7 vinyl windows installed without a permit in Fox Park.
-An appeal of staff denial to retain exterior wrapping on front windows installed without a permit, also in Fox Park.
-An appeal of staff denial to retain a front door installed without a permit, in Benton Park.
-A new application to install solar panels on front roof slope, also in Benton Park.

Proposed demolitions are below:

-6044 Cates, in the West End neighborhood (photo from Geo St. Louis)

4308 Gano, in the Fairground Neighborhood. (Photo from Bing Maps).

4623 Kennerly, in the Greater Ville neighborhood. (Photo from Bing Maps).

The Preservation Board meeting is held at 1015 Locust, Suite 1200.

The date is June 28th at 4 p.m.

Anarchy in Affton, and Other Reflections on St. Louis's Placeblogosphere 4:23 PM

Does anyone know the whereabouts of one J. Patrick O'Brien, the "city" of Affton's onetime mayor? Has there been a coup?

On December 23, 2007, after a somewhat regular posting schedule, the esteemed pseudo-mayor of a pseudo-city (Affton is not incorporated) simply stopped posting. See for yourself here at his now-defunct blog: Mayor of Affton.

The Mayor offered St. Louis placeblog readers something we're all too light on: laughter. O'Brien would refer to his wife as the "First Lady" and his home, more than likely, being in Affton, a Tudor-style gingerbread or a Post-War saltbox, the "Mayoral Mansion".

Whether he reviewed the Affton restaurant scene...:

Last night the First Lady and I tried out the new Trattoria Toscana restaurant on Gravois next to the Ten Mile House. Let me first say that earlier I told a friend that I was going out to Affton's newest Italian eatery and he said "Fazoli's?" Chris, you are a jerk and so are you Fazoli's. I hate Fazoli's food and apparently they hate Affton since they don't have a location here.

...or faux-bombastically trumpeted his mayoral background in real estate development...

The Mayor attended a conference on Sustainable Development this morning hosted by the Urban Land Institute.  Most of the discussion was old hat for the Mayor as I am well aware of the concepts that create such developments.  What was enlightening was to see actual reports and data that proved the return on investment to developers that choose to “go green”.

...the Mayor of Affton was a delight to read.

If this were the end of the story, I'd be kind of depressed. With the passing of the Mayor of Affton blog, there was definitely a visible void, and not just in everyone's favorite South County hamlet. Our region needed more people writing about their neighborhoods, their municipalities, to get us excited and interested. Affton is one of the most stereotyped places in the region--it's all retirees, it's boring, it's not urban, etc.--yet I believe O'Brien opened our eyes to a colorful place. That's St. Louis--an impossibly varied kaleidoscope of villages.

So, it's important to note now, three years after Affton's Mayor disappeared from the blogosphere, that we have plenty of other Mayors running around town (keep in mind--some of these mayors predated the ascendancy of Foursquare!).

One of my favorites is Nicki's Central West End Guide. Neighborhood resident Nicki Dwyer snaps photos of businesses new and old, street life, flora and fauna, and more--all in the Central West End or nearby. By focusing on the life of the neighborhood, as opposed to blogs like mine that settle for our great, if inanimate, built environment, Nicki truly enlivens the neighborhood. I know she doesn't go by "mayor", but I'd vote for her!

We now even have a Near South Side-centric neighborhood newspaper online, called Your Local Messenger, and an online-only (and VERY well done) North County magazine at NoCoSTL.

56 Houses Left dutifully and beautifully cataloged the long destruction of a North County neighborhood near the airport--the Carrollton Subdivision. In happier news, a swanky mid-century modern neighborhood of Crestwood (the Ridgewood subdivision) gets much love on this web site.

Old North St. Louis has a whole band of blogger-rehabbers. Check out 1318 Hebert and the 3 Walls Project (covering the process of a stunning renovation at 3240 N. 19th). Our Little Easy hasn't been updated in a while, but is worth a look.

So, neighborhood mayors out there reading this--urban, suburban, rural, it matters not, of course--please send us your placecentric blogs so that we can all rest assured that the faux-Mayoral blogging doesn't have a term limit.

The North Side: Let's Plug the Loss of Place 6:09 PM

I won't take the easy route and claim the entire North Side of St. Louis is suffering unimaginably. Those fearful of anything "North of Delmar" would be well-advised to check out Old North St. Louis, one of St. Louis's most exciting stories of revitalization and community reinvestment. Even though it's the most often cited North City neighborhood for tales of urban regeneration, Old North does not have a monopoly on the moniker "the future is north" by any means.

Hyde Park has seen several measures designed to stop the outward flow of residents and to plug the loss of irreplaceable historic buildings. Blue Shutters Development, Better Living Communities, and Sun Ministries are just some of the groups in Hyde Park attempting to make a difference for both the built and social environments. Sponsored by the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts and the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis, artist Theaster Gates is attempting to heal the neighborhood through arts and education.

With the same development and financing team as Old North's 14th Street Mall restoration project (known as Crown Square), the resurrection of Dick Gregory Place in the Greater Ville is no less exciting. There are stable North City neighborhoods as well who have not seen the worst of decline. These include Academy, the Lindell Park area of JeffVanderLou, Visitation Park, Baden, etc.

Yet much too large swaths of the North Side continue to slip away, losing a valuable sense of place.

The most recent news is that four houses in College Hill burned. One of the four was occupied, and was a complete gem. See 859 Cowan, pre-fire, below:

In the Post-Dispatch story, their photograph of the fire shows the extent of the damage to this particular home. Thankfully, no one was hurt.

Four homes burning within blocks of one another is more than suspicious. Arsonists are likely the culprits here, considering that the three vacant homes had no utility hookups.

Arson, brick rustling, and simple demolition-by neglect are forever denying generations of St. Louisans enjoyment of some of the city's oldest and, at one time, most charming neighborhoods. College Hill is but one struggling North City neighborhood; St. Louis Place, much of JeffVanderLou, the Vandeventer neighborhood, the Ville proper--all are very significant historic neighborhoods that are literal shells of their former selves. JeffVanderLou, in particular, just saw a devastating round of arsons back in March. Then there's an eight year history of NorthSide project visionary Paul McKee, Jr's holding companies' neglect of its properties. So widespread was this neglect that blogger Rob Powers was able to catalog over 200 days of blog posts worth of destruction.

In certain North Side neighborhoods, I wonder if there will be much of a physical infrastructure left to save in the next ten years. St. Louis Place is already infamous for its expansive urban prairie.

This web site and several other St. Louis built environment blogs focus quite often on St. Louis's healthiest neighborhoods or those seen as having the most potential. Benton Park, Benton Park West, the Grove, the Central West End, and yes, Old North St. Louis, are pretty popularly blogged areas of the city these days. In some ways, it's to be expected that a St. Louis blogger will focus on where the most "news" is, or where the best photographs/stories come from. Even those bloggers that like to point out areas of improvement in the city generally look to some gaping holes in otherwise stable streetscapes and neighborhoods.

It's clear that we have an imperative to focus considerable attention on some of the North Side's most distressed neighborhoods. Now, will historic preservation alone lift up neighborhoods that have witnessed disinvestment and flight of people and businesses for decades now? No, quite simply. But, for a hypothetical moment, make the city a mirror image. Soulard is a pockmarked neighborhood ringed with unsuccessful attempts at housing low-income residents. It's now undergoing a remarkable resurgence of the pieces of its built environment that remain. It's our Old North. Today's St. Louis Place and JeffVanderLou are nearly 100 percent intact and now thriving; they're our Benton Park and Benton Park West. O'Fallon is our Tower Grove South. Baden is our Carondelet.

In this mirrored image of St. Louis, we must see the value in saving Benton Park. Our chopped up Soulard is still worth saving, and is seeing rehabilitation, so let's not write off neighboring Benton Park off either. So if we flip back, we see the importance and potential of JeffVanderLou, or College Hill, or St. Louis Place. They should be neatly woven into the fabric of the rest of the city, but they're not. Their hopes of a Benton Park-style revival are slim because of their isolation.

We can't wait around for a NorthSide development proposal, which is too big, or a North 14th Street renaissance, which was very specialized and hard to replicate.

First of all, we need more preservation advocacy specifically focused on the North Side's most sensitive areas. With few people in St. Louis speaking to the importance of these areas, it's easy to see why there's no push to save/repopulate these neighborhoods. It would be nice to see Landmarks Association of St. Louis open a satellite office in Hyde Park or College Hill, renovating and occupying a storefront in the process. Such an action would show that these neighborhoods have great architectural and social value and deserve reinvestment.

Second, we need more leadership like Antonio French, of the 21st Ward. French has partnered with the group Rebuilding Together to tackle vacancy and blight in the Penrose neighborhood. His "Block by Block" program is a great model that can spread to other neighborhoods in surrounding wards. French is also attempting to curb gang violence in his ward, is regularly seen cleaning up O'Fallon Park, and introduced Preservation Review in his ward. While staging alley and park cleanups as well as hosting prayer vigils for crime victims might seem like minute steps, French is investing his confidence in his neighborhood and ward. French is very wise to invite the presence of Rebuilding Together into the 21st Ward. The full force of St. Louis's non-profit arm should be applied to ailing North City. If St. Louis is one of the most giving cities in the country as certain studies show, surely we can channel some of this energy toward addressing systemic poverty and blight in North City (and beyond). Non-profits will take notice of sound leadership and will hopefully respond with the same confidence that the area's leadership projects. Our leaders, but also bloggers like me, must shift the dialog about North City from its crime/violence to "ideas" "hope" "opportunity" and "improvement" in earnest. This means working with and for, not in spite of, neighborhood residents.

We need to install cameras on targeted city blocks. These cameras could catch criminals in the process of robberies, assaults, and other crimes. Cameras could definitely help put an end to arson and brick rustling in some of St. Louis's most tattered neighborhoods. All parties caught illegally demolishing properties and selling off their bricks should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. They're literally stealing a building. Antonio French is already at work to bring cameras to the 21st Ward, at least.

We need philanthropic investment in North City. In New Orleans, there was a corporate-sponsored event called "Christmas in July" where employees of large firms downtown would take a couple days off and assist in renovations of historic properties in a then-rundown neighborhood. Why not do this in North City, HOK? Anheuser-Busch InBev? Monsanto? Enterprise? Et cetera. I proposed in a previous post that the Gateway Foundation, the bankrollers of Citygarden downtown, fund a citywide greening program to install mature trees on barren blocks. Imagine a Citygarden-scale investment in targeted areas of North City--$40 million dedicated to renovating LRA properties, installing new lighting, neighborhood banners, etc.

Speaking of the LRA, we need to market vacant properties better. Again, I turn to Antonio French, who created a website to market city-owned properties in his ward. The LRA should also have a bricks-and-mortar storefront, either downtown or in both North and South City, that would inform would-be buyers of what is required of them as well as offer technical assistance in purchasing and renovating properties.

Realistically speaking, most of presently fallow North Side land won't be built upon anytime soon, right? Yet I see Detroit get boatloads of attention for its mostly empty neighborhoods and all of the opportunities they offer in terms of art installations and urban farming. I wonder why St. Louis's most neglected neighborhoods don't generate the same interest, nationally and locally. The St. Louis PR machine rightfully, it would seem, focuses on the city's vibrant and up-and-coming neighborhoods, but our most struggling areas are the ones that need idea factories. It would be great to see St. Louis University and Washington University, among others, bringing art installations to empty North City blocks. Detroit artists literally froze a house to very visibly tell the tale of what foreclosures do to an urban neighborhood. And a New Orleans artist bought up a whole block of the St. Roch neighborhood and transformed each house into something of an outdoor art showcase, renovating one of the shotguns for her own residence. We need more of this type of eye-catching activity in some of our abandoned neighborhoods.

The "Safe House" in New Orleans--an interactive art exhibit advocating for clean soil in polluted areas of the city. It is one house on a whole block dedicated to outdoor/indoor interactive art in a destitute New Orleans neighborhood. Image Source: Art:21 Blog

We could do both at once--that is, create artful built environments and fill in vacant lots. Habitat for Humanity St. Louis is currently constructing several dozen homes in Old North. In that neighborhood, Habitat consulted a strong neighborhood association to get a sense of what type of design for housing that neighborhood residents would see as reflective of their community. The result of that interaction was a thoughtful play on Old North's architectural heritage, with small, but contemporary shotguns as well as two-story flounder houses. Maybe North City residents could be sold on the concept of container houses, which are growing in popularity worldwide.

A simple shipping container house in Atlanta, Georgia. Image Source: G Living

In College Hill, and other North City neighborhoods like it, we need to plug the loss of place and start filling these parts of the city with a constant stream of ideas. We have creative, thoughtful people engaged already in the betterment of our city. How do we use them to create a sense of energy and possibility directed at the least successful of St. Louis's neighborhoods? What are your ideas?

What Will Become of the Penrose Park House? 3:47 PM

Built in 1902 by a private owner, the Craftsman home at 4961 Penrose was later acquired by the City of St. Louis, and the land around it became today's Penrose Park. This property was used as the park keeper's house until the 1980s, when it was abandoned. The Board of Public Service recommended demolition in 1997. Though this never happened, the Penrose Park House did appear on the Preservation Board agenda in May of 2006 with a fresh demolition request.

In the Cultural Resources Office (CRO) staff report, Kate Shea recommended approval of the demolition permit. The CRO's reasoning was that the city did not have the funds to maintain the home and that the park's master plan contained drawings for an public amphitheater on the site. A demolition permit was applied for on April 26, 2006, but no work commenced. The permit was canceled on March 12, 2008.

The city's Geo St. Louis website contains April 2010 photographs of the building still extant, albeit decayed. What are the plans for the Penrose Park House?

This Google Streetview capture, probably dating to mid-2009, shows the battered beauty and its bucolic surroundings.

Lafayette, Forest, Carondelet, and Tower Grove Parks all have historic houses within them. Urban parks with remaining park houses are much better at relating the history of the neighborhood. It's sometimes the case in St. Louis that parks and gardens were created by clearing buildings on site. In our most historic parks, though, historic homes were trapped within or specifically built as park houses. It's nice to have a physical piece of history dating before or during park construction.

Private homes within public parks can work. There's one in Tower Grove, on Magnolia, that to my knowledge is privately owned.

Maybe the Penrose Park house could become an "Aldermanic Mansion" where the elected official of the ward would reside?

Update: More Information on Hyde Park Rehabs 6:31 PM

This blog recently reported on 15 building permits for renovations in Hyde Park, all received in March 2010. All parcels in question are owned by the Eliot School, LP. The Eliot School, LP shares the same registered address as the Irving School, LP, owners of the now renovated Irving School. To view photos of that renovation, I point you to Michael Allen's Flickr page.

Here is a picture of the historic school prior to renovation, also courtesy of Michael Allen via Ecology of Absence:

Eliot School, LP will be rehabbing the Eliot School as well, located at 4218 Grove Street in the Fairground neighborhood, just outside of Hyde Park. The Board of Education is still the owner, but the city's development website says the former school will be converted into low-income housing. The city lists the developer as Better Living Communities--a project of Bethlehem Lutheran Church, which completed a development of several new townhomes on Salisbury called Salisbury Park I in the early 2000s, among other projects.

Pictured below, courtesy of the City of St. Louis, is the old Eliot School:

Better Living Communities has put a lot of effort into stabilizing and bettering its surrounding neighborhoods. Bravo to them. It's a thrill to see so much of Hyde Park's heritage rescued all at once.

I wonder if they had anything to do with Salisbury Street's new sidewalks and nifty acorn street lamps?

Above, a nicely redone streetscape along Salisbury. The Salisbury Park development is located on the south (right) side of the street staring down some historic beauties on the north (left) side.

This is all such great news! I cannot wait to check out Hyde Park the next time I'm in town.

Hyde Park's "Number Streets" See a Flurry of Renovations in March 6:47 PM

 In the month of March, the Hyde Park neighborhood saw over $4.8 million in building permit activity. Almost all of the permits are in Hyde Park's western half, in the "number streets" from 19th up to 25th.

Included in the mix of units with permits for substantial rehabilitation are:

--two single-family homes
--ten two-family homes
--three four-family homes.

The owner of the parcels in question is Eliot School, LP.

Below is a list of the addresses, with whatever pictures I could scrounge up from the city's website. UPDATE (4/26/10): Chris Naffziger of St. Louis Patina was kind enough to get some photographs of addresses I couldn't get pictures for online! Thanks, Chris!

4034 N. 23rd Street (courtesy of Chris Naffziger at St. Louis Patina)

4008 25th Street

3606-08 19th Street (at center)

3613 19th Street

3915-17 19th Street

3942-44 N. 20th Street (courtesy of Chris Naffziger at St. Louis Patina)

3918 N. 21st Street (courtesy of Chris Naffziger at St. Louis Patina)

3931 N. 21st Street (courtesy of Chris Naffziger at St. Louis Patina)

4031 N. 22nd Street

3906 N. 23rd Street

4013 N. 23rd Street (courtesy of Chris Naffziger at St. Louis Patina)

3610-12 25th Street (at left)

3933 25th Street (what a gem!?)

4009 25th Street

1918 Angelica (courtesy of Chris Naffziger at St. Louis Patina)

I am absolutely overjoyed to see so many venerable Hyde Park structures getting rehabilitated! Hyde Park is my favorite North Side neighborhood and among my favorites in the city. Concentrated rehabilitation is a great strategy for stabilizing this portion of the neighborhood. Way to go! Anyone care to fill in the photographic gaps for me? I'd credit your work and possibly buy you lunch at Cornerstone Cafe in Hyde Park the next time I'm in town!

We Demand...an Inspiring Showing of Hyde Park Students Pressing for a Better Neighborhood 12:51 PM

I hope you have been keeping track of the Pulitzer's Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark exhibit. Not content at keeping the art inside their post-modern walls, the Pulitzer has created an interactive website where St. Louisans are asked to complement the exhibit, which, put simply, analyzes urban change and how people respond to it. (Visit "Your Saint Louis" Here).

The Pulitzer has also sought out local artists and change-makers and has displayed their work on the site. Of particular interest to this blogger is Theaster Gates, who is working with a group of students in Hyde Park on a project called "We Demand".

Any educational system should train students on how to be good and active citizens. In doing so, we just might fashion the next generation of leaders who will generate positive ideas on how to improve our cities and our neighborhoods. Hyde Park needs these creative, motivated children and their mentor, Theaster. I encourage you to watch the video below! In addition, there are other videos available here.


Urban Expression: We Demand from The Pulitzer on Vimeo.

Guest Piece: Sun Ministries in Hyde Park 10:52 AM

The following is a guest piece by Jason Calahan of Sun Ministries. Mr. Calahan contacted me after reading a previous post on the vacant buildings bill. Sun Ministries' "Board Up Hyde Park" effort--as well as other undertakings in the neighborhood--are, I feel, more than worthy and deserve space on this blog.


Sun Ministries is launching a nationwide effort to rebuild America's most devastated inner cities.  We are calling this undertaking the Isaiah 61 Initiative.  We hope to unite people to serve these areas, and are calling for missionaries to relocate to the inner cities, in order to live and work, rebuild decaying structures, minister to the neediest residents, and make a generational impact on these desperate areas.  We want to minister to the whole person and the whole community by addressing physical, emotional, spiritual, and educational needs, providing creative opportunities, as well as restoring homes and buildings, starting new business and cooperating with existing ones, and beautifying public spaces. 

This house, which actually faces Hyde Park, exemplifies the neglected state of the skillful artisanship found in the Hyde Park neighborhood.  It is one of the better preserved structures.

We are starting in the historic Hyde Park neighborhood, located in North St. Louis.  Although Hyde Park is beautiful in its layout, classic old-city brickwork and architecture, welcoming sidewalks and parks, the area has been subject to generations of poverty, oppression, and neglect.  There are over 900 vacant buildings in the ward, half the population lives below the poverty line, and a third are single parent households.  The neighborhood is one of the most desolate in St. Louis.  There is little tax base, as many residents and businesses have left.  You can walk down streets where one whole side consists of abandoned, decayed buildings, many of which look like they have been bombed.  Pruitt-Igoe was a notorious failed segregated housing project, and though it wasn't located in Hyde Park, it sent damaging shock-waves throughout all of North St. Louis, and is a symbol for the kind of abuse and division affecting the area.  

A common sight in Hyde Park.  Good examples of the architecture and brickwork of the area.

One of the many "bombed out" buildings.

Desolation.

Unfortunately, this is not a rare sight in Hyde Park.

We hope to partner with groups of any kind, including schools, colleges, churches, police forces, city governments, student activity groups, and other social entrepreneurial organizations in order to reach our goals.  We will be moving into homes in the area and restoring buildings.  We hope to provide job skills and training, start businesses, help the homeless enter the workforce, and provide business/retail incubator space.  We are working on providing community programs in sports, arts, and tutoring.  We hope to address spiritual and emotional needs in a one-on-one manner.  We aim to lay foundations of change and attack root problems to poverty and hopelessness in the area. 


Our current base of operations is a building on Newhouse that was given to us by G. W. Helbling and Sons, a silk screening business that had been in the neighborhood for 45 years.  We are currently working on bringing the building up to code and beautifying the property and surrounding city block. 

We hope to transform this huge, beautiful house into our Leadership Center, which will house missionaries and interns and provide space for them to develop community service ideas.

We are planning to restore this building and create our Opportunity Center, which will have offices for providing job skills and training, and a retail space for providing work for poor, homeless, and missionaries.

This building features exceptional brickwork, a cast-iron facade and corner entrance, beautiful architecture, and it is decaying at an alarming rate.  We want to preserve and restore it and use it to provide employment.

In ministering to this community, we have noticed that racism and division are still very alive in St. Louis and the surrounding counties.  St. Louis suffers from little tax support from its county.  People in the suburbs warn us of violence in the city, oblivious to the violence happening in their own “safe” towns.  It has been difficult getting groups with highly-aimed mission statements to come into a poor area.  Individuals and groups in the city have been confused by a group that seeks to build nothing but community.  But we have met really great people in the neighborhood.  Our neighbor Ralph was eager to help us clean out our building.  We played football and wrestled with a group of about ten rowdy young boys.  The people at Cornerstone Cafe have been very kind and welcoming.  Alderman Bosley and his staff have been cleaning parks and alleys with us, and have assisted us greatly in getting established in the neighborhood. 


In ministering to the whole person and the whole community, we hope to preserve and restore the architecture and history of Hyde Park, to retain the beauty and artistry of the neighborhood and increase the sense of community identity.  Most of the structures in Hyde Park are beautiful, classic, St. Louis-style brick buildings with ornate brickwork, and some even feature cast iron facades.  In an effort to protect and preserve these properties, beautify the area, and make a declaration that someone cares about these people and this neighborhood, Sun Ministries is partnering with Alderman Freeman Bosley, Sr. in an effort we are calling Board Up Hyde Park.  We are looking for groups of all kinds who want to help us decorate boards with positive words and images that we will then install in the vacant properties.  If you want to be a part of this effort or learn more about our work, you can see the flyer below or visit http://www.sunministries.org or http://www.isaiah61initiative.org.

The flyer:

Alderman Antonio French Gauging Interest in Bold New Infill 11:57 AM

On his 21st Ward website, Alderman Antonio French is asking whether or not the ecologically-friendly home shown below would be welcome in his ward.

Here is the picture of the home he referenced, which is located in Philadelphia:

What do you think?

I believe several things need editing with this particular design. There needs to be some sort of semi-public space--like the stoop on the neighboring historic home. Landscaping would definitely soften what is certainly a very harsh industrial look. I'd like a different door, no utilities showing, etc.

But I am completely in support of new design ideas for St. Louis architecture. As I contributed on French's website, St. Louis needs to be having the discussion of what identity we wish to project as a city with our 21st  Century construction. Do we want to be producing a second rate version of our storied history and heritage or trying to author something new entirely? Yes, this example is pulled from another city, but, with tweaking, it could be made "ours".

I support the effort to bring bold architecture to St. Louis and also laud Alderman French for publicly airing these ideas and attempting to engage his constituents on urban design.

Thanks go out to Joe D. for sending this link to me.

A Second Stunning North Side Transformation is Now Underway 9:01 AM

If you're like me and have to pinch yourself every time you see the glistening, newly renovated 14th Street Mall in Old North St. Louis, prepare yourself for a similar reaction.

Just as the old 14th Street Mall, once in ruins, is being miraculously and meticulously resurrected, so too is Dick Gregory Place in the Greater Ville. Work has begun on several of the 15 historic buildings on a street that Paul Hohmann of Vanishing St. Louis once declared to be "on the brink of devastation". That link contains several photographs of a gorgeous but suffering group of homes that seemed as if its ultimate fate could be nothing other than widespread collapse or demolition. Thanks to the work of the Regional Housing and Community Development Alliance and others, Dick Gregory will now shine as brightly as 14th Street. Two new homes will be added to the mix, as will the renovation of a mixed use building at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. and Aldine. In total, 40 units will be put (back) on the market.

Matt Fernandez, now Old North St. Louis Restoration Group's Community Development Specialist, provided Urban St. Louis forumers with the following two photos of the commencement of the work. Fernandez assures us the work will be high quality--they're the same contractors that worked to bring back North 14th Street in Old North. Check them out:

Seeing these wonderful North Side preservation successes gives me hope that other forlorn, forgotten neighborhoods and commercial districts of a completely under-appreciated part of our city can return to greatness as well.

UPDATE (3/5/10 @ 10:00am): Rick Bonasch, of RHCDA, dropped a comment on this post with a few corrections and clarifications. Thanks Rick! Check out his blog, St. Louis Rising.

Just for clarification, RHCDA is the development consultant. EM Harris Construction is the General Contractor.

Dick Gregory Associates, LP is the owner. General partners are affilates of Northside Community Housing, Inc and Greater Ville Neighborhood Preservation Commission, both based in the Ville.

The project includes historic rehab of 15 buildings listed on the National Register and 2 new two-unit buildings to be built on Aldine in the District. The new buildings will be at a scale to mesh with the historic buildings.

Mayor Slay Talks LRA Successes, but Cites a Failure 6:13 PM

Mayor Slay's blog, MayorSlay.com, is host to a variety of discussions about city politics and development as well as general announcements from City Hall.

Recently, Mayor Slay took to explaining how LRA works in a three part series. You may read each section here: Part One / Part Two / Part Three.

This blog appreciates when an elected official--or his staffers--take the time out to explain circuitous processes of governmental agencies. I will note that I think all of what was in the Mayor's posts should be clearly laid out on the LRA's web site. But at least we attentive ones now know.

I was most interested in the third part of the series, explaining LRA successes.

In this portion, the Mayor mentions that the LRA worked with the Guardian Angels Daycare Facility to sell them a vacant commercial row for their newly constructed facility on North Vandeventer at Finney. I don't count this as a success--at all. See below.

This is the building that was demolished, via a blog post at Ecology of Absence entitled "Commercial Rows Fall on Vandeventer":

The handsome Italianate row occupied only the far northeastern corner of a large group of parcels eventually controlled by Guardian Angels.

Now take a look at the replacement:

From an urban design standpoint, we've steered straight off a cliff. Why--at the very least--could Guardian Angels not have used the facade of the old building as its face to the city? Proper urban zoning should have made the new structure's setback illegal anyway. But now we have a building with all the architectural charm of a QuikTrip occupying the spot of a reusable North Side commercial building. I realize the costs would be higher to preserve and stabilize a facade, but the public benefit of a more pedestrian-friendly facility and a preserved historic street wall would go far. The surrounding Vandeventer neighborhood is quickly becoming another St. Louis urban prairie; buildings like the former 1121-33 N. Vandeventer lent a sense of character and stability to the struggling neighborhood, even in their vacancy.

It's also worth noting that Guardian Angels could have built around this building, given their land-wasting suburban site plan. But the LRA is connected in no way to urban planning and design. Mayor Slay himself says that the LRA tries to preserve all buildings located in a city historic district, but this Vandeventer site isn't even protected by preservation review, much less a historic district.

Here the Mayor hits upon an important point: the only time our urban landscape receives any planning and design considerations is when a piece of land is inside a historic district. Historic preservation activities should not be a city's only legal teeth to demand a better, more urban built environment. Our city deserves comprehensive planning so mistakes such as this Guardian Angels building do not occur across the cityscape.

The point is illustrated further by Mayor Slay when we read that the (two) aldermen representing the surrounding neighborhoods are attempting to recreate a former commercial district (Sarah-Finney) atop a series of LRA-owned vacant lots. See them here, on Finney, on the Google Map.

Why try to recreate a commercial district when you've just trumpeted the demolition of a crucial piece of that former district? If the building were preserved, the LRA could have helped Guardian Angels to construct a new facility on the commercial street that is to be resurrected. In ideal terms, there would have been urban design guidelines in place as well. The old Italianate row could have been spared and used as part of the commercial district reconstruction.

These kinds of senseless decisions happen when you have a vacuum of urban planning and such decentralized leadership (note that two aldermen are involved, not one).

This may be a success in the broad term of "development", but, to me, it shows a failure of the LRA to integrate their activities with urban planning and design.

But not to Mayor Slay, who says:

None of these new developments – or others — would not be possible if LRA did not thoughtfully administer the land parcels under its control with a vision for the best possible bright future for our neighborhoods. That’s why LRA has the policies it has.


I respectfully disagree.

What's in a Bridge's Name? 9:50 AM

As the new Mississippi River bridge ceremonially breaks ground today, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran a nice article on the efforts of archeologists to excavate and document sites to be disrupted by the construction of the bridge. Since the area in question was host to 19th century urban neighborhoods and Mississippian culture dating, perhaps, to the 9th century, these digs are important undertakings.

But as I read the article, something else was on my mind. What will the bridge be named?

Wait, what? It was already given a name? By the state of Missouri? In 2005?

Yes. The bridge is to be known as the Ronald Wilson Reagan Memorial Bridge.

Without getting overly political, I'm not happy about the name or the way it came about. Does Ronald Reagan have any association with Missouri? I know he was born in (northern) Illinois, but that doesn't count by my judgment. Also, doesn't it seem natural to consult the localities that the bridge will connect before naming it? Was this ever done?

The article states the bridge's Missouri landing would be Brooklyn Avenue (itself named after nearby Brooklyn, Illinois). Why not call it the Brooklyn Bridge?

Many bridges are named after the street on which they land. The Poplar Street Bridge is a prominent example. Since the bridge is to feed into Cass, why not call it the Cass Avenue Bridge?

If the state wanted to name the structure after a famous person, why did it not choose a famous St. Louisan or Metro East figure? I would have loved to have seen a Josephine Baker Memorial Bridge, to name just one.

The Post-Dispatch article brings up an even better idea for naming the bridge: the city's mound-builder history, which spans both side of the river. What about the Mound City Bridge?

Basically, any other name would have been better for this new bridge. Missouri, where is your creativity and pride in place?

With NorthSide Project, the Villain is the Process 9:42 PM

Wow.

What a circus the NorthSide development has been as of late.

Talks of McKee's holdings in NorthPark facing foreclosure. A near meltdown by McKee himself over blogger Doug Duckworth's videotaping of a public meeting. Reports on Claire Nowak-Boyd's blog that McKee has indeed been empyting out North Side buildings and buying out landlords (only to later reneg and force them into foreclosure while also threatening the future of the buildings themselves). Oh yeah, and that whole bit about the city having to back its largest TIF request ever.

Whew.

Of all the things that could be said, I would like to highlight one.

McKee, a private developer making this huge TIF request and subjecting the Near North Side to further degradation, can certainly be accused of wrong-doing. The jury has sort of already delivered that verdict.

The real enemy here, at least looking at the breaches against historic preservation and urbanist principles, is twofold:

A) we don't have a coherent plan to guide urban development throughout the city


and


B) we don't have meaningful ways for citizens to influence the decision-making process.


Therefore, I would argue, it's the process, and not Paul McKee, Jr., who's really to blame here.


That is a half-hearted indictment of the leadership of the North Side and the city as a whole coming from me. But a lot of the problems, of course, are due to an anemic, visionless, and bureaucratic leadership rather than one outright malevolent.


So this process? Well, you might hate that the San Luis is getting torn down for a surface parking lot; you might detest that Crown Plaza just north of downtown is your run-of-the-mill strip suburban center; you may loathe Loughborough Commons for its lack of a pedestrian realm; and indeed, you may despise McKee for trashing several sensitive, historic neighborhoods.


Yet our zoning allows all of the above. Our Preservation Board, and moreover the process of preservation in the city, is beyond circuitous. The process can only be described as so ridden with holes that it would puzzle a preservation expert much less a mildly interested plainclothes citizen. At any rate, a citizen's right to contest Preservation Board decisions has been taken off the table by Judge Dierker in the case Friends of the San Luis v. St. Louis Archdiocese. (Well, if you're a next door neighbor or have direct economic interest, then you're fine to contest...).


And what about planning? Does our city do it? We have a Planning and Urban Design Agency, but they're largely advisory. So the Strategic Land Use Plan of 2004 developed by then lead planner Rollin Stanley goes largely ignored because there was never any legislation to enforce it. So, the Building Division continues to issue demolition permit after demolition permit in neighborhoods deemed "Neighborhood Preservation Areas" by that same Land Use plan. Much of the North Side isn't under "Preservation Review" and isn't in a local or National Register historic district either, so the demolitions simply go unreviewed. If the vacant lot ever attracts the attention of someone willing to build something--unless they're going to receive tax abatement status for the property--they're not subjected to any sort of urban design standards. So we get more suburban-style commercial and residential buildings where they really just don't seem to fit.


Try to contest any aspect of any of this. What department do you start with? Who do you complain to? Will you even hear a response? Won't your alderman have the ultimate say in almost all matters anyway? It seems so.


So, if you want to be an activist for your own neighborhood, you better develop a friendly relationship with your local alderman. Better yet, run for the position. Because if that alderman already has enough friends that don't think like you do with regard to urban design and preservation, then you'd better rest assured none of the other alderman are going to throw a wrench in his plans (thank you, aldermanic courtesy!). It's as good as a done deal. So when the redevelopment agreement goes before the Board of Alderman, as it must in order to pass and become a reality, we have no assurance that any aldermen outside of the 5th and 19th Wards, primarily, will truly have a say.

Citizens of the North Side should not have had to fight to hold the TIF hearing at a time more amenable to public participation. And what's this about the removal of a NorthSide project naysaying commissioner from the TIF commission? That doesn't sound like a democratic process to me.

If St. Louisans' ability to access their government and the decision-making process were simpler, more straigtforward, and less politicized, our built environment's present state might not be so piecemeal. We have to remember that the biggest problem with the NorthSide project is that, when or if this TIF is approved, the city has no planners to assist McKee on appropriate urban design, and indeed, no means to demand it from him. There's no progressive zoning ordinance to rely on. The project area's not under Preservation Review and is not "officially" historic (it's neither in a local nor National Register district), so ultimately residents will have no say over which buildings stay or go.

So, if we're looking at the possibility of a suburban developer attempting to wave a magic wand over the North Side, and we have no means of either stopping what he takes from the built environment or influencing what he puts in, is it his fault? Or is it a horrible broken process that denies citizens due influence over the outcomes of major decisions affecting the built environment?

While Paul McKee's conduct thus far with the North Side has been highly questionable, this seems like an appropriate time for citizens to demand more power and control of the shaping of their city.

Northside Project Community Benefits Alliance Includes Provision to Modify Preservation Review 5:31 PM

The citizens of the wards affected by Paul McKee, Jr.'s Northside Regeneration project have drafted an innovative document that, if adopted, would certainly alter how the project proceeds and what it does for current residents. Read the Community Benefits Alliance's work here on their website.

Of particular interest to me is the call for residents--not the Building Division--to review proposals for demolitions in all of north St. Louis (not just the project area, even).

Neighborhood Control of Preservation and Demolition: We propose an immediate moratorium on demolition north of Delmar, and meaningful neighborhood control of preservation and demolition. In order to preserve the valuable housing stock and architectural heritage north of Delmar, we believe that all of north city should be put under a revised form of Preservation Review, where proposed demolitions would need to be approved by the Neighborhood Development Advisory Board prior to review by the St. Louis Preservation Review Board. In addition, we expect any emergency demolitions be approved by the Neighborhood Advisory Board prior to approval by the Building Division, to prevent a developer from using this known loophole in preservation planning to demolish salvageable historic buildings which meet community standards for rehabilitation. This will preserve the community’s ability to access the State Historic Tax Credit program as an engine for economic development.

Emergency demolition permits are the easiest way to bypass preservation legislation in the city. Simply let your building precipitously decay (removing boards from windows helps) and watch as the city grants you an emergency demolition permit.

But a lot of the North Side is not in either a local historic district or a National Register District. North Side wards are also basically missing from Preservation Review, a process that ensures each demolition permit is reviewed by the Cultural Resources Office instead of simply going straight through to the Building Division, who almost always approves permits.

This bold suggestion of having the community review what of their building stock is important to them is innovative. It may not be airtight itself (some people, especially without architectural backgrounds, tend to unilaterally favor new construction at the expense of old). But the language in the CBA is still a bold step in the right direction of instituting citywide Preservation Review.

It's unbelievable to me that a city in 2009 would allow for a huge North Side warehouse to be dismantled (for a parking lot? This is getting beyond old.) Yet this demolition sailed through without so much as a notice at a grocery store.

This is simply unacceptable. The NorthSide CBA is one of the only public voices I have heard that has proposed this "radical" solution to our city falling further into an unwalkable, uninteresting, semi-rural haven for the automobile.

June Preservation Board, Proposed Demolition: 4646-48 St. Ferdinand 5:55 PM

Photograph obtained from the City of St. Louis

4646-48 St. Ferdinand is located in the Greater Ville neighborhood. The proposed demolition is requested by the city's Land Reutilization Authority (LRA), not coincidentally one of the largest landowners in the city. While I'm sure this property has not been fun to live adjacent to, one has to wonder: could the city not better secure its own property? Why are the second floor windows open to the elements? Could this have contributed to a quicker demolition-by-neglect?

Paul McKee, Urban Assets Both on List of May Demolition Permits 6:00 PM

Of 10 completed emergency demolition permits in May, 9 were North Side addresses and 1 was a Central Corridor address.

More interestingly, a company controlled by Paul McKee, Jr. of "NorthSide" fame saw the demolition of at least one more property. The firm Urban Assets that has been covered by Michael Allen as another potential Distressed Areas Land Assemblage Tax Credit Act recipient demolished two in May.

Here's the list:

5031 Claxton - Mark Twain Neighborhood
Emergency Demolition of a One-Story Single-Family House
Owner: Bryce Peters Financial Corporation

5052 Kensington - Academy Neighborhood

From Montly Demo Permits

Owner: Urban Assets

Urban Assets owned this lovely St. Louis foursquare that the city says was built in 1896. Located within the Mount Cabanne-Raymond Place National Register District, this demolition should have gone before the Preservation Board, which has jurisdiction over demolition permits in National Register districts. Emergency demo permits bypass this review. This is yet another demonstration that emergency demolition permits should be reviewed by the Preservation Board. Not processing these emergency permits undermines the process of preservation. This block of Kensington has suffered an unusually high level of demolition for its relatively intact host neighborhood. Urban Assets is hopefully not starting the same process of real estate speculation and expedited decline that has earned McKee so much distrust.

4643 San Francisco - Penrose Neighborhood
Owner: Frances May

2507 Slattery - JeffVanderLou Neighborhood
Owner: Babcock Resources, LLC, linked to Paul McKee, Jr.

If you recall one of my earlier posts, McKee's companies have now demolished several buildings on this same block. This site sits several blocks west of one of McKee's proposed job centers (at Jefferson and Cass). Still, could they be clearing anything adjacent to the proposed job center site early on? It's possible.

4335 Evans - Vandeventer Neighborhood

From Montly Demo Permits

In the Bing Maps capture provided above, 4335 Evans is the house just to the left (west) of the multi-family property.

Owner: DHP Investments

Con artist Doug Hartmann incorporated DHP with the stated intention of renovating hundreds of properties across the city. These renovations never materialized for most properties. One high profile DHP holding was the now mostly destroyed Nord St. Louis Turnverein in Hyde Park. For more reading, click here. The future of their current holdings remains up in the air. This one received an emergency demolition permit.

1456 Hamilton - Hamilton Heights Neighborhood

Photograph provided by the City of St. Louis.

Owner: LRA


5900 Kennerly - Wells Goodfellow Neighborhood
Owner: John A. Davis


5858 Lotus - Wells Goodfellow Neighborhood

Photograph provided by the City of St. Louis

Owner: Urban Assets

Yet another Urban Assets property. Hmm...

528-34 North Newstead - Central West End Neighborhood

Photograph provided by the City of St. Louis

It tooks like this spare but attractive CWE multi-family building has been felled for a potential new townhouse development, as seen in the picture below (also from the City):


4216 N. 20th Street in Hyde Park is also on my list, but Michael Allen has already lamented this senseless loss.

I will be tracking demolition permits monthly to see if there is an uptick or a pattern in McKee- or Urban Assets-related demolitions.