Categories
Media Urbanism

Healthy and Active Blogging

by Michael R. Allen

The staff of Trailnet’s Healthy and Active Communities Initiative have been blogging away for the last two years. Not reading their work? You should be. The blog provides fresh and insightful information you don’t get in many urban issues blogs — writings about the history of food prices, developments in biodiesel, the problems with the abundance of corn in our diets and so forth. Just as autocentric urban planning is very unhealthy, so is an economic system that keeps nutritious foods off of the shelves of inner city groceries. Trailnet’s staff keep pointing out how these two problems are related, and how the future of every urban area depends on more than just bricks and mortar.

Categories
Downtown Green Space JNEM

Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Trust Incorporated

by Michael R. Allen

In their May 8 statement on their conclusions about what should be done to improve the Arch grounds, Memorial Drive and the downtown riverfront, Walter Metcalfe, Peter Raven and Robert Archibald laid out an agenda for year-round attractions and a new museum on the grounds, a lid over I-70, increased number of visitors to the Arch grounds, an international design competition and a 2015 deadline for the goals. Some of those goals are laudable and consensus-builders, like improving access and attendance. Others, like the museum plan and the semantics of “attractions,” are quite controversial.

To this end, the trio of mayoral-appointed advisers suggested establishing “a regional not-for-profit trust should be organized to raise funds for, operate
and maintain the new destination attraction.”

Although the National Park Service’s public comment period on the Arch grounds had not yet commenced, on June 11, Metcalfe, Archibald and Raven incorporated the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Trust. Incorporation documents (available here) state the goals of the corporation as those stated in the May 8 letter. The corporation’s directors are exclusively the three advisers; the Danforth Foundation has no representation.

Categories
Central West End Historic Preservation Preservation Board

New Story at 4477 Olive

by Michael R. Allen

The graceful commercial building at 4477 Olive Street in the Central West End may be getting a reprieve. In April, the Preservation Board voted to defer for two months an application for demolition from the Youth Technology Education Center (YTEC) and the owner, Community Baptist Church. (See “Same Old Story?”, April 25.) At that meeting, representatives of the Central West End Association Planning and Development Committee testified against the application and agreed to meet with church pastor Willie Kent to see if a compromise was possible. The board was swayed by the spirit of negotiation, and unanimously voted to provide time for more talk.

As a bit of background, the section of Olive Street where 4477 Olive is located was excluded for the original boundaries of the Central West End Historic District due to ward boundaries. Subsequently, that end of the Central West End has been isolated — even physically, through barriers at Newstead and other places — from the neighborhood at large. Recent developments have led to a renewal and expansion of the historic district boundaries (which still cut across ward lines) to include the commercial district. Still, there is friction along ward lines between stakeholders in the different sections of the Central West End.

Most of that friction may come from lack of communication. With Kent, YTEC representatives and Central West End Association leaders at the table, a compromise that would preserve the building (most likely) or at least its front elevation is in the works. Things are going so well that YTEC sent the city’s Cultural Resources Office a memo asking that the matter be removed from the Preservation Board’s June agenda.

Due to procedural rules, however, the board had to take some action. At Monday’s meeting, the board voted unanimously to defer the matter indefinitely. Let’s hope the dialog between stakeholders is fruitful and that the lovely building is preserved while YTEC’s expansion occurs. When the demolition application surfaced, few would have predicted the matter would have been anything but another senseless case of parties talking past each other. Then again, common ground comes from common values — and all of these parties believe in the revitalization of Olive Street.

Categories
Architecture Events Green Media

Greening the Heartland Documented

The 2008 Greening the Heartland conference is over. Yesterday marked the end of the three-day conference on sustainable practices in Midwestern architecture and urban design, held at America’s Center in St. Louis.

Yet the conference still exists, at least online. A crack team of local bloggers documented the conference experience through videos, interviews with conference organizers, photographs of events, posts about green success stories and so forth. Thanks to their efforts, those who couldn’t fly across the country or pay the registration fee can immerse themselves in the conference online. (No gasoline for travel or paper for printing required!)

Read the blog here.

Categories
Downtown Green Space JNEM

Public Meetings Announced for Memorial Planning Effort

From the National Park Service:

Two open house style meetings will be held in St. Louis on June 25 and July 1 to give interested individuals and organizations an opportunity to learn about and comment on preliminary alternatives for the future management of the Gateway Arch and Old Courthouse (Jefferson National Expansion Memorial). The existing management plan has been in place since 1964 and is in need of updating; therefore, a General Management Plan (GMP) to help guide National Park Service (NPS) management of the memorial for the next 15-20 years will be developed from the preliminary alternatives over the course of the next 18-24 months. The two public meetings are scheduled for Wednesday, June 25, 5-8 p.m., in the Trolley Room of the Dennis and Judith Jones Visitor and Education Center (the historic Lindell Pavilion) in Forest Park; and Tuesday, July 1, 3-6:30 p.m., in the Old Courthouse, 11 North Fourth Street.

Preliminary alternatives have been developed by the NPS planning team, taking into consideration previous studies and plans developed by the NPS, the City of St. Louis, and other private and public organizations. These preliminary alternatives have their foundation in the purpose and significance of the Memorial as stated in the executive order that established the Memorial. The five alternatives identified to date are: Alternative 1, no action (provided as a baseline against which the other alternatives are assessed); Alternative 2, Connections; Alternative 3, Expanded Programming; Alternative 4, Portals; and Alternative 5, Park into the City.

“These preliminary alternatives will be refined and modified as the planning process continues,” said Tom Bradley, Superintendent of the Memorial, “then a preferred alternative will be identified. It may be an existing alternative, it may be a combination of alternatives, or it may incorporate new ideas brought to light during the open house meetings. The preferred alternative, then, will form the basis of the GMP for the Memorial.”

Requests to be added to the project mailing list should be sent by mail to Superintendent, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, 11 North 4th Street, St. Louis, Missouri 63102; by telephone to 314-655-1600; or by e-mail. A newsletter will be issued within the next 30 days which will outline in greater detail the identified potential management options for public review and comment. Notification of subsequent public meetings will be made through local, regional, and national media; newsletters and public meeting schedules will also be published online at www.nps.gov/JEFF.

Categories
Agriculture Events Mississippi River North St. Louis St. Louis Place

St. Louis Place Alive With Thursday Night Concerts

by Michael R. Allen


Headliner Kim Massie thrilled the large crowd at the Thursday kick-off of the Whitaker Foundation/Grace Hill Urban Evening Series at St. Louis Place Park in north St. Louis. Massie’s blues-oriented programs deviated for a crowd-pleasing cover of Gretchen Wilson’s “Redneck Woman,” showing that music can knock down any supposed cultural divide. Gene Dobbs Bradford & Blues Inquisition opened.

This is the year for the series at St. Louis Place. St. Louis Place, laid out in 1850, is one of the city’s oldest and most beautiful public parks. The music energized the neighborhood, with residents of Rauschenbach and 21st streets flanking the park hanging out on front stoops to get an earful of tunes.

Concerts run each Thursday at 7:00 p.m. in St. Louis Place through July 24; full schedule here.

The joy of Thursday night came on the heels of national publicity for the neighborhood to the east, Old North St. Louis. The acclaimed conservation group the Natural Resources Defense Council’s blog featured a laudatory entry by its Kaid Benfield, director of the council’s Smart Growth program. Benfield’s post “Of the community, by the community, and for the community: the rebirth of Old North Saint Louis” celebrates the community-driven resurgence of downtown’s northern neighbor.

Meanwhile, the North City Farmers’ Market featuring produce from St. Louis Place’s New Roots Urban Farm, started on Saturday, June 7 and runs through October 25. Each Saturday from 9 a.m. until noon, people can purchase fresh food and enjoy cooking demonstrations at the intersection of 14th and St. Louis in Old North.

On top of all of this, the Mississippi River flooding has avoided the popular North Riverfront Trail, which remains open and accessible east of Old North.

Residents of the near north side are having a great summer — good music, the world’s coolest urban trail, a farmer’s market and awesome music usher in a pleasant season.

(Photographs by Lynn Josse.)

Categories
Architecture Housing North St. Louis Old North

Strange and Cool in Old North

by Michael R. Allen

One of the most unique buildings in Old North St. Louis is the house at the northeast corner of Florissant Avenue and Dodier Street (numbered 1917 Dodier). Florissant runs diagonally across Dodier, which conforms to the street grid laid out in the 1850 East Union Addition. Of course, the house shows us that Florissant is diagonal with its chamfered corner parallel to that street.

So many details make this house unlike any other. Obviously, the corner and its treatment — a stepped parapet against a side-gabled roof — is singular. There is the concealed side entrance. Then there is the pleasant fact that the dentillated cornice continues across the chamfered corner, a move that provides wide, commercial Florissant with the same decorum as quite, residential Dodier. The formal elevations of the house are faced with a firm pressed brick that was not available until the 1880s, but the windows are topped with flat limestone lintels in a much earlier fashion. This house is strange in the coolest way!

Categories
Agriculture Iowa land use

Land Use and Flooding

by Michael R. Allen

From “Iowa flooding could be man’s fault, experts say” (Washington Post):

Between 2007 and 2008, farmers took 106,000 acres of Iowa land out of the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to keep farmland uncultivated, according to Lyle Asell, a special assistant for agriculture and environment with the state’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR). That land, if left untouched, probably would have been covered with perennial grasses with deep roots that help absorb water.

Categories
Demolition Historic Preservation LCRA Riverfront

Casino Claims Historic North Riverfront Warehouses

by Michael R. Allen


Nestled between two prominent landmarks, the glitzy new Lumiere Place casino complex and the venerable Ashley Street Power House, stands a group of warehouse buildings. These aren’t the most iconic buildings — certainly not amid such strong competition. Still, the street wall presence of three buildings on Leonor K. Sullivan Drive between Carr and Biddle ties together disparate sections of riverfront fabric.

That presence is about to disappear. In May, the city’s Preservation Board voted 3 to 2, approving demolition of the buildings. While the applicant was the city government, Lumiere Place owner Pinnacle Casinos was a forceful advocate for razing the historic warehouses.

The warehouses in question comprise a wide four-story brick building built in 1881, a modern addition to the south from 1946 and a long one-story stone building to the north built in 1883. The grouping is a little peculiar, but there’s a reason for the strange appearance.

Thomas McPheeters was on his way to becoming one of the West’s biggest storage magnates when he built the four-story center building in 1881. That building was used for warehousing dry goods, and its looks are not out of the ordinary for industrial St. Louis. Yet its northern neighbor is an odd one-story stone-faced building built by McPheeters in 1883. Early fire insurance maps state that this building was lined with cast iron, suggesting that this was a primitive cold storage warehouse. McPheeters continued to develop cold storage facilities, and in 1900 and 1901 built much larger brick cold storage warehouses a few blocks north of his earlier building. Eventually McPheeters’ company sold the earlier buildings to the Thompson Chemical Company, which added the south building in 1946 and used the buildings for production.

Concerning the immediate surroundings, many remaining buildings were wrecked for Lumiere Place but an impressive pocket to the north contains large buildings, including the Ashley Street and Laclede power houses and McPheeters’ later buildings. These buildings comprise the North Riverfront Historic District National Register of Historic Places, listed in 2002 in response to renewed interest in developing the area.

Unfortunately, the old McPheeters buildings were not able to be included because a 2001 fire (and demolition) at the old Belcher Sugar Refinery left the old McPheeters buildings too far from the district to qualify. Yet the buildings could still be listed on the National Register of Historic Places, making historic rehabilitation tax credits available.

Unfortunately, that prospect will not come. The city’s Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority (LCRA) purchased the buildings in 2003. LCRA’s name says it all – the agency exists to clear land for new projects like Lumiere Place. However, the original Lumiere Place redevelopment plan didn’t include the fine old warehouses, leaving open the possibility of reuse.

All three buildings are sound, and the city’s Cultural Resources Office has advised that none have conditions of unsoundness established under the city’s preservation review ordinance. Still, there are challenges here — but none even as big as building a multi-million dollar, state-of-the-art casino. The middle warehouse has lost a section of one wall, exposing part of the wooden post and beam structure. The roof is missing in places. These are the conditions one expects for vacant property of this age, and conditions that have become standard fare for St. Louis tax-credit-savvy developers.

Although I cannot profess much respect for the execution of the Lumiere Place architecture and site plan, I was hopeful that its presence would not be a huge intrusion into the historic fabric of our riverfront. While the casino is visually at odds with surrounding architecture, and its construction entailed demolition of historic fabric, its location is ideal for connecting Laclede’s Landing to the industrial buildings to the north. Pinnacle repeatedly discusses a second phase of Lumiere Place that will create much-needed housing on the riverfront.

Pinnacle could have made as bold of a move as it did with its new casino and included historic rehabilitation in its plans. Connecting the new development with the historic context would be cool and smart, demonstrating Pinnacle’s commitment to transcending the usual. Also, utilizing historic rehabilitation tax credit and unusual buildings would offer additional financing tools and create something more special than a new building. The bonus would be the impact of helping to draw development up into the North Riverfront Historic District.

Pinnacle and city development officials have touted Lumiere Place as a catalyst for spreading investment across the riverfront areas north of the Eads Bridge. The vision of a vibrant riverfront with residential space certainly is compelling. Then, at the Preservation Board we heard from St. Louis Development Corporation Deputy Director Otis Williams, who told us that Lumiere Place wanted the McPheeters warehouses torn down because their appearance was supposedly hurting casino revenue. There’s a mighty large gap between the promises of spreading investment and the self-contained concerns conveyed through Williams.

That’s a gap big enough to swallow three fine buildings, but hopefully not the larger vision of revitalizing this section of riverfront by sensitively connecting the fabric of Laclede’s Landing and the North Riverfront Historic District.

This article first appeared in the Vital Voice on June 13, 2008.

Categories
Central West End Historic Preservation Mid-Century Modern

San Luis Gets Website, Spot on Most Endangered List

by Michael R. Allen

There’s a new website called “Save the San Luis” — referring to the threatened San Luis Apartments at Lindell and Taylor in the Central West End — located at NoParkingLotonLindell.com.

Also, last weekend at its annual membership meeting, Landmarks Association announced that the San Luis was one of the additions to this year’s Eleven Most Endangered Places list.