Heard on the news this morning that Slay will be on hand today at 2 pm to start the demolition of 26 vacant properties near Rankin College ( Page and Newstead area) to make land available for 'future development'.
Even though these are not gorgeous victorian houses, it still seems shortsighed since there is no immediate plan that I know of . Another grassy patch or parking lot?

Heard that as well, and was also confused by what seemed to be a celebratory tone. Surely there has to be something in the works to follow? They can't still be so short-sighted as to tear down vacant but stable buildings just to turn blighted buildings into blighted lots, can they?

Here's a map of the area. There are 161 buildings in that area still standing according to Google maps.

-RBB

I'm usually against demolition but the area is so far gone and the upside so great with Cortex and Ranken that you really can't risk it and let the area lean too ghetto. I don't believe anyone is being displaced and the buildings in this area were never going to see the investment needed to get it all fixed back up anyway but I'd have to see each building individually to really know if there's anything to be outraged about.

leeharveyawesome wrote:I'm usually against demolition but the area is so far gone and the upside so great with Cortex and Ranken that you really can't risk it and let the area lean too ghetto. I don't believe anyone is being displaced and the buildings in this area were never going to see the investment needed to get it all fixed back up anyway but I'd have to see each building individually to really know if there's anything to be outraged about.

I mostly agree with this, I just hope they believe their is something imminent even if it's not full blown plans yet. I know these places can become bastions for crime, so on that level it could help things some, but I really hope their is a strong believe something gets built there soon. Otherwise I'm not sure I agree with it.

But rarely does speculative demolition lead to any real reinvestment. Heck even demolition where reinvestment is proposed doesn't guarantee anything - see the SkyHouse proposal.

Wouldn't dilapidated buildings immediately adjacent to a trade college make for a perfect opportunity for the college to reinvest in its neighborhood? Use the restoration of these buildings to teach your Electrical, HVAC, Manufacturing, and Construction majors. Your students now have real-world experience and the college has a revitalized neighborhood surrounding it that they helped build.

-RBB

What gets me is the attitude that solid, historic, yet blighted properties are seen as an impediment rather than an asset.

rbb wrote:Wouldn't dilapidated buildings immediately adjacent to a trade college make for a perfect opportunity for the college to reinvest in its neighborhood? Use the restoration of these buildings to teach your Electrical, HVAC, Manufacturing, and Construction majors. Your students now have real-world experience and the college has a revitalized neighborhood surrounding it that they helped build.

Ranken already does this throughout their neighborhood

DannyJ wrote:

rbb wrote:Wouldn't dilapidated buildings immediately adjacent to a trade college make for a perfect opportunity for the college to reinvest in its neighborhood? Use the restoration of these buildings to teach your Electrical, HVAC, Manufacturing, and Construction majors. Your students now have real-world experience and the college has a revitalized neighborhood surrounding it that they helped build.

Ranken already does this throughout their neighborhood

I'm actually really glad to hear that - thanks DannyJ. It'll be interesting to see which buildings are targeted - perhaps they're already too far gone....

-RBB

Ranken Community Development Corp
http://www.ranken.edu/about-ranken/rank ... orporation

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The area has obviously seen better days, but there's plenty of vacant land to build new houses on and the more that are torn down, the more gaps there are to fill. Many of the surviving homes are beautiful. One of my favorite rows in the city lies within these boundaries (photo from August 2011):

And it was already being chipped away at as of last September:

I've spoken to people who live on these blocks and they love what's left of their neighborhood's built environment and want to see both rehabs and infill. The new single family homes could help stabilize the neighborhood and encourage rehab - they would easily fit in between existing buildings. Here's a Rankin home going up in the Lewis Place Neighborhood:

Down in McRee Town, expensive new construction is going up next to dilapidated housing:

Projects like North Sarah should be encouraging adjacent rehabs to knit neighborhoods back together. But Rankin is a fenced in fortress that doesn't seem to care about it's surroundings, just wants to take advantage of the empty space to throw up conveniently located construction training sites.

random thoughts:

I wish there was a more open dialogue regarding demolitions rather than announce it the day of. They could have posted pictures of the too-far-gone-to-save houses that are to be demolished. What is there to hide?

It irks me when our fine Mayor proudly announces this as the path to success for the neighborhood. Has he not learned anything from recent success in neighborhood revitalization? (Yes, even in North St Louis!) I almost feel like this announcement should have come with an apology to the community for failing to save the soul of the neighborhood .

That demo money could have been used to stabilize some of these 'dangerous' buildings for future residents.

And ofcourse, if this part of the city had preservation review, it might have had a different future altogether.

imran wrote:random thoughts:

I almost feel like this announcement should have come with an apology to the community for failing to save the soul of the neighborhood .

How about an apology from the RESIDENTS for failing to save the soul of the neighborhood? The residents had world-class housing at their disposal, in America, with a decent safety net. It should have never come to this.

Maybe we should funnel the tens of thousands of Latinos currently crossing the border and see what they can do with it.

STLEnginerd wrote: based on what i see only one is adjacent to Ranken so these sites are not much good for them to incorporate as part of their campus. Only about half are adjacent to an already vacant lot which would enable someone to construct a larger development on multiple lots and of those very few are large parcels of vacant lots (say 5 or more adjacent lots).

Yep; to claim this is for some kind of "campus expansion" is disingenuous at best.

Did anyone see the Political Eye editorial in the STL American about this?

http://www.stlamerican.com/news/politic ... f887a.html

There is a reference there to a political rivalry between Alderman Sam Moore and the Mayor's office, whereby Moore, even though he's been pushing for more demos in his ward for a long time, doesn't want to be viewed as being in Slay's camp.

So Moore stays away from the announcement of the demos, even though he was invited to participate and they are happening in his ward. Maybe he wanted to have his own press conference?

Then there's a reference to the time-honored tradition of "aldermanic courtesy" and the necessary "kissing of the ring" of an alderman when it comes to taking credit for such efforts. It's almost as if these people think they're royalty - or maybe some other kind of syndicate?

Isn't that just sad? Sad and low.

Good leadership = service, not self promotion. Sadly, many of our local politicians don't get it. Okay, maybe most politicians don't.

stlexplorer wrote:The area has obviously seen better days, but there's plenty of vacant land to build new houses on and the more that are torn down, the more gaps there are to fill. Many of the surviving homes are beautiful. One of my favorite rows in the city lies within these boundaries (photo from August 2011):

And it was already being chipped away at as of last September:

I've spoken to people who live on these blocks and they love what's left of their neighborhood's built environment and want to see both rehabs and infill. The new single family homes could help stabilize the neighborhood and encourage rehab - they would easily fit in between existing buildings. Here's a Rankin home going up in the Lewis Place Neighborhood:

Down in McRee Town, expensive new construction is going up next to dilapidated housing:

Projects like North Sarah should be encouraging adjacent rehabs to knit neighborhoods back together. But Rankin is a fenced in fortress that doesn't seem to care about it's surroundings, just wants to take advantage of the empty space to throw up conveniently located construction training sites.

They always seem to go after the coolest house on the block - how sad when a press conf is called and demo is seen as victory -