urbanSTL

Perhaps some help. What would this mean exactly?

Shane Cohn wrote:
just added language to Del Taco CID bill to prohibit CID generated funds being used for demolition.

jmstokes wrote: It makes me want to pull my hair out. Our ONE true benefit over all the godforsaken, far flung, sh*tty suburbs in the area is our urban environment, and with it, all the beautiful architecture, walkable areas, and interesting stores that come with it. Do we support any of those? No. We tear them down in some misguided 1950's attempt at job creation, when our incompetent alderpeople piss back and forth for the next $1,000 donation from a big developer who can smack down a QT and claim to create 50 jobs - all minimum wage, and all rubbish. It makes me sick, and I'm tired of it.

...

I know good things are happening in this city, and damn, there are good people, doing great advocacy. From my, personal, point of view, I'm seeing a lot more negatives than I am positives. I'm a transplant to St. Louis, so I don't see all this as politics as usual. I see a broken system that has failed utterly and completely for 50 years that people just shake their heads and cluck at as "business as usual."

If I were a brand new transplant to St. Louis, with no prior knowledge of it, I would begin to think that this rampant demolition for suburban-styled buildings is some scary new trend. It’s not, of course.

I agree with you in many ways Jmstokes, but I think you’re omitting the context of these negative actions and decisions here.

In the 1990s, countless (and I mean COUNTLESS) numbers of great buildings were lost, from the small corner store all the way up to absolute landmarks like the Ambassador Theater. In the 1990s more so than previous couple decades, the replacement was often a vacant lot, gas station, or something suburban-styled. Few people tracked demolitions because everyone thought this was all a natural consequence of a city in an outright freefall.

In the 2000s, the game changed. Suddenly on-lookers felt the city had a chance to survive and even thrive. So, whereas before, Del Taco would have gotten a nice post-mortem by a nostalgic writer in the Post-Dispatch (if that), now we have a full-fledged outcry to save the building. And we chipped away at aldermanic courtesy in the process. To me, it’s a sign of a turnaround of a backward process—not the opposite.

But more to the point of the first paragraph: St. Louis had jumped out of a plane without a parachute by the early 1970s and we hit the ground sometime in the mid-1990s. We should be buried and gone, but we survived—and we’re actually in a very slow process of rehabilitation. This sort of perspective—accounting for the fact that we’ve lost more population than any other city in the world over the past 60 years, and much of our employment base at that—lends better understanding of why we’re still in a troublesome spot.

I know we shouldn’t be making this situation worse—which is why the frustration is totally justifiable, but you have to realize that we were so much worse off before. There’s a real opportunity in this city, and (slow) change is becoming more and more evident. Let’s speed it up!

As a side note: we have extremely low demand right now for housing, retail, or anything else that contributes to an urban, active environment. The urban built form was a response to demand more than anything else (it only made financial sense to make the most out of your narrow, small lot). Most developers in this suburban-dominated nation will not understand the quaint notion that we should continue to build as if the demand for land is high, when they know it’s not (after all, they’re asking for handouts from the government ostensibly to make the project financially feasible).

This is NOT an argument for suburban-style buildings, but an explanation of why it’s the default in a slow-growth city.

This is not a rhetorical question - What would it take to get this built?



or this?

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2249/196 ... bfb903.jpg

Screw the TIF money and the tax abatement. Lets say all of that was in play. Lets say it made sense to level the Del Taco. We have a developer that wants to work with the site. We have the ability to give him tax incentives. What does it take to have something built at this site that promotes density and sits up against the side walk? In other words, I'm trying to figure what office or department in the City essentially dictates an urban design or no destruction of the current building. Does that happen in other cities? What is that called? Zoning? Help me understand this.

jmstokes wrote:

newstl2020 wrote:I hope this doesn't hit a nerve and it isn't anything personal, but it seems as though JM has took an unfortunate dive off the deep-end lately.

I've lost faith in this city, and more importantly, its leaders, to provide a liveable, urban environment in which to live and raise my family. I'm willing to put up with the crime above the national average, the piss-poor schools, and the headaches that come with city living. I'm not willing to put up with all of the negatives to live in a suburbanized environment - where buildings are torn down for strip malls and parking lots, where aldermen defer to "courtesy" in the 11,000 person ward over because we can't act as a city, and where I virtually have to drive to half the places I want to visit, because there's simply no other alternative.

Back to my other thread about playing to our weaknesses and the relation here. I don't care about the Del Taco building in particular. I do care about a process that removes all that is unique and interesting about this city and replaces it with the same crap I can get in Ballwin. Why live in a "city" that refuses to act like one?

It makes me want to pull my hair out. Our ONE true benefit over all the godforsaken, far flung, sh*tty suburbs in the area is our urban environment, and with it, all the beautiful architecture, walkable areas, and interesting stores that come with it. Do we support any of those? No. We tear them down in some misguided 1950's attempt at job creation, when our incompetent alderpeople piss back and forth for the next $1,000 donation from a big developer who can smack down a QT and claim to create 50 jobs - all minimum wage, and all rubbish. It makes me sick, and I'm tired of it.

Young people want to move to cities in droves - and we're too busy trying to accommodate some other demographic instead of positioning ourselves to these young people who might move here as singles but later get married and have families and give this city the bump it needs to get over this hump and back to an upswing. I don't get the end game - and with 28 aldermen each responsible for a tiny area, and too simple or ignorant to look at the big picture, there is no end game, other than abject failure for the region.

I know good things are happening in this city, and damn, there are good people, doing great advocacy. From my, personal, point of view, I'm seeing a lot more negatives than I am positives. I'm a transplant to St. Louis, so I don't see all this as politics as usual. I see a broken system that has failed utterly and completely for 50 years that people just shake their heads and cluck at as "business as usual."

I guess I took a dive off the deep end too. I agree with everything you said.

I still love St. Louis and I appreciate the high quality of life here. But to me the fight to save Del Taco is as much about restoring our city's political system and our vision for the city's future as it is about the structure itself. The majority of our city's leaders blithely ignore basic urban planning and economic principles. What about our unique built environment? What about the best and highest use of our land? And what about our budget that's already stretched to the limit? Why do our leaders routinely grant tax incentives for questionable developments that produce negligible gains?

Regardless of the fate of the Del Taco building, these questions won't be resolved. And as long as that's the case, it's getting harder to be optimistic about the future of our city in my opinion despite the many positives and the abundance of great people that strive to make St. Louis a better place.

^^^ I admit, I'm there too. Living here is frustrating more often than not, this whole Del Taco thing is one more flame to the fire.

I have no connection to the Del Taco building, never went to SLU (thank goodness) but I do see/understand the merits of keeping it/reusing/incorporating it into a new plan.

abundance of great people that strive to make St. Louis a better place.

The question is, how do we get these people into city government so they can make a difference? There have been recent successes, but how can we build on that...I guess this is all off topic, but I'd definitely participate in a grassroots effort to get more progressive people in office.

Dudes - I'm bumping my zoning question from a couple posts up; need to know how we can use tax incentives to force urban design/build on the part of developers. Think carrots and donkeys. Anybody know the answer to this?

"He wants to replace Del Taco with a larger building for several tenants set back from the street to provide more parking."

Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/ ... z1Qp5Lzfxv

Seems they already have exactly that kind of space in the existing retail portion of council Plaza. Maybe they should just focus on leasing what they have.

timeforguinness wrote:

Alex Ihnen wrote:City PAC

nextSTL PAC

100%

rawest1 wrote:...a grocery/pharmacy store, something that is nowhere on or off campus and is more than desperately needed...

A bit hyperbolic. The Lindell Schnucks and Walgreens are closer to, say, Marguerite than this would be.

rawest1 wrote:...something that is unrealistic/impossible with the saucer building there...

this is silly. it boils down to whether or not the developer cares enough to try, or whether he wants to build something fast and cheap. if he won't even consider alternatives then it's the latter. for someone with such a great reputation, it certainly is disconcerting how he and Marlene Davis are attempting to manipulate historic tax credits and tax abatement in ways that are antithetical to their purpose.

ttricamo wrote:Dudes - I'm bumping my zoning question from a couple posts up; need to know how we can use tax incentives to force urban design/build on the part of developers. Think carrots and donkeys. Anybody know the answer to this?

There is nothing to prevent a city from including design standards as part of approval for the granting of tax incentives. But in reality much of the great urban environment created from the pre-auto era is no longer allowed under most current city zoning codes with parking minimums, setback requirements and the like.

I believe the best way of going about in general your good approach for any city would be for the legislative adoption of form-based zoning and design standards and the creation of a strong design review board with teeth that reviews submited plans for consistency with the legislative standards. Of course, different standards could be adopted for historic districts, theater districts, downtown business districts, etc. Historic preservation review would be another layer. See here for form-based codes:
http://www.formbasedcodes.org/

rawest1 wrote:Fair enough, but people who live in Marguerite and DeMatt don't have kitchens and mostly eat on mealplans at the on-campus cafeterias and foodcourts.

On the other hand, you have this space that is surrounded by the Flats, Marchetti, and Grand Forest (not adjacent but very nearby), totaling thousands of students in apartments with kitchens who would stand to benefit tremendously.

Not to mention just a little further away are the people who live in the easternmost Student Village apartments, and the University Heights lofts on Laclede, and the Linen Lofts on Compton, and the P.W. Shoeco lofts.... Maybe not so much because those people would probably be driving anyway and they might as well hit up the Lindell Shnuck's, but the point is, there is a very legitimate case for the need of grocery/pharmacy there.

Like everything else, all this depends on how you define the geographic market area and how much you expect people to walk. My daughter used to live in the South Loop and now lives in Chelsea, and in both cases, she has/had to walk just about a mile to get to a supermarket. I'd argue that, in an urban context, Schnucks and Walgreens are more than close enough to serve all the way to the eastern end of campus.

And I admit a bit of anti-incentive bias creeping in. I'm to the point where I oppose any subsidy for retail. (Yes, I'm talking to you, too, Shrewsbury.) I really, really would oppose a Walgreens or CVS in that development, and if they don't go in, I think you'd end up with a high-markup joint if you put in a quick shop or other small-scale food retailer. And in any event, you'd end up subsidizing competition to currently vacant Midtown Alley spaces, as well as the still-vacant stuff in the new apartments along Lindell just west of Vandeventer.

framer wrote:"He wants to replace Del Taco with a larger building for several tenants set back from the street to provide more parking."

Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/ ... z1Qp5Lzfxv

Seems they already have exactly that kind of space in the existing retail portion of council Plaza. Maybe they should just focus on leasing what they have.

It would be nice for an alderperson to ask him, "I have a knapkin and pen right here.... can you come up and sketch out what you mean by "pedestrian-friedly" with greater setbacks and more parking? I also have an etch-a-sketch if you prefer."

But Yackey shouldn't be demonized... he's trying to make productive use out of a difficult property and simply playing the tax incentive game that is made available to developers. Hopefully he is true to his word that he is open to finding a re-use of the building.

I think it would be really cool if eveyone could work together.... Yackey, preservationists, the city, Metro, SLU, Trailnet, Grand Center, the urban design community & students, etc. to do a design charette and dialogue with the task of finding a realistic plan to redevelop the larger site in a manner that preserves the building, enhances the economic viability of the entire site, and accomdates bike/ped use to the Metrolink and campus. This could be in conjunction with an even larger effort to develop a harmonious bike/ped plan for Grand from Arsenal (the terminus of the existing Great Streets project for S. Grand) north to at least The Rock Church.