urbanSTL

Roger Wyoming as much as i would like for it to stop its not going to stop until many significant & aggressive changes are made
Saint.Louis is a name it's the people who live here that make the city. Until people of North Saint.Louis say enough is enough & people start turning these criminals in & our courts stop being so lenient on criminals none of this will never stop.
Saint.Louis is a city being victimize by it's own residents particularly in North City. You have some who care but most could never care they are all about getting theirs & they'll kill at will..
North Saint.Louis is a hostile environment not only for the innocent but the police trying to make things better.
Drugs alone will make these people do anything gangs blah these people actually think they own the corner when in reality they don't even own their own soul.
These are bad people who have no cares in the world about any of us trying to make good & make Saint.Louis a better place to live
If you asked anyone of them where's Yellowstone National Park located would never know cause many have probably never been outside of their little corner block.

Also when adults have no direction in life this is what happens..
People actually can't argue anymore without someone having a gun knife or some other object for a weapon.
How about we spend that billion & more on North Saint.Louis ridding it out the evil that plagues it..
2 more slayings today it's gotten very rough out there & you often wonder whats causing all of this?
I make no excuses for these devils & someday justice will be served...
Yes Chicago has many things to do . It's no different from any american city with high crime..

I was thinking, is more homicides might not be an indicator of more violent crime? Since it would be more accurate to use all violent crime, since sometimes the same incident depending on accuracy would either be a homicide or an attempted one. It would look like there is higher crime if you see for example 100 homicides from 200 incidents than say 70 homicides from 250 incidents. Statistical luck would play a role in this its just the news focuses on homicide too much and not total violent crime since homicides are a function in part by luck factors.

It doesn't matter how affordable a metro area is, if there aren't any jobs or if it's an exciting place to live people won't move there. You could actually make the case that places are affordable because people don't want to live there.

^^ I agree with that, affordability isn't by itself a good thing, but it can tilt an area in its favor if there are other positives. But a place getting to expensive can become a negative for an area causing middle-class people to want to leave.

Another issue is in the southwest people may need to leave due to water issues. The quality of life in relation to that could make a place unbearable.

There was a recent post, I think in the technology thread, about how the affordability of St. Louis provides many advantages for a cash strapped start-up.

Saint.Louis will remain undesirable because of the biggest problem that continues to plague it.
Crime education also our big local companies continuing to create jobs in the county & not the city.
Why is it so hard for companies such as Enterprise express scripts etc to actual put some jobs in the city where's Slay on this? I couldn't believe he touted Express Scripts as gold status when it came to start- ups. Yes they came a long ways however they are not a model company when they continue to expand everywhere else & yet have no presence in the city what so ever Our Mayor lack of the ability to promote the city as business friendly or a great place for relocation to out of towners.
Downtown can't even get any jobs without the shark fight of the thousands of other munies wanting the same.
Our aldermen denying a tax abatement for a 14 story building in the CWE which my haunt the city for quite a while the failure to promote downtown as the place for jobs & job relocation


I think we need a clean slate clean house new beginning better promoters etc.
Saint.Louis will be a beautiful place to live if our so called elected leaders would stop tearing down every old building for a vacant lot or another damn park.
Could a millennial please run for office in the next election maybe they'll have a better vision on how to progress Saint.Louis
Just my little rant is all

shadrach wrote:

TheNewSaintLouis wrote:Our Mayor lack of the ability to promote the city as business friendly

Purely anecdotal, but a recent conversation with someone who started a business in the city, the city is not business friendly at all, but antagonistic. I've heard this lament before.

St. Louis No. 2 in ease of starting new biz: ranking

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has ranked the city of St. Louis as the second most favorable city for starting a business in the United States, coming in after first-ranked Dallas and before third-ranked Raleigh. The study ranked cities according to their regulatory environments.
more here
http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/blog ... nking.html

Purely anecdotal would be entirely accurate.

I don't know if this counts as national or not.

‘Made in St. Louis ft. Nelly’ will make you fall in love with St. Louis all over again

http://fox2now.com/2014/08/06/made-in-s ... ver-again/

Great feature on Portland and Westmoreland Places, with tons of photos (in the New York Social Diary, no less):

http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/the-w ... 5.facebook

Amazing homes!

Anybody know if they ever offer tours to the public, like the Square and Compton Heights?

The Central West End Association does a house tour every year, and this past year the tour was of some houses on Portland Place. That's the only time I've heard of a tour being offered. In general the residents strictly enforce a "no trespassing" policy. When I first moved to St. Louis I was walking around the Central West End and Forest Park, enjoying the architecture. When I from Lindell onto Lake, walking towards Portland and Westmoreland Place, the security officer drove up towards me and told me (emphatically) that I was trespassing and had to leave.

Ebsy wrote:Purely anecdotal would be entirely accurate.

I don't think so. The city's less-than-friendly business environment is well-documented. In January's FEAST Magazine, the Tastemakers Round Table article featured an interview with some of St. Louis' leading restaurateurs, including TJ Vytlacil of Blood & Sand and Death in the Afternoon, Scott Carey from Sump Coffee, and Adam Tilford of Mission Taco, Milagro, etc.

In a portion of the interview (which starts on page 50, this portion begins on page 60), they explain the difficulties of doing business at St. Louis City Hall. I know this is only one article, but it shows just how difficult it can be to start a business, secure licenses and permits, etc. in St. Louis than it is in other cities. I would love to believe St. Louis was a business friendly place, but I believe there's a lot of room for improvement. Of course, that room for improvement is likely to go unacknowledged by a city government that operates on the premise of "that's the way things have always been done".

FEAST Magazine- 2014 STL Tastemakers Round Table- January 2014

Opening a restaurant without a liquor license can be as short as a week. With one it's 2 months (depends how fast you can get signatures from people around the place) If you have a restaurant 1000+sq feet of customer space and no off street parking, you have to get a variance. And that's 4-6 week process ....biggest X factor is the alderman if a occupancy permit has to go to a hearing, I've seen some stall for 2-3 months. I've seen the 24th ward alderman hold up the Taco Bell renovation on Hampton because of 1 foot of sidewalk.

Source: I was the city's conditional use officer for occupancy permits/home business's for almost 2 years
City also has a Business Assistance Center on the 4th floor staffed by 4 people that help anyone get all the paper work done, for free.

dbInSouthCity wrote:Opening a restaurant without a liquor license can be as short as a week. With one it's 2 months (depends how fast you can get signatures from people around the place) If you have a restaurant 1000+sq feet of customer space and no off street parking, you have to get a variance. And that's 4-6 week process ....biggest X factor is the alderman if a occupancy permit has to go to a hearing, I've seen some stall for 2-3 months. I've seen the 24th ward alderman hold up the Taco Bell renovation on Hampton because of 1 foot of sidewalk.

Source: I was the city's conditional use officer for occupancy permits/home business's for almost 2 years
City also has a Business Assistance Center on the 4th floor staffed by 4 people that help anyone get all the paper work done, for free.

St. Louis is a great city to make a life in. I think St. Louis suffers from a lot of perception problems that turn into real problems. If St. Louis ever gets to that critical mass it could really boom. Many of the perceptions people have about St. Louis being slow, backwards, not progressive etc. is really old talk now. St. Louis is does a lot of things current boomtowns wish they could get done, but we never show off like other cities would. I believe Dennis Lower pf Cortex said that St. Louis has to stop being so modest and do some chest thumping, start hyping the region up if we want to compete. Fortunately, I've been seeing a lot of that lately and St. Louis has been getting a crap load of positive national press. Not to mention St. Louis is becoming a reality show mecca in its own right. Sweetie Pies has really put the city in a positive life, now we got this BAPs show, something else about soccer moms, salvage city etc. It really is pretty amazing how our image has changed in the last few years.

My impression (so this is anything but scientific) is that the general business climate around St. Louis (things like cost of doing business and such) make it a good place to start a business, but that the red tape one most go through at City Hall runs counter to that. So I could certainly see there being a lot of varying opinions on whether we're business friendly or not.

What specifically the bad red tape and how do you fix it while also considering the interests of residents near the businesses new location? Business owners are not the only ones with something at stake when a liquor license is issued.

jstriebel wrote:My impression (so this is anything but scientific) is that the general business climate around St. Louis (things like cost of doing business and such) make it a good place to start a business, but that the red tape one most go through at City Hall runs counter to that. So I could certainly see there being a lot of varying opinions on whether we're business friendly or not.

Only red tape at city hall is the ego of the alderman. I have many more stories of almost all of them holding up projects for no actual reason

Anthonino's wanted to expand and the alderman there held up the building permit for month plus, at the end I just said f it, there is nothing in the zoning code that's this doesn't comply with and approved it.

Hence the old saying.....