urbanSTL

Early Fairview Heights rendering

Those look so awesome.

Very awesome.

Who is creating these visions/designs/renderings?

zun1026 wrote:Who is creating these visions/designs/renderings?

designworkshop.com

stlien wrote:

zun1026 wrote:Who is creating these visions/designs/renderings?

designworkshop.com

Not a bad firm to have on this project. There do some really high quality work.

goat314 wrote:

wabash wrote:An interesting characteristic of St. Louis is that it's at the small end of cities that can even discuss TOD. Indy, Cincy, and KC don't have any transit to speak of. Detroit and Tampa don't have transit that would facilitate TOD. Baltimore hasn't seen TOD except as a destination for the DC job market. Comparably sized cities that seem to have successfully encourage/executed TOD are Seattle, Minneapolis, Denver, and Portland.

St. Louis falls somewhere in a category with Cleveland and Pittsburgh, where we have transit and have been redeveloping our CBDs, but not executing significant TOD. We're 500K bigger than Pittsburgh and 750K bigger than Cleveland, so one could argue that we are the furthest behind in this group.

A major factor is obviously population growth which has been relatively stagnant in these cities over the last decade. So, while there is a lot of interest and excitement about TOD among urbanists and transit enthusiasts, I don't think it has been the automatic by-product of transit investment that we hoped it would be.

In larger cities (Philly, Boston, Chicago, DC, San Francisco, New York) fuel prices tend to be higher, parking is more expensive, traffic is worse, and there is preexisting commuter rail infrastructure that stretches further out into the hinterlands than light rail is designed to. All of these factors, along with higher property costs (among others), make commuting a much more attractive option than in the smaller cities.

I agree with everything you said. St. Louis doesn't have the population growth to do the huge development projects you see in cities like Dallas or Denver etc., but St. Louis could use TOD as a catalyst for redevelopment in older, inner ring suburbs and St. Louis City. If planned right and implemented with serious intent we could make some real progress in changing our urban landscape. We give so much TIF money to commercial/retail developments in this region without a residential component, why not fund true mixed use development?

Disclaimer: I'm unsure if I am just responding to a conversation long-since dead and it's not really worth it or if this is still somewhat an ongoing discussion. I was just reading through the forums and decided to join because I wanted to chime in re: the general theme of the conversation, as I see it both in the above quoted, and in the regularly appearing articles on the NextSTL front page.

What I wanted to speak to was the "poor" or pseudo-TOD that seems to often be developed in St. Louis. I think the top-most quote about St. Louis being on the small end of cities who can even talk about this is a really interesting point. I have a few thoughts on this.

First, I considered that there might be something "more" than the size of the city that has to do with its ability to engage in these sorts of TOD projects. There is also the grandfathered built form. I was recently in Spokane, Washington of all places, and I discovered that while the city had significant urban sprawl, the urban population (MSA) of no more than 250,000 or so managed a very "sturdy" urban core. What was more interesting, though, was the neighborhoods that surrounded the downtown. All were very bikeable. In addition, while there was no light rail, busses operated a tight shift, maintaining a significant presence throughout a number of notable intersections in these neighborhoods, all of which led back to downtown. Now there's a chicken-or-egg question here, but what I saw was that, at these transit dense neighborhoods, many older homes had been converted to urban lifestyles services and amenities (coffeeshops, boutique storefronts, etc.).

There's not a real "direct" tie from that observation to St. Louis other than to say that St. Louis is "blessed" with a strong urban form that enables many of the existing structures, if properly serviced from the transportation and transit standpoint, to blossom into their full potential.

My second thought has to do more with the “why” of these TOD initiatives. St. Louis is a strong urban fabric that features many "gashes," the consequence of prior urban reinvestment projects primarily targeted to increase the speed of movement through the city, under the antiquated civil engineering logic that the goal of transportation is to increase mobility (as opposed to accessibility). Such investments not only destroyed valuable built form, but also enables the simultaneous devaluation of urban land and valuation of exurban land which, prior, had been untapped by road construction. Thus, in effect, road construction on the scale at which it occurred subsidized suburbanization by making affordable and vehicle ready vast swaths of prior untouched land.

So, when we look at these proposed TOD projects in the city, today, what we see, I imagine, is this confused attempt to “undo” what was already done. The biggest catch here is that the land value has already been reduced. Thus, more capital intensive structures and the densities they dictate just don’t make sense in these environments. The question then becomes what is the TOD in St. Louis? Is the TOD something to serve live/work individuals who focus on transit as the crux of their everyday movement for most journeys? No, I would argue.

Rather, TOD in St. Louis exists very much in the commuter sense. Most people live in the suburbs. TOD makes sense in St. Louis mostly on the premise of a Kiss and Ride. These are locations that should maximize their accessibility to both the suburbs and the city, and should feature real estate programming that seeks to capture the value created from traffic operating through this multi-modal “joint.” To that end, Brentwood’s Metro stop that is near the Best Buy should (and could) become a hallmark TOD development for the city.

In order for such developments to occur, the City needs to realize that continued infrastructural increases to the I-64 corridor seek (in most cases) to actually devalue land values in the city and cost the city further property tax revenue to, in effect, subsidize ease of access to the employment centers within its borders. It should, rather, “take back,” these subsidized right-of-ways and utilize them in a way that benefits, rather than hurts itself.

Moving back to the Brentwood example, what if, in a really aggressive scenario, the City were to take a lane off of each side of the freeway and institute a BRT corridor with a permanent concrete divider that created substantial pedestrian islands along the side of each freeway. Each “station” would feature pedestrian focused development abutting the existing urban fabric. Better yet, elevational change could be managed by the lane being lifted with infill up to existing grade and “out of” the depression within which the freeway lies. And, while you’re at it, because this would actually have the capability, given the right headways and vehicle capacities, to actually produce reduced congestion into the downtown, the savings from additional infrastructure investment could go towards the purchase and maintenance of the fleet. On top of that, since BRT is about 5% the cost of a subway (like $10 million per mile, right?), you could make the whole thing go electric, and that would pay for itself in under 10 years (the mechanical investment, that is).

If you gave something like this to the city, it would help activate many of the “dead” cross streets in the city that serve as tertiary routes to the freeways, such as Oakland Avenue. The moment such incentives are drawn to really create the demand for such modal choices at a physical node, like Brentwood, we could then really pressure, with good reason (and maybe no real pressure needed) development typology to acknowledge from a design standpoint, the latent demand that their physical structures need to “address” to capture potential customers. Thus, the real estate would give way and, ideally, turn to “face” the services, so long as the services enabled themselves to be taken advantage of (read: hire an architect).

Here's the TOD presentation on the Delmar and Forest Park stations shown at the meeting in May.

Would it be sacrilegious to suggest developing the land on both sides of DeBaliviere South of FPP? I realize that land is a part of Forest Park, but it adds nothing to the park, city, neighborhood. I presume Lindell home owners would balk even if the buildings only went a third of the way down. It just screams build on me, plus buildings up to the corner might slow down traffic on FPP.

The alternatives look pretty good. Worrisome that none are financially viable. Ped access from Pershing to FP Station is a no-brainer; that should have been a part of the Cross County build. Did the neighborhood not want it back then or was it an oversight? Narrowing Delmar, good. A lot a demo in Alt 3. Wish there was some street opening along DeBaliviere.

A lot in here, check it out.

http://skinkerdebaliviere.files.wordpre ... -21-13.pdf

quincunx wrote:Here's the TOD presentation on the Delmar and Forest Park stations shown at the meeting in May.

Would it be sacrilegious to suggest developing the land on both sides of DeBaliviere South of FPP? I realize that land is a part of Forest Park, but it adds nothing to the park, city, neighborhood. I presume Lindell home owners would balk even if the buildings only went a third of the way down. It just screams build on me, plus buildings up to the corner might slow down traffic on FPP.

The alternatives look pretty good. Worrisome that none are financially viable. Ped access from Pershing to FP Station is a no-brainer; that should have been a part of the Cross County build. Did the neighborhood not want it back then or was it an oversight? Narrowing Delmar, good. A lot a demo in Alt 3. Wish there was some street opening along DeBaliviere.

A lot in here, check it out.

http://skinkerdebaliviere.files.wordpre ... -21-13.pdf

They are all very financially viable. Did you see the amount of subsidies available for some of these projects. If we can string together HTC, LIHTC, and TIF together I don't see a developer that wouldn't jump all over this. I suspect we will get many developers from out of state that have experience with TOD, especially if the subsidies are in place. From what I'm hearing leadership at Metro and St. Louis City really want this TOD thing to work and a lot of people are pushing for it. It also benefits from the proposed gigabit city and Loop Trolley development.

Preferred Plans for Forest Park-DeBaliviere/Delmar Loop MetroLink Station Areas 7-1-13

http://stlouis-mo.gov/government/depart ... eID=357793


Preferred Plans for Arch-Laclede's Landing/Stadium MetroLink Station Areas 7-1-13

http://stlouis-mo.gov/government/depart ... eid=357794

Here is the presentation from the 2nd TOD workshop. A lot in there. What to do with Lucier park still a tough one. Putting the Delmar station under Delmar with elevator on the south side and access through the Wabash station on the north side would be great. It should have been that way from the beginning. Too bad they just rebuilt the Delmar bridge, so I don't think this will happen anytime soon.

Streetscape changes. Cover tracks at FP stationwith acces to Pershing. Diet for Delmar to Goodfellow.

Renderings are like a dream.

Introduction of form based code with polling of the audience.

http://skinkerdebaliviere.files.wordpre ... _final.pdf

^WHOA! Those renderings made the proposals so real. I cant wait to see real renderings from other station plans. I don't see how people are not excited about TOD in the region.

It's like a different planet. Something to aspire to.

Washington Post - As D.C. area developers gobble up land, Metro system poised to become more overwhelmed

Since the recession, real estate developers have been gobbling up Metro-accessible land and planning and building offices and apartments from Reston to New Carrollton. More than 12,000 new apartments became available in 2012 and a similar number will arrive this year, 3,000 units more than the previous high.
...
When 1812 North Moore Street is fully occupied, it likely will bring some 3,000 workers into the center of Rosslyn. The developer, Monday Properties, says it is committed to helping Metro expand and improve access. “We champion public transportation, as it is an essential component of our long-term Rosslyn redevelopment plan,” Tim Helmig, Monday executive vice president, said in an e-mail.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ ... story.html

City launches fund to aid developers who build TOD projects - Part of the affordable housing budget

http://www.stltoday.com/business/column ... afef9.html

Glad the city is thinking like this, but in my humble opinion this fund is too small to have any transformative effect and definitely not focused enough. Any TOD funds in St. Louis should focus on development around light rail stations or real BRT, not bus lines. It also should focus on creating mixed income, mixed use projects....not just low income housing.

If the area for this fund is within 1/2 mile of Metrolink stations and/or the 35 bus routes that run at least every 30 minutes, then it can be applied to just about anywhere in the City. Hopefully in practice these funds will be focused around Metrolink stations. If that's the case I think Debaliviere, Delmar, and a Boyle/Sarah station would stand to benefit the most. $1 million a year is a drop in the bucket, but perhaps it could be used to leverage other housing funds. It might not be much, but I'm thrilled to see the City putting money toward TOD. It's the one thing that is guaranteed to make something happen.