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St. Charles County is a victim. It doesn't realize it yet, it thinks it's uber successful, but in a few years it will realize it has been overdeveloped & exploited for all it was worth. Behind its pretty, vinyl facade, St. Charles County, at around 20%, sports the highest retail vacancy rate in the metropolitan area.
Drive around St. Peters and O'Fallon for a bit and you'll notice what seems like endless miles of strip malls along various major roads. Look closer and you'll see plenty of empty storefronts with colorful leasing signs displayed in the windows where retail goods should be. I know for a fact that commercial real estate brokers have been struggling for 2 and a half years to fill the space in new strip center located in what appears to be a great location across the street from St. Charles County Community College. Another strip center along Mexico has been mostly vacant for over a year. These are just 2 examples. Despite the high vacancy rate & leasing difficulties, developers are still building strip malls on any open plot of land left in STC county. These developers seem to be so greedy they're willing to rape the county in which they live, it's crazy.
I don't want to see St. Louis fall victim to the greed of developers the way STC county has. I'm all for a developer making money in the City, I encourage it, but there have to be ground rules and standards of design. If any alderman or city official can drive out to St. Charles County and honestly say the development and built environment that they see there will fit into the cityscape of St. Louis, I argue that alderman is a threat to the City and should be voted out of office.
Why does St. Louis have The Planning and Urban Design Agency & Rollin Stanley if the city doesn't utilize them? Surely this agency can have a sit down or luncheon with alderman about urban development, the things to look for in good urban design, and the red flags. Not to say the agency goes totally unutilized. I was ecstatic to learn the Ward 16 alderman Donna Baringer consulted with Stanley when developing a plan of action for Macklind Avenue. More alderman should follow her lead.
When I voice my opposition to a development, it's not to stymie growth, but to call for something better...something that benefits the City and her residents. Be it a Walgreens, a grocery store or some other retail outlet, good urban design can be applied to most everything and it shouldn't cost more, but it does require thought on the part of developer and architect. It's crazy that what most people in the blogosphere want is simple, thoughtful design. It's so easy!
Urban is not SUBurban. The City (or it's residents through the democratic process) must ensure that mayor, alderman and developers understand and design for our city environment, and then step back and let the developer make all the money he/she wants! How simple is that?
As I drove through St. Charles county today, I remembered what it used to look like. Beautiful trees and wooded areas, parks and creeks where I used to play were replaced with acres of parking and thousands of strip malls that all seemed to look alike. It was sad seeing my childhood memories buried under uninspired subdivisions & asphalt. People from the burbs question why I live in the City. I'd have to turn it around and ask them why they live where they do. The suburbs, to me, don't even contain different shades of beige, it's that unispired. I refuse to let St. Louis City turn itself into something as boring and antispetic.
I'll sign whatever petition, give to whatever cause, that fights to ensure our City doesn't look like the outer reaches of our region. Our City is too unique, to beautiful to settle for second rate, irresponsible development. I'm not clever or bright enough to start some kind of "urban movement", but I know what I believe in and I tend to fight for it. I may not be that great of a leader, but I'm one hell of a follower.
Drive around St. Peters and O'Fallon for a bit and you'll notice what seems like endless miles of strip malls along various major roads. Look closer and you'll see plenty of empty storefronts with colorful leasing signs displayed in the windows where retail goods should be. I know for a fact that commercial real estate brokers have been struggling for 2 and a half years to fill the space in new strip center located in what appears to be a great location across the street from St. Charles County Community College. Another strip center along Mexico has been mostly vacant for over a year. These are just 2 examples. Despite the high vacancy rate & leasing difficulties, developers are still building strip malls on any open plot of land left in STC county. These developers seem to be so greedy they're willing to rape the county in which they live, it's crazy.
I don't want to see St. Louis fall victim to the greed of developers the way STC county has. I'm all for a developer making money in the City, I encourage it, but there have to be ground rules and standards of design. If any alderman or city official can drive out to St. Charles County and honestly say the development and built environment that they see there will fit into the cityscape of St. Louis, I argue that alderman is a threat to the City and should be voted out of office.
Why does St. Louis have The Planning and Urban Design Agency & Rollin Stanley if the city doesn't utilize them? Surely this agency can have a sit down or luncheon with alderman about urban development, the things to look for in good urban design, and the red flags. Not to say the agency goes totally unutilized. I was ecstatic to learn the Ward 16 alderman Donna Baringer consulted with Stanley when developing a plan of action for Macklind Avenue. More alderman should follow her lead.
When I voice my opposition to a development, it's not to stymie growth, but to call for something better...something that benefits the City and her residents. Be it a Walgreens, a grocery store or some other retail outlet, good urban design can be applied to most everything and it shouldn't cost more, but it does require thought on the part of developer and architect. It's crazy that what most people in the blogosphere want is simple, thoughtful design. It's so easy!
Urban is not SUBurban. The City (or it's residents through the democratic process) must ensure that mayor, alderman and developers understand and design for our city environment, and then step back and let the developer make all the money he/she wants! How simple is that?
As I drove through St. Charles county today, I remembered what it used to look like. Beautiful trees and wooded areas, parks and creeks where I used to play were replaced with acres of parking and thousands of strip malls that all seemed to look alike. It was sad seeing my childhood memories buried under uninspired subdivisions & asphalt. People from the burbs question why I live in the City. I'd have to turn it around and ask them why they live where they do. The suburbs, to me, don't even contain different shades of beige, it's that unispired. I refuse to let St. Louis City turn itself into something as boring and antispetic.
I'll sign whatever petition, give to whatever cause, that fights to ensure our City doesn't look like the outer reaches of our region. Our City is too unique, to beautiful to settle for second rate, irresponsible development. I'm not clever or bright enough to start some kind of "urban movement", but I know what I believe in and I tend to fight for it. I may not be that great of a leader, but I'm one hell of a follower.
1 comments:
By
equals42, at
11:03 PM
Congratulations. Monday should have been a holiday for you anyway so look at it as the longest President's Day ever. Too bad you didn't get to say goodbye while everyone was still at work, but it sounds like they were a crappy employer. Every place I've worked has had a nice send-off for me except for the layoff. Even that one wasn't so bad with the 2 months of pay plus a severance.
Look, get drunk, read a book or slide down Art Hill. Whatever. Enjoy. Just clear your mind and start purposely referring to your old job as "my last employer", "my old job" and "them". By Wednesday you should be thinking about the new job and forget the old. It's an exciting thing starting a new job. Don't let the old one bother you anymore.