Major League Soccer Expansion in St. Louis - 2016 St. Louis City Talk Favorite

This is the second of two sports related favorites from 2016. The first was the Cardinal/Cordish proposal for a mixed-use development at Ballpark Village.

The next is the potential for MLS soccer in our fair city. The league is expanding and they indicated that St. Louis is one of the top cities under consideration for a team.

Per MLS' official website:

MLS Commissioner Don Garber announced Thursday that Teams 25 and 26 will be announced during the second or third quarter of 2017, at an expansion fee of $150 million each, and begin MLS play by 2020. Teams 27 and 28 will be announced at a later date, at a price delivered in conjunction with the timeline.

The league acknowledged ownership groups from 10 markets have publicly expressed interest in securing an MLS expansion team: Charlotte, Cincinnati, Detroit, Nashville, Raleigh/Durham, Sacramento, St. Louis, San Antonio, San Diego and Tampa/St. Petersburg.

Interested expansion owners must submit applications by Jan. 31, 2017. After review, a series of in-person meetings will take place during the first and second quarters of 2017.

2017 is going to be a critical year for St. Louis when it comes to this burgeoning sport. 

Let me first say, I love sports. Really all sports, but I'm not an MLS soccer fan to date. That would change if we got a team. My kids love soccer. They are into it, they understand it, they play it in the CYC and SLPS. They would beg to go to games just as they do to Blues games.

Secondly, I have had the pleasure of working with people from all around the world. Argentinians, Colombians, Mexicans, Chileans, Belgians, Spaniards and Brazilians, they all have hard core fans. I've never seen such devotion to a team or a sport. It is infectious to be around. It is exhilarating just to be around them and hear them talk about their teams. The chanting, the songs, the colors, the pride...it is like nothing we have here...maybe college football, but Illinois and Missouri aren't those kind of teams.

I think soccer is one of the growth sports for the next century in the U.S. MLS in the most international sport and could help retain and grow our Latino, African and Eastern European populations. I think it could help to attract and retain the next generation of people who will consider living and working in St. Louis.

So when an ownership group of wealthy suburban businessmen floated a stadium proposal just west of Union Station in the Downtown West Neighborhood, I was excited.

If any of these owners actually live in St. Louis, I apologize, but my guess is they are County residents who are not being asked for public $ at the city/county level and not expected to own the stadium if the team decides to pull a Arizona Cardinals/Los Angeles Rams move.

Now remember, some of these same well-meaning folks were behind building a second NFL stadium for the Rams. No offense, but they don't understand what people who live in St. Louis need. It is not stadiums, it is $ for schools, neighborhood stabilization, potholes, and cameras, cops, investigators and prosecutors to combat the out of control crime we have to deal with. It's always easier to spend someone else's money.

The group includes St. Louis Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III, World Wide Technology CEO Jim Kavanaugh, prominent hotelier Bob O’Loughlin, UniGroup President Jim Powers, St. Louis Blues CEO Chris Zimmerman and former NFL task force co-chairman Dave Peacock.

Jim Woodcock, global sports co-lead and senior vice president at FleishmanHillard, said the group — which is dubbing itself MLS2STL — came together naturally as several of its members, including Woodcock, began asking about MLS ownership following the departure of the St. Louis Rams. (source)

But the pretty pictures and potential for the city were a bit tarnished by the need for massive adjacent and on-site surface parking lots that are not needed 348 days out of the year, and financial support of public tax money from St. Louis only. No St. Charles, St. Clair, Madison, Jefferson or St. Louis County support has been asked for to date, just good old money bags St. Louis. Yeah right. We are broke and need the money more than any city in the region. But we're supposed to bankroll this thing for 17 professional sports games a year (more if you make the playoffs). The Blues bring 41 games and the Cards bring 81.

Oh, and they want the city to own the stadium. Remember how this works Rams fans? It is not smart investment. 

I want MLS soccer here, but we should not be the only city paying for it.

However, I expect in any negotiation the first offer is the one that most benefits the party making the offer. This is how most negotiations work. It is now up to the leaders in the city to pass the napkin back across the table with a better offer.

And hopefully the voters can decide if the public money from St. Louis should go to another sports stadium that we own.

Remember how this played out with the Rams? It is happening again. 

As a citizen and voter in St. Louis, I am willing to pitch in some for this team. The terms have to be reasonable and the ratio of public funds should match the wealth of the region. If it does, this could be a great regional effort to bring a popular and growing sport to St. Louis.

The region can play together nicely and bring a team here. St. Louis would be a great location, we just need to not get completely screwed over financially.

It can work, but will it? Look no further than Great Rivers Greenway or the Zoo Museum District to see the amazing things we can do when we pool our resources.

It will be fun to watch it all play out in 2017.

Viva St. Louis. 

New Medians, Curb Appeal and Other Updates in Lafayette Square

It's been fun watching the Lafayette Square Neighborhoodgoing through a monumental upgrade of their infrastructure along Lafayette Avenue from Jefferson Avenue to Truman Parkway and Park Avenue from Mississippi Avenue to Truman Parkway as well as in the park.

Per the Lafayette Square Restoration Committee (the non-profit neighborhood association) several improvements to the streets and sidewalks were planned:

Starting mid-2015 SWT Design developed plans for five areas:

Lafayette at Jefferson

Park Avenue at Truman Parkway

Park Avenue at Vail / Plaza Area

Dolman at Lafayette

18th Street at Lafayette

Design focused on slowing traffic, pedestrian safety, and beautification.

As noted above, the plan is from SWT Design, a firm located in the suburbs west of St. Louis.

I'll share the images of the original plans as well as some of my photos of the progress along the way. As of publishing, the new columns being installed do not have the globes on top, I assume they will eventually be installed to match the original columns around the park:

Park Avenue at Truman Parkway:

Decorative pavers and concrete work at the intersection of Park and Doleman including ADA accessible corners:

It's hard to believe the beautiful brick building, a former mop factory circa 1910 has remained undeveloped. Back in July, 2012 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that a developer had proposed a renovation to apartments and offices.

Opposition to this project was loud and clear from the neighborhood, as the proposal included 42 income-restricted apartments. This aspect of the story was reported by NextSTL in August, 2013.

Now, one of the city's marquee neighborhoods is set to vote up or down a proposal for a complete historic renovation of the long vacant Zittlosen building. If approved, the 1910 Zittlosen Manufacturing Company building fronting Park Avenue at Dolman (1322 Dolman address) would be renovated to the stringent specifications of the Lafayette Square Local Historic District Code. So what's not to like? The project would produce 42 income-restricted apartments. If chatter from the Lafayette Square neighborhood listserve is a true reflection of neighborhood sentiment, the project doesn't stand a chance. Neighborhood support is helpful and public notice is requred for the project to receive the full package of tax credits being sought. In practice, this means the proposal likely needs support from the mayor, local alderperson and neighborhood to bolster chances of success.

Then, per meeting minutes from the Lafayette Square Restoration Committee's November, 2014 meeting, demolition was considered:

Richard Stockmann presented a resolution which stated that the LSRC would entertain the proposal of demolition of 1322-32 Dolman so long as there would be new construction to replace the existing building on the site. A discussion about the resolution included understanding that the LSRC would entertain a proposal to demolish and construct as opposed to just “demolish.” Mr. Stockmann proposed that the resolution be adopted with the omission of a partial sentence. The motion was seconded. A comment was made to table the motion to allow time to review and consider all options - President Negri allowed a motion to table the resolution until the December membership meeting (source).

Presumably, there will be decorative fencing connecting the columns at the corners of Park and Truman. As of publishing, these sections appear incomplete.

 columns on the southwest corner of Park and Truman

                    columns on the northwest corner of Park and Truman

Park Avenue at Vail Plaza:

Impressive rain gardens, easement plantings including perennials and trees and new crosswalks and pavers were part of this section:

Lafayette Avenue at Doleman Street:

The plantings on the easement by Lafayette appear to be bald cypress trees and the cul-de-sac will have perennials.

bump outs provide protected parking spaces along Lafayette

new trees

no sign of fencing at date of publishing

I can't figure out what these are, but I'm curious.

Lafayette Avenue at 18th Street:

Pedestrian bump outs to ease with crossing traffic lanes and allowing for trees and perennial plantings.

clump river birch and perennial grasses in the median

planted bump-out near the I-44 exit from Lafayette

 columns being installed

upgraded cross-walks

bump-outs providing protected parking lane

cul-de-sac near Clementine's Creamery

bike lanes and crossing made much safer at Lafayette and I-44 exit

Lafayette Avenue at Jefferson Avenue:

medians have grass sod vs. mulch at publishing

grass at time of publishing

massive bump-outs widened the sidewalks

protected parking lanes now exist

As you can see the execution is a bit different from the SWT plans posted on the LSRC website. There appears to be no addition of a column south of Lafayette at Jefferson, and no plantings nearest Jefferson. The design at publishing simply has a large concrete and composite bump out and widened sidewalk with no tree or perennial plantings.

You have to give credit to the successful, organized neighborhoods driven to improve their neighborhood.  The designs are welcoming and add some much needed sidewalk improvements and curb appeal to passers by and neighbors alike. The pedestrian experience is improved and the green elements of porous concrete and native plants will likely abate runoff and provide interest to the street.

Undeniably, these upgrades are a major step change for the curb appeal and pedestrian experience in several high profile parts of the neighborhood; yet, it misses on one critical and probably highly controversial element:  permanent street closures and removal of the rectilinear street grid at Doleman and Lafayette and 18th Street and Lafayette.

Doleman has not been closed for long, there is still evidence of when it was a through street, but as time marches on, it is easy to forget this part of the neighborhood was accessible and not a dead end cul-de-sac.

former entry from Lafayette, now a cul-de-sac

We pay for streets as a city to help get from one place to another, to connect different places, not too isolate them.  But, it is a common occurrence here in St. Louis, even in the wealthiest, most stable places to develop cordoned off spaces vs contiguous, flowing spaces.  See St. Louis University's recent attempt to close Laclede Avenue between Grand and Spring.

Reopening the streets is a tough nut to crack.  Neighbors think it will bring increased crime, auto traffic and higher speeds on residential streets.  There are enough old timers here to remember the days when drug dealing was still big in this part of town and the street closures were meant to curtail the drive thru dealer situations.  Lafayette Square is by no means the only neighborhood investing in permanent street closures.  

The Shaw Neighborhood has doubled down on their street closures to isolate them from the neighborhood to the north, Botanical Heights (formerly McRee Town).  See the Slay balls recently installed at Thurman Avenue and DeTonty Street as an example (a slight upgrade from the Schoemehl pots that previously existed).

Slay balls: no passage

Schoemehl Pots: image from Google Streetview

The neighbors who have lived in these areas remember when this part of the city hit rock bottom with McRee Town and Peabody Darst Webbe bringing some real problems to a part of the city they were investing in. So, their voices continue to be loud and the streets remain closed in an era where those problems of the past have largely subsided.

An interesting question:  who owns the road, who paid for it and who gets to decide how it is used?  I think in my utopian city, streets would be meant to get you from one place to another providing flow.  Not dead ends and cul-de-sac's creating a maze of dead ends and one ways making navigation frustrating and confusing, nowhere is this more evident than in the Skinker-Devaliviere Neighborhood.

Alas, so it goes.

All that aside, the investment in Lafayette Square is appearing in other parts of the neighborhood as well. There is plenty to be optimistic about.

The park itself, which I documented back in February, 2014

 is seeing some major upgrades. Largely through grants and fund raising, the Lafayette Park Conservancy has proposed the following projects:

Historic 1869 Fence Restoration

The 4,100 foot long iron fence with its large stone gate posts and massive iron gates is the most distinguishing feature of the park. Its spear point was chosen as the symbol of the neighborhood and the Lafayette Square Restoration Committee. The list of its problems with the fence is very long. There are many broken, wobbly and missing fence posts, parts of the 15 foot long fence sections are broken or missing, fourteen gates are missing and weather has damaged the stone gate posts. Missing and broken fence posts must be replaced and the anchoring system has failed. “Saving the Fence” will be the Conservancy’s major project for the next few years. 

UPDATE: The Conservancy has selected Robinson Iron of Alexander City, Alabama to undertake the test phase of the fence restoration project. Robinson Iron will take six sections of the fence from the southeast corner of the park to their workshops where they will be taken apart so patterns can be made to replace broken and missing parts.

The "mending fences" project is underway with a section nearest Lafayette and Mississippi removed now and posts and fences being reproduced to match the Victorian era fencing.

You can donate to this project by clicking HERE.

Revolutionary War Guns

The second of the three guns from the British warship HMS Actaeon, sunk in the Charleston, SC harbor in 1776, is set to be restored in 2015-16.

Grotto Bridge Handrail

The grotto bridge was built around 1900 by the Koken Iron Works. It replaced a rustic wooden bridge built over the Grotto in 1865. That bridge was blown away in the Great Cyclone of 1896 which devastated the park. In time, the Koken bridge became unstable. The bridge would shake to such an extent that some of us feared a large wedding party posing for photographs might collapse into the lake below. Delahanty Construction Services LLC stabilized the bridge in 2012 and Steve Coffey, AIA, was the architect for the project. The project entirely consumed a generous $75,000 grant awarded to the LPC by the Whitaker Foundation intended for pathway renewal. The original handrail would be too low and open to meet the standards set by the Americans with Disabilities Act. The LPC consulted Classic Metal Craft and they have designed a handrail which would satisfy the requirements of the Act and be elegant and appropriate for this bridge. 

Pathways Renovation

About one quarter of the pathways in the park were resurfaced in 2012 thanks to a grant from the Darden Foundation. The year before the Grotto Bridge was reconnected to the pathway system for the first time in decades thanks to a grant from Alderman Phyllis Young. The gravel surface had become worn and uneven. The smooth asphalt surface was instantly popular with the persons who use it most frequently: walkers, children on bicycles, parents pushing strollers and dog walkers. Just hours after the Grotto Bridge was connected to the pathway system a wheelchair was seen on the bridge. This would have been nearly impossible before then. The LPC asked Steve Coffey, AIA, to prepare a set of detailed drawings on ways to upgrade the rest of the pathway system and his plans have been delivered to the Parks Department. The Board of Public Service will select a contractor and construction should begin in mid-2015.

Music Stand

Preliminary drawings are complete and a bid of $500,000 has been received to recreate the 1876 Music Stand in the spot where the original base now stands near the center of the park. When completed, this music venue will support larger music groups than the Elizabeth Cook Pavilion. currently used for summer concerts, in addition to providing a distinctively Victorian centerpiece that can be easily seen by motorists passing the park on Lafayette Avenue. The Conservancy is currently seeking grant providers or other lead donors as it begins raising funds for this high-impact project.

Today, all that's left of the music stand is the crumbling foundation.

Here's a picture of what it looked like in its heyday:

Also of note are the re-striped dedicated parking lanes, bike lanes and angled parking along Lafayette.

parking spaces, bike lanes both east and westbound and a single traffic lane on Lafayette Avenue

dedicated bike parking station off of Park Avenue

Angled parking in front of the 1928 German cultural center called Das Deutsche Haus

As reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2010, this vacant building where the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra recorded in the 1950s was slated for renovation by the Church of Scientology, but that fell through. So dreams of Beck and Juliette Lewis coming to town for the silver shovel photo opp were all for not.

New construction is underway at Lafayette and Mississippi with the addition of a new home on a former vacant lot:

The stringent new construction guidelines make for some high-end, nicely matching buildings, as evidenced by a recent new home near Park and Mississippi:

New left...old right

And at the southeast corner of Mississippi and Lafayette, a new location for a charter school is in the works. In March, 2015 NextSTL reported on the ~$2.1M project to convert the former Lafayette Baptist Church to a 20,000 square foot school for Lafayette Preparatory Academy, a public charter school currently operating in the Downtown West Neighborhood.  The school conversion is managed by impressive local firm UIC and is slated to open in 2016, accommodating ~270 students in grades K through 5.

UIC image of planned renovation

Progress at publishing

These are good times for the Lafayette Square Neighborhood. Go check it out!

Street Trees And Re-establishing An Urban Canopy

In part one of my posts related to curb appeal and environmental sustainability, I discussed a "Milkweed for Monarchs" project undertaken by the Fox Park Neighborhood Association in 2015.

In this post, I will share my personal connection to a street tree project recently completed in the same neighborhood. I joined the Fox Park Neighborhood Association for a one year term through 2015. The board was looking for projects to bring to the general membership that would benefit the neighborhood in a meaningful way.  Several proposals were weighed including the median project mentioned previously, a sidewalk replacement project and finally a street tree replacement project.

The neighborhood had been seeking upgrades to the medians for years, so that was a no-brainer. The other two options took some research.

It started with some simple observations of the neighborhood.  Walking the streets and auditing the sidewalk situation and the largest contiguous stretches of streets without trees.  The sidewalks were ruled out after receiving a couple cost prohibitive bids, so we focused on street trees.

Why are trees an asset to the neighborhood?  Well, the benefits to the public, property owner and pedestrian along the sidewalk are indisputable and well documented.  One of my favorite reads on the subject is from Dan Burden's "22 Benefits of Urban Street Trees" published in 2006.  Burden is a Senior Urban Designer at Glatting-Jackson Architectural and Design Firm in collaboration with Walkable Coummunities, Inc.

In short, here's the list of 22 reasons urban street are a benefit to any city:

1. Reduced and more appropriate urban traffic speeds. 
2. Create safer walking environments
3. Trees call for placemaking planting strips and medians,
4. Increased security
5. Improved business
6. Less drainage infrastructure.
7. Rain, sun, heat and skin protection
8. Reduced harm from tailpipe emissions
9. Gas transformation efficiency
10. Lower urban air temperatures
11. Lower ozone
12. Convert streets, parking and walls into more aesthetically pleasing environments
13. Soften and screen necessary street features such as utility poles, light poles and other needed street furniture
14. Reduced blood pressure, improved overall emotional and psychological health
15. Time in travel perception
16. Reduced road rage
17. Improved operations potential
18. Added value to adjacent homes, businesses and tax base
19. Provides a lawn for a splash and spray zone, storage of snow, driveway elevation transition and more
20. Filtering and screening agent
21. Longer pavement life
22. Connection to nature and the human senses

Pretty impressive, eh...there is something on that list for everyone from the environmentalist to the staunch libertarian.  As I said, these benefits are pretty universal and many are backed by empirical data vs. subjective or academic reasoning, which adds to the rock solid line of evidence that street trees are a benefit to all.

Take for instance #6:

"Trees absorb the first 30% of most precipitation through their leaf system, allowing evaporation back into the atmosphere. This moisture never hits the ground. Another percentage (up to 30%) of precipitation is absorbed back into the ground and taken in and held onto by the root structure, then absorbed and then transpired back to the air. Some of this water also naturally percolates into the ground water and aquifer. Storm water runoff and flooding potential to urban properties is therefore reduced."

You can read up on all 22 reasons HERE.

Anyhow, here is how we went about our project. Each year the various wards throughout the city are allotted funds that can be spent largely at the discretion of the elected alderperson. In our case, we have a great working relationship with the alderperson, Christine Ingrassia, and she helped fund a street tree audit of the city's sixth ward. This will go a long way in understanding where to invest in trees in the future. We asked Ingrassia to help us navigate the system and make contact with the correct departments in the city.

For this particular project, the neighborhood association had some funds saved up from various fund raising campaigns and we wanted to show our commitment to getting Fox Park back in the tree game by making a purchase of trees directly from our organization's treasury.

Next we had to do some homework to bring a plan to the Board and then to the general membership for a vote.

We started by investigating available species. We went to the Missouri Botanical Garden's wonderful website to select species that are low maintenance, drought resistant and have low pedestrian trip-causing debris (e.g., acorns, gumballs)

The city also has a list of trees that they recommend:

We narrowed it down to three species including the ginko, Freeman maple and blackgum. Ginko's were voted down on the off chance that female trees (you only order males) could find their way into the supply chain and females produce the 

butyric acid-laden fruits which are quite foul smelling (that doesn't stop my dog from eating them like Skittles).

So we set a meeting with the city's Forestry Department to share our intentions and develop a game-plan to help us identify the species, associated cost, locations within the neighborhood and the logistics of ordering the trees and getting them planted.  So, our alderperson, the head of Forestry, the Urban Forester and two other certified arborists on staff were kind enough to sit down with us in April and talk trees and help plot out our path. We had the following questions:

1. species availability

2. height and trunk diameter available

3. planting instructions/location suggestions within Fox Park

4  what is needed from us?

5. next steps and other feedback from forestry

Turns out the arborists liked our choices for species and said either would work. We decided upon the blackgum as it is a hearty native that does well in clay soils and has colorful fall foliage and  has very little debris.

Blackgum:

 Nyssa sylvatica 

Per the Missouri Botanical Garden, blackgum are a "plant of merit" and categorized as low maintenance and "tried and trouble-free".  The species selection was a go.

Forestry explained the process. They would be responsible for:

• site assessment
• recommendations for any box cuts (taking a saw and cutting ~6 inches off the sidewalks) to create more space for the tree
• receiving and holding the trees from the nursery until time for planting in late 2015
• planting

The cost for each 2-2.5 inch diameter tree was $140.00, all above labor included.

Forestry agreed to send out a staff arborist to help us identify ideal planting locations.

Now that we had an understanding of the process and associated costs, we took the details back to the board who agreed to propose the purchase of 20 trees to the neighborhood's general membership for a vote.

We then took the plan to a neighborhood meeting for a vote. The general membership voted unanimously in support of the project.

We were on our way.

In July, on what must have been one of the hottest days of the year, we met with one of the city's arborists to walk the neighborhood and select some good sites.

There was some heavy construction throughout some parts of the neighborhood, including Oregon Street and Magnolia Avenue, so we avoided those areas.  We also had to avoid some obvious obstacles such as utility lines.

We expresses an interest in having this first planting be in a high profile, high traffic zone. We wanted a large contiguous stretch that currently had NO trees to help make the biggest impact of a planting. The 2700 block of Russell Boulevard immediately came to mind as this is likely one of the most traveled east-west corridors in Fox Park.

Dan the arborist made his recommendations, a small group of board members concurred and we marked twenty planting sites with orange spray paint for the next step in the process: box cuts.

Depending on the width of ground between the street and the sidewalk, cutting the sidewalk could be necessary to give the trees enough space to grow.

This work was carried out by the city:

Then, we just had to wait for the weather to cool off, typically around October or November.

Well I was lucky enough to be on Russell and Ohio the day the Forestry Dept. workers delivered our trees to get some photos and thank the guys that did the truly hard work...the digging.

Here's the result of their hard work and the dedication and support of our local alderperson and neighborhood association.

Hopefully the neighborhood has shown that we are committed to reaping the benefits that urban street trees provide and we'll see the next generation of neighborhood leadership continue this worthy pursuit.

And if you were one of the lucky neighbors to have a tree planted in front of your abode, please consider helping establish these beauties by providing plenty of water.

Cheers, Fox Park! You are better looking and healthier today than you were a year ago.