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Tuesday, May 26, 2009

"NorthSide": Historic Preservation

Pay careful attention to these two slides. The first slide shows existing buildings in gray:



The second shows buildings proposed for preservation in black. Planner Mark Johnson at Civitas calls these buildings "legacy properties." The three buildings at left (a house on St. Louis Avenue, Greater Bible Way Church and Crown Candy Kitchen), strangely, are not owned by McEagle. Crown Candy Kitchen is not even included in the project area. There was no discussion of preservation strategy beyond the promise that every building that could be saved would be saved.

McKee and Johnson both talked about how the warehouses between Delmar and Martin Luther King, including the GPX building, should be demolished because they wall downtown off from north St. Louis.

More slides available online here.

8 comments:

Alex Ihnen said...

It's hard to see much detail here, especially concerning single-family homes, but with your knowledge of the area this certainly gives a good idea of what McKee would like to see stay and what he would like to see go. My initial reaction is that there will be quite a bit of infill and not as much "clear-cutting" as some fear.

I don't want to diminish what has been lost and what may be lost. I think that McKee should be required to save many, many more buildings, but 2,000 lots is a very big number and that's just a part of the project area.

Anonymous said...

I have lived in Old North St Louis my entire Life and I think this is great for someone to try and improve the area. My only regret is that onsl is being left out. This is horrible old north has always been one of the better neighborhoods on the north side and because the old north board members do not have control or input in the development they are against this great plan and onsl will become the bad part of town. They should be welcoming McKee with the key to the North side whether he succeeds are not he is going to try and improve the way of life in the area. I understand the mistrust, but he did what he had to do to get property at a low cost, at least he has a plan what about LRA what is there plan there properties are never taken care and some one should be held accountable for these as well.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the slides, they help but the details (besides in the rushed timeline) are difficult to view.

Clearly the MoDOT properties (freeways 70 & 64) are the keys to the job centers and reflect an increasing reliance on auto-centrism.
john

A.A. said...

I'll have to overlay other maps to see which buildings will be destroyed but look even closer at the South and SE sides of that map....holy smokes! That is fairly close to 'clear-cutting' scorched earth.

samizdat said...

It would seem there are entire blocks of residences which will be dissappeared. So much for preservation.

Joe said...

If they plan to not lose a single business (a big point that Mr. McKee made), then why are they wiping out two enormous warehouses? Is it because someone else's job centers don't make money for McKee? Someone should contact the owners and let them know they're slated for demolition in this new fantasyland.

Brian said...

If McKee would like to build a new home for GPX (and any other tenants) within the city limits, I wouldn't have any problem with the demolition of those warehouses.

thoughts from south grand said...

Mr. Allen,

Thank you for all of your hard work. Now is the time to focus. To quote someone I know "We are the people we have been waiting for." And to quote a great song "Bring the noise!"