In a Friday evening news dump the week before Thanksgiving, Kirkwood City Council announced that they would be parting ways with city administrator Russ Hawes. There would be no formal transition to a named successor, no transfer of institutional knowledge, and no grand send-off. Instead, the end for the man who had managed the city's… Continue reading Kirkwood’s 6-1 Republican Majority
Last week I wrote up how Double Eagle won the Public Works sweepstakes. Ahead of this Thursday's City Council public hearing on the Double Eagle proposal, I wanted to explore the other proposals that the Council passed up. The Public Works RFP process unfolded in two stages. Initial bids were submitted by five applicants —Double… Continue reading Public Works Site: The Rejects
On January 8th, Kirkwood City Council will hold a public hearing on Double Eagle Development's proposal for the former public works site. The proposal, the Council's preferred response of the six they received, calls for 203 homes across six all-residential buildings and 303 surface parking spots. In reviewing each of the RFP responses, a picture… Continue reading How Double Eagle Won Over the Council
A couple of weeks back, first-term Kirkwood City Council Member Al Rheinnecker alerted the public via his re-election campaign newsletter that the Council had voted to implement a 14.8% electricity rate increase for the coming year at their October 17th meeting. The department will also increase the fixed "customer charge" portion of electric bills from… Continue reading Kirkwood Electric’s Problem is Not Unique
Well folks, after nearly a year of waiting, the results of the Request for Proposals on the former Public Works site have finally surfaced via this week's Planning & Zoning agenda. The selected proposal comes from St. Louis-based Double Eagle Development and calls for 202 homes across six four-story buildings, accompanied by 247 parking spots.… Continue reading 202 Homes Proposed for Former Public Works Site
After winding itself through the approval process three times, the Council finally offered first reading approval to Pitman Place, the 60-apartment mixed-use project proposed for the former Commerce Bank site at 300 N. Kirkwood Road, at their November 20th meeting. The Kirkwood City Council was supposed to issue its verdict on the project in early… Continue reading Council Greenlights Pitman Place
On September 4th, Kirkwood City Council unanimously voted down a contract with a local company, Fybr, for a technological solution that aimed to address the parking issue in Downtown Kirkwood. I was disappointed by that decision because I've long been a fan of Kirkwood's previous adoption of the technology and especially its long-term potential. The… Continue reading String of Errors Leads to Rejection of Parking Solution
I've long maintained that Kirkwood's tear-down crisis is merely a symptom of how expensive our land has become. After you spend $500k to purchase the lot, spending another $200k to tear down the existing small home that sits on the lot and build a new bigger one seems like small potatoes. The Venn diagram of… Continue reading How To Revive the Starter Home
Kirkwood has poured a tremendous amount of sweat and treasure across multiple administrations into becoming a more walkable community. And while I have nits to pick here and there, overall these efforts have been worthwhile and successful. But no amount of curb bump-outs or bike lanes has convinced the blatant rule-breakers to stop blatantly breaking… Continue reading Tired of the Speeders? Turn on the Cameras.
The rumors of the Kirkwood Apartments' demise are greatly exaggerated. Just a few months after the 300 N. Kirkwood Rd project was finally pronounced dead, a new developer, TriStar Properties, has revived it in much of its original form —60 apartments, 2,940 square feet of retail, and 111 parking spaces across four stories— utilizing the… Continue reading Kirkwood Apartments: Episode II – Return of the Apartments
