College Town

Meramec Community College’s large campus and voluminous student traffic makes for a challenging environment to craft a more walkable neighborhood. With that being said, however, there are steps that can be taken in both the short-term an the long-term to ensure that this stretch of Geyer is not only walkable for the residences that sit along it now but also for those that could in the future.

Short Term:

In the short term, Meramec would continue to own and operate their property as they do now making limited improvements with hopefully a much more consequential effect. The first of these proposed changes is to make the western side of Geyer (and therefore the eastern side of Meramec’s campus walkable in the most basic sense of the word (i.e. add a sidewalk). A secondary priority would be the addition of crosswalks  both where made necessary by the new west-side sidewalk and across Geyer at its intersection with Ashwood Lane (as depicted).

While access to campus for these two neighborhoods might be a luxury not worth the expense, the argument becomes more viable when you consider that a crosswalk like the one proposed would service 58 homes in the two neighborhoods combined. At an average of four family members per home,  this means upwards of 232 residents, themselves potential full time students, summer-schoolers, adults taking continuing education classes or even faculty and staff, would gain direct walking access to the campus they live next door to.  The additional crosswalks make even more sense when you take into consideration part three of the short-term plan. While a sidewalk is a necessary welcome addition, an opportunity exists to further utilize the space as a sort of community space/linear park. It really wouldn’t take much; the land and trees are already there. Throw in a few nice round picnic tables, perhaps some landscape lighting and all of a sudden we’ve created not only a place to walk through but a place for Meramec students to sit down and eat lunch, a place to walk your dog at night, a place to sit and do homework at on a Spring afternoon or a place to stop and take a rest when you’re going to need one to get through the home stretch of your August run.

Big Bend & Geyer

Other stretches of road surrounding campus are also in great need of redesign. The most obvious of these is that of the intersection of Big Bend and Geyer. The biggest problem with Big Bend & Geyer is the fact that it has cross walks linking two of its sides even though sidewalks run along all four. This set up leaves all residents southeast of the intersection (the most densely populated of the four thanks to the Brooksgate Manor condos located there) completely cut off from the other three quadrants.

The second most pressing concern is its aesthetics, or lack there of. The sidewalks are cracked and overgrown, the area surrounding the tracks is a gravel and trash strewn no-man’s land and any effort to integrate the streets with the surrounding community remain opaque to me. Replacing sidewalks, weeding and replacing buffers between the sidewalk and the street (like the one pictured above) with grass and Northern Red Oak trees (oddly specific but using the same tree to line a street gives it a sense of place, plus they turn bright red in the fall) is easy. It also makes all the difference in terms of property values and whether or not people can picture themselves calling the surrounding community home. Another way to maximize the welcoming spirit of this corner of Kirkwood is by transforming the little wedges of unused property, catty-corner from one another at the intersection, into pocket parks. Which sound ambitious except for the fact that all it takes is throwing boy-scout troop donated picnic table in the one thats already landscaped and simply planting a few bushes and installing a bench in the other.

Before 🙁

After!

Finally, the intersection’s bus stop needs a proper structure. Traffic to and from Meramec is horrendous. So much so that it is the origin of the problems on South Geyer and the need for traffic calming there. If you want people to willingly take mass-transit, you have to make them feel like they’re not participating in some sort of shoestring-budget welfare program but rather that they’re taking advantage of a great community asset. A simple structure like the one above accomplishes just that while also making an inherently transient activity, riding the bus, feel a little more comfortable, and permanent.

Vision:

The larger vision I have involves an agreement between the city and St. Louis Community Colleges in which the city would purchase the eastern portion of the campus (pictured below) from the cash-strapped institution, for development. Kirkwood would then create two new blocks out of the property and issue a request for proposal (RFP) for these blocks. While these RFP’s would leave some room for architectural interpretation some hard guidelines for these proposals would maximize benefits and minimize the opportunity cost. Amongst these guidelines suggested are as follows:

Firstly any proposal should require a commitment to density. Density is achievable primarily through minimal setbacks, reduced space between homes and taller, narrower houses (/apartments/condos). More people means more patrons of both Meramec itself and other stores and restaurants throughout out Kirkwood and especially of those within the new development proposed here.

Secondly, please don’t make it strictly residential. Kirkwood has all of its retail and dining services in one part while everyone lives in all the other parts. Walkability means that everything you need to live on a week to week basis exists within walking or biking distance. While that wont be achievable by adding a few spots for a small neighborhood grocer (à la Ladue Market) or a laundromat (it’ll make more sense after you read my third suggestion below), it will get us closer. Walkability is the type of thing you have to chip away, otherwise you get New Town St. Chuck…

Thirdly I suggest that a portion of the development be designed with low-income youth in mind. While Kirkwood needs to keep affordable housing in mind on a much larger scale than this one project, this location is especially well suited to a solution based on the demographics of those attending Meramec. More affordable housing could be accomplished a number of different ways with this project. Amongst these possible solutions are: Rent control (i.e. low rent units reserved for those with demonstrated low income, simply instituting LIHTC’s (Low Income Housing Tax Credits, what most economists would argue is the most free-market-sound solution but one that requires entire community involvement rather than just on a project by project basis), or even just making the units less luxurious and thus lower priced than what would otherwise be built.

I’m an undergraduate major, not an affordable housing policy wonk so I’m not really sure what the difference in terms of either the viability at the local level or effectiveness is between the different options. I know this though: Kirkwood would benefit from catering to the class of young creatives that tend to congregate in places like Meramec that are built for kids still trying to figure it out. Right now those kids move to The Loop and South Grand and Cherokee Street and sometimes they hang around the right other people that have right similar ideas or have the right connections to bring those other kids’ ideas about and sometimes they start fashion brands or make art . Kirkwood is urban. it can be cool, it can be weird. Weird isn’t as scary as you think it is. I promise.