Grant’s Trail: Halfway Home, It’s Time for B-GT

A few weeks back, we received word that East-West Gateway’s has granted STP (Surface Transportation Program) funding for Phase 1B of the Grant’s Trail Extension to Downtown Kirkwood. This is the second of four legs to be funded, with the first leg —running from Argonne to the corner of Fillmore and Monroe— having received TAP (Transportation Alternatives Program) funding at the end of March. The next funding available for the third leg, is the 2023 iteration of TAP, with applications due July 21st.

In honor of this half-way-there milestone, I wanted to write up a little piece outlining what we’ve achieved with the project so far, what we have left to do, and outlining a vision for how we can maximize the value of this project (hint: it begin with “re” and rhymes with “xoning”). Let’s get into it!

What We Have So Far

Kirkwood now has funding locked up for the first two phases of the project that aims to connect Downtown to the existing Grant’s Trail trailhead. These phases, two Phase 1a and Phase 1b, begin at the farmer’s market and run all the way to Leffingwell.

This leaves a short gap between the two phases we’ve secured funding for and the existing 12.14-mile Grant’s Trail. Phase 2a and 2b will aim to connect these two segments. Let’s take a closer look at what we have left to do.

What Remains

The anticipated next phase of the project will be the one most similar to the existing Grant’s Trail and the most straight-forward in terms of routing. In short, Phase 2a calls for to Kirkwood acquire an abandoned rail spur that runs from Leffingwell to Elliot Ave from Union Pacific, clear the the overgrowth, debris, and railroad ties that currently litter the site, and pave and light a new 1/3rd of a mile of mixed-use path.

Then, in Phase 2b, Kirkwood will finish the job, connecting the first three phases to the existing trailhead. The most recently released plan for this final phase calls for it to depart from the final stretch of the rail spur (which at some point was acquired by the owner of the adjacent light manufacturing building who apparently is uninterested in selling the right-of-way to the city) and instead run East on Elliot, South on Holmes over the BNSF tracks, and then link up with the existing trailhead. This detour is not quite as efficient as continuing straight down the rail spur, which is unfortunate, but honestly, convincing BNSF to allow us to build a new rail crossing for the path (rather then using the existing Holmes crossing 170 feet away) was going to be a long shot. Railroads are notoriously protective of their property, which is, for example, why when we go to build our new Amtrak loading platform at Kirkwood Station, the platform will be a little taller than currently exists, but will fall short of the true step-on step-off level boarding that allows for more faster on-boarding and off-boarding. That’s okay though, we can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The more interesting question is in which order we should seek to fund these final two segments.

A Quick Aside of Funding Sequencing

Now, as I said at the top, the next opportunity to apply for funding is via TAP grant with an application deadline of July 21, but in deciding the sequencing of these final two phases, it might make sense to reverse the order and apply for phase 2b rather than continuing our sequence and applying for funds for 2a.

That’s because these final two portions of the project are pretty different than one another also pretty different from one another and thus have different associated costs: Phase 2a is a traditional rails-to-trails project while Phase 2b is essentially a streets-improvement project. Together, Phase 2’s two segments have an estimated price that is nearly twice the cost per mile as the first two segments. I’m assuming that the rails-to-trail segment of Phase 2a is what is driving that difference (likely thanks to the ROW acquisition costs involved with purchasing the land from Union Pacific).

But the two main grant funding sources we’ve been using for these things also differ from one another (TAP grants are less competitive but offer less grant money while STP-S grants are more competitive but offer a bigger reward to those who win them). It might make some sense then to try and line up the more expensive segment with the more generous STP grant and submit an application for Phase 2b in the coming less generous July TAP window instead.

That would leave us to submit an STP application for Phase 2a in the fall. Now that’s risky because cost plays a role in what projects get picked, and as I said before, the STP grants are more competitive. But the one thing we have in our back pocket is that by saving the most expensive portion of the project for the final stretch, we can also expect it to get a substantial boost in the scoring (and thus funding prioritization). Because it would be the the final stretch of a major connection, we’d stand to gain the full 25 system connectivity points on the performance rubric, thus overcoming the ding we’d suffer on the cost rubric for asking for so much. Not a game-changer, and maybe I have something flipped in my analysis, but certainly worth looking into.

While we wait around for these final two feet to drop in whatever order they happen to, however, it’s really important we start setting ourselves up to maximally benefit from the substantial investment we’re making here. All four phases combined will cost Kirkwood over $2 million, even after the grants, and we have to make sure that we get as much return on that investment as possible. I think the easiest way to achieve that return is by clearing the way for private investment in the area surrounding the project.

You Can’t Have NIMBYs When No One has Backyards

Longtime readers of my Grant’s Trail Extension pieces know that my big idea from the very beginning has been to use the project not just to provide a recreational asset for Kirkwood or to draw the occasional bike rider into town, but to leverage the project to address our single biggest problem: the exploding cost of living in Kirkwood. That means rezoning the light industrial land that surrounds the trail’s route.

Reserving the most biking infrastructure-rich land in the entire city exclusively for industrial businesses that have few employees and often rely on big trucks to onboard and off-boarding manufactured goods makes little sense; it’d be a bit like deciding that the best place for a new landfill is in manhattan. Instead, we should allow flexibility in land uses around the new trail so that its uses can change in accordance with our infrastructure developments.

I think the best way to do that would be to roll out a new B-GT (Business-Grant’s Trail) zone and proactively re-zone all the current I-1 light industrial lots surrounding the trail to this new B-GT designation.

Such a zone could be governed by whatever rules you wanted, but the way I envision it is as a new mixed-use zone (commercial or residential or both, think The James) that also allows for the persistence of the current light industrial uses.

Should Those Things Co-exist?

Allowing such diversity of uses in the same area might strike you as undesirable (what about health hazards, after all?!) but if you look at what’s actually allowed in the current light industrial zone, it’s very mild stuff: pottery, t-shirt printing, ice-sculpture carving, etc., none of which are going to be any more harmful than living near 270 or 44.

Additionally, the work of the Grant’s Trail construction itself requires that the soil to be tested to ensure there are no existing contaminants present that might make residential use unwise. I’m not expecting for that soil testing to find abnormally high level of lead or radiation, but if it did, we’d have plenty of time to reconsider allowing residential or commercial uses nearby.

And finally, while living next to the ice sculptor might not be your cup of tea, a developer is only going to build there if they think it’s going to be demand; if no one wants to live there, developers won’t build and everything will stay the same.

So why not just re-zone it exclusively for mixed-use and tell the light industry to kick rocks? Well, allowing light industrial to persist as a permitted use gives more flexibility to current owners (since they’d still be in compliance with the zoning, they wouldn’t need to get special-use approval from the council if they wanted to build a new structure, for example). By not forcing residential uses on current property owners but allowing them to pursue residential uses if they so choose would potentially convince some of these owners to support the rezoning, not least because such a change might allow them to profit handsomely.

Okay, But What About Flooding?

Now the one other concern I’ve heard about this idea of mine is that the area is flood prone. But I looked it up and it that doesn’t really seem to be the case. Looking at FEMA’s website, there are only one or two lots with even a 1% chance of partially flooding in a given year (aka the 100-year flood zone). Even a much rarer, more catastrophic flooding events like 500-year floods (0.2% of flooding in any given year) would have little impact on the neighborhood according to FEMA projections.

Still, there are some steps we could take to make people feel better about it if it’s a concern. More on that in a second.

Some Ideas for B-GT

Okay, so what would a B-GT look like? Beyond simply allowing mixed and light industrial uses, a B-GT zone could also dictate special parameters to incentivize the type of development that we’d like to see on the trail:

• No required car parking (with developers still being allowed to develop parking if they wanted as they almost assuredly would)
• Higher levels of required bike parking
• Ground-floor trail-facing commercial uses
• Perhaps something like required rain gardens to help mitigate run-off or higher degrees of flood-proofing to help head off those concerns about flooding I mentioned.

You obviously don’t want to go too overboard with these parameters or else the whole thing might go the way of our ADU legislation and nothing would get built, but in so far as they could be used to help build community support and make sure we get good projects, we should by all means we should go for it.

Some Added Sugar to Make the Medicine Go Down

The one other idea I have to increase the popularity of such a zoning change is for the city to acquire some land and make a new park to serve the area’s new resident base. As I mentioned in my prior piece on McEntee Park, opportunities for new parks are very limited, and as your population grows, so too does demand for them. That means that identifying and capitalizing on opportunities for new parks when they present themselves becomes extremely important.

I think the empty lot at Leffingwell and Clark provides a compelling opportunity. Placing a park here could also provide a place for more significant storm water and flooding infrastructure since it lies directly adjacent to the creek that is the source of those concerns. I also just really love the old train bridge that the park looks out on (even though it’s in sort of rough shape and I’m not sure how much longer it will be around for).

Work Smarter Not Harder to Beat the NIMBYs

More than any of that though, I think the reason why this re-zoning idea works is that no one currently lives on these lots so there’s no one to really complain. I mean, I’m sure there will be complaints, but I at least expect fewer of them here. And this is really one of the few places left in Kirkwood where this kind of opposition-less infill is still possible. If you think about it, the reason why places like St. Charles and Chesterfield and Wentzville grow isn’t because they don’t have NIMBYs. In fact, social science tells us that those kinds of places are full of people with low levels of openness to new experiences. They grow because they can sprawl out into places where no one currently lives and build with abandon. Kirkwood can’t really do that. We’re surrounded by backyards everywhere we look. But here, in a place that just happens to be directly adjacent to our Downtown, and which just happens to be located directly on top of our community’s soon-to-be premier walking and cycling infrastructure, an opportunity has fallen in our laps. We should pick that opportunity up and run with it. All we have to do is get out of the way.