Update 01/07/2021:
The Starbucks was unanimously voted down upon first reading. I’ll keep you updated if Starbucks comes back to the drawing board as I suspect they will.
Previous Story:
First of all, I just want to say sorry for going AWOL for a couple months. The end of the semester got sort of busy there and while things were (and are!) happening in Kirkwood, they were happening a little more slowly. So after the The James victory, I figured it might be alright if I took a little bit off, it was starting to get too easy. But the brief respite seems to be over because Kirkwood is once again on the brink of potentially making a really unfortunate decision about a certain coffee franchise. So we’re going to cover it, break it down, hopefully destroy in a Ben-Shapiro-esque fashion (jokes), and then tomorrow get into some positive news, touching briefly on condos proposed for 144 W Adams (a project that I think is good but that City Council should tweak slightly) and then a good development on the consolidation front.
But all that’s for a different year. Because 2020 is for the bad thing. The bad thing is that Starbucks is trying to punk us.
Starbucks
To summarize what this is all about, Starbucks wants to move across Kirkwood Rd from their current strip-mall location to just about 400 feet away to the site currently occupied by Kirkwood Glass. I wrote a whole piece about it and you can check out more renderings of the project including its interior there, but essentially, it looks very nice. The problem is that the proposal also calls for a drive-through to wrap around the entire building, with two concrete walls and a channel of traffic separating the coffee shop from the sidewalk and any potential pedestrian visitors.
I waited too long to get this published before the public hearing/organize resistance so now my only hope is that some of the city council members read this or arrive at their own conclusion January 7th. P&Z recommended the project on a rather embarrassing 5-3 vote so the battle is likely to be close, but if this council has proven anything to me, it’s that I shouldn’t discount their ability to think critically about crucial projects. What follows is what I hope they’ll consider.
The Zoning Code is Good, Actually!
The Starbucks proposal does not adhere to the zoning code, almost in any way shape or form. More specifically, it falls short of the minimum lot size required for a drive through, providing only .52 acres compared to the required 1, the space provided for cars to line up in the drive-thru falls short with developers providing only 115 of the required 160 feet, and the project 90% on both streets, in this case, the proposed project occupies 0%. .
I’m famously not in favor of the zoning code, but here’s a case where I think it has some merits, especially the piece about setbacks. Setbacks, how far a place should be setback from the sidewalk are important because they’re what make a place feel like a town or not. Pedestrians generally like to window shop, people watch, and feel protected from the elements. All of this is more possible when buildings are built to the sidewalk than when they’re set back. This is true even when the setback isn’t being used for a drive through and concrete walls, as it is in this case.
All this matters even more so because the intersection of Monroe and Kirkwood Rd is the last urban intersection in Downtown Kirkwood heading South as defined by these setbacks. Three of its four corners are built to the sidewalk, the fourth is slated for a Starbucks drive through. Filling in this corner with a good building, even a Starbucks, that is built to the curb would allow Downtown Kirkwood to continue to grow, with pedestrians reasonably conceiving of the MOD Pizza/Kirkwood Cinema Lofts as all being part of one continuous downtown. Alternatively, placing a drive-thru here will mean that for at least a generation, Downtown Kirkwood will for all intents and purposes, end at Monroe. Once pedestrians see a place is no longer designed for them but is instead designed for cars, they tend to turn around and head back to a place where they feel more welcomed.
Save Us the Art.
Because of all those modifications to the code the project would require, in order to gain approval the developer must, by rule, go “above and beyond” in some other aspect, anything that improves the public good to a greater extent than the deviance from the code would harm it, can be counted. The developers are trying to make the case that a small pedestal on which public art could be placed is enough to make up for these shortcomings. If you look at the image below you can see just how small we’re talking.
The thing is, some projects, you can squint a little, and decide that even if they don’t adhere to the code perfectly, they certainly will make Kirkwood better, and so you let the developer do a nice little thing here (See: The Hutton’s wider sidewalks) or add an extra mid-block crosswalk there, and everyone moves on. The next project we’ll talk about tomorrow is one of those. But I simply don’t think that there’s anything that could be offered to make a drive-through in this location worth it. Even if Starbucks wanted to say, pay to greatly improve the pedestrian experience of the intersection (and they don’t, they want it to be convenient for cars, that’s sorta the whole point), the simple fact is that the form of the building is incompatible with any sort of reconciliation with urbanism. But there’s not really any point to playing out this hypothetical because what’s being offered is even more embarrassing than that. The idea that one more variation on the sort of basic, inoffensive, brightly painted-twisted-metal sculpture that tends to dominate these sorts of installations was going to get the job done; that uninteresting art placed next to a drive through and most frequently enjoyed from within the confines of another piece of brightly painted twisted metal was going to be good enough, is laughably uncreative and wildly insufficient from a corporation that made $26.5 billion dollars in 2019.
Other Considerations:
A couple other things are important to consider here beyond the simple letter of the law. First is that Starbucks generates a lot of sales tax revenue. This is a persuasive argument to City Council most years, but the idea of a car- centric tax-generator in a year where that’s about the only thing keeping the city afloat is especially persuasive. But if we want to repair that tax base and the damage done by 2020, we’re going to have to build our downtown in the same model that has made it such a financial goliath for our town so far: pedestrian oriented, quaint, intimate, full of character. Drive-throughs are none of those things.
Disjointed Policy
Approval of the proposal would also just be an incredibly confusing signal. The project is located one intersection away Taylor & Monroe and the Performing Arts Center. Kirkwood just spent thousands of dollars on making the intersection more pedestrian friendly by raising the whole intersection to the level of the sidewalk. This was an incredibly progressive move from Kirkwood. Raised crosswalks work at both a philosophical and physical level. Physically, they act as a giant speed bump, forcing cars to slow down to a safe speed so that pedestrians don’t get hit. At a philosophical level, a raised intersection makes it so that cars are the ones that are forced to change levels and adjust instead of the typical arrangement where pedestrians are forced to step down and traverse what is unambiguously the realm of cars.
Even if you don’t care about all that though, to put the time, money and effort into something so thoughtful and forward-looking and then to turn around and just down the street allow a structure that is designed, almost entirely, for use by people arriving in cars, makes virtually no sense.
Why Do We Get the Shitty One?
The final thing to consider is that Kirkwood already has a Starbucks. That we’re not really gaining a new amenity. It’s just a matter of whether we want to allow an existing business to build a shittier version of itself.
Starbucks has essentially two models: one for places that have higher standards and won’t allow them to just build anything, and the kind they put everywhere else, from highway exits to the parking lots that front big box stores. Kirkwood already has one of the latter with the building that fronts the Kirkwood Commons being unambiguously for cars in an area of the city that is undeniably built for them. And I think that’s fine. But then we have this other location, the one in question, the one in Downtown Kirkwood. And I don’t think it’s asking too much of Starbucks for them to build this one a little differently.
Starbucks would like to build a new Starbucks because they think it would make them more profit. But they only rebuild every 20 years or so. This means that when they do decide to remodel, they try to extract the most out of the location as possible. But plenty of places have told them no, to do it better, and we have enough sway to do the same.
Because, here’s the deal: Kirkwood is as good as Clayton.
And we’re as good as The Loop.
And we’re as good as the Central West End.
And if we don’t think we are as good as those places quite yet, we should ask ourselves why and try to be. Kirkwood deserves a location on par with these. Clearly Starbucks still thinks its worthwhile to build them, still thinks they can make money off them. Starbucks is sticking us with the shitty version because they think we’ll take it and because they’re greedy. It’s up to us to simply say we won’t take it and encourage them to try again.
Bottom Line
The problem is not the Starbucks. The problem isn’t even Starbucks at this location. Starbucks is good and I’m sure the people of Kirkwood would enjoy having a nicer one and this locations seems like it might be as good as any (even if an apartment building with a Starbucks on the ground floor would be even better!). The problem is that Starbucks has phoned this project in. Because they think Kirkwood will roll over an accept it. I have more faith in us than that.
Thanks for a Good Year.
If you’re reading still, —and even if you aren’t— I just wanted to say thank you for making a rough year a little brighter and giving me something to do through a March that never seemed to end. We got some really really incredible things done this year. We made Kirkwood a better and more inclusive place to live. And I couldn’t, (and simply wouldn’t) have done it without your comments, your retweets, your votes, your clicks, and your support. We’re doing incredibly important, worthwhile work, and I don’t want you to forget it.
As always, thanks for reading. I’ll see you tomorrow, Kirkwood.