6:30 Introductions
6:35 Review of Agenda - anything to add?
6:40 Review of South Grand Parking Study - Consulting team
6:55 Establish the chain of communications between Consulting Team, Community, Steering Committee & PDA - All
7:10 Focus Group Sessions - All
7:30 Parking Space Usage Counts - Dick Zerega
7:45 Home Tour Questionnaire - Susan Anderson
7:55 Next Meeting? (to discuss focus group outcomes)
8:00 Adjourn
Meeting opened by Emily Andrews SLACO
Self-introductions around room, in attendance were:
Susan Anderson, South Grand Community Improvement District
Don Roe - welcomed everyone. Introduced Dick Zerega, who is replacing Ray Lai as the Steering Committee's liaison. Reminded everyone that "time is money," and to keep this in mind as we work through the parking study process.
Alderman Conway - Announced that the City is acquiring the three buildings on the north side of the 3500 block of Juniata, which are currently vacant. They will be renovated and converted to single-family homes.
Mark O'Bryan - The first phase of the Study is data collection starting out with a handful of focus groups. Would also like to address how we're going to keep everyone organized and how we'll communicate.
Everyone agreed that Marc would be the contact person for the consulting team, Dick for the City and Emily for the Steering Committee.
Paul Stefanski - What do you need from us in terms of data and data collection?
Mark - We still need to get a traffic count from Grand and Arsenal. And also street information, like one-ways, speed limits, number of lanes, etc. This should be easily gathered from the City. And what about the plans for Commerce Bank? It would be helpful to know that information.
Michelle Maple - Commerce knows their space needs for the final product. And that they'll need the entire lot for construction for two year. But we can get more detailed information from Fran Fanara, who is on the Steering Committee.
Mark - Do the plans include a public plaza?
Michelle - Yes, they include a plaza-like space. It would still be Commerce property.
Mark - Are there other large projects in the district we should know about?
Alderman Conway - Tim Boyle is coming more and more on-line with the Dickmann Building. And of course, there's now a tenant lined up for Dave McCreery's building on Grand & Arsenal.
All agreed that we should keep track of business changes & turnover throughout the study.
Paul - Do the maps we have here (of the business district & its land use) include the recent revisions to the Bread Company parking?
Michelle - Yes.
The group began discussing focus groups.
Mark - Do any of the businesses on Grand have existing records that might be useful to us?
Michelle - Several have guest lists and mailing lists they maintain. We can get those for you.
Paul - It will also be important to find out future plans of businesses when we're gathering their input. Also, safety is an issue we need to address related to parking. For example, how far are you willing to walk from where you park and is that related to safety?
Susan - And is it related to safety from crime, or safety from traffic? Crossing Grand can be very prohibitive.
Paul - What about gathering examples of good parking design? Like the lot in Lafayette Square that's fenced except on one part? That contributes to safety because there's only one way in and one way out.
Michelle - Grand does have a parking standard. We're working with Larry Williams in the Treasurer's Office to clean up the existing city lots and make them more user-friendly.
Don - Will meters be added to the lot next to Cheap Trix?
Michelle - Yes, probably by the end of this year.
Sheryl Foster-Gadkari - The ideal focus group includes 10 - 15 people. We'd like to conduct focus groups with the residents and with the businesses. We can divide the groups by interest, by neighborhood, etc. What do you think? These focus groups will give us a qualitative, global data. And will inform our more specific, quantitative data gathering, which will be through surveys.
Paul - Maybe we could have this discussion at a neighborhood meeting.
Patrick Moore - Customers & potential customers are missing from the focus groups.
Sheryl - Yes. I agree, but it's difficult to conduct a focus group with this group. We will gather data from them through questionnaires or surveys.
Patrick - We could mail questionnaires to residents, instead of doing focus groups. Or hand them out as people are leaving the Bread Company.
Brian Marston - We should do both focus groups and questionnaires.
Sheryl - We can do separate focus groups, so we can target the questions to participants' interests.
Paul - Which comes first the focus groups or questionnaires?
Sheryl - The focus groups are first. The qualitative data from the focus groups will help us better structure and focus our questionnaires.
Paul - We should also include real estate agents that are working in the area in our focus groups.
Susan & Dave - Can help with names & contact information for property owners & real estate agents in the business district.
Patrick - We should do the resident focus groups all together - offer two dates and let people sign up for the one that works best.
Sheryl - We (the consulting team) will facilitate the focus groups, meeting with groups one-on-one.
The group then discussed who should be invited to focus groups and how to divide up the focus groups. The consensus follows:
There will be four focus groups total:
The Consulting Team will put together on a draft of questions and bounce it back to the Steering Committee for review, suggestions and approval. They will also let the Steering Committee know preferred dates for focus groups. The Steering Committee will then commence organizing the focus groups by finding and committing participants.
Dick Zerega - We need to talk a little about the turnover of or the demand for parking spaces. There's no money in the contract for the collection of this data. Is there a way to focus this data collection, so that we look at specific areas at specific times? Would the steering committee do this data collection?
Patrick - Can we use the information we collect during the focus groups to inform this kind of data collection?
Emily - Also, Mark Abbott (Steering Committee member & Harris-Stowe professor) promised student help. Steve Shapiro did also. Is this kind of information on parking space turnover useful?
Mark - We'll find out during the focus groups where the hot spots are. Then we can focus our volunteer data collectors. Do the neighborhoods have something that shows owner & rental information for residential properties?
Patrick - We can provide that information.
The group then reviewed and discussed the questionnaire that Susan Anderson drafted to use for the Grand South Grand House Tour. There were several additional suggestions for questions. Susan will make the changes and if anyone thinks of anything else, they can e-mail her. Everyone agreed that the questionnaire was great and will be helpful to the study.
Mark - Could businesses distribute some of our questionnaires? And maybe offer a coupon to those who fill out the questionnaire?
Susan - I'm working on this sort of thing right now with the businesses.
The group then held a brief discussion about the timeline of the Study:
Questions?
Minutes
April 11, 2002
April 11, 2002
Submitted by Emily Andrews
Emily Andrews, SLACO
Alderman Steve Conway, 8th Ward
Sheryl Foster-Gadkari, Strategic Impact Inc.
Michelle Maple, Commercial District Manager
Dave McCreery, S. Grand Business District
Brian Marston, Tower Grove South
Patrick Moore, Tower Grove East
Mark O'Bryan, Art & Architecture, Inc.
Don Roe, St. Louis Planning & Urban Design Agency
Paul Stefanski, Tower Grove South
Irvetta Williams, The Williams Group, Inc.
Dick Zerega, St. Louis Planning & Urban Design Agency
We would prefer to complete the focus groups by Mid-May.
There are currently no meetings scheduled. Look for information about focus groups soon!
Contact Emily Andrews @ SLACO
314-533-9104 x 205
emlandrews@hotmail.com.