South Grand Parking Study
October 14, 2002

6:30 Review Agenda - Anything to add?

6:35 Parking Standards, Demands and Deficiencies - Dick Zerega

6:50 Discussion of Draft list of Ideas of Possible Solutions - All

7:35 Next Steps

7:45 Next Meeting

8:00 Adjourn

Self-introductions around room, in attendance were:

Mark Abbott, Tower Grove South
Susan Anderson, S. Grand Community Improvement District
Emily Andrews, SLACO
Dave Drebes, Tower Grove East
Fran Fanara, Commerce Bank
Michelle Maple, Commercial District Manager
Dave McCreery, S. Grand Business District
Brian Marston, Tower Grove South
Patrick Moore, Tower Grove East
Don Roe, St. Louis Planning and Urban Design Agency
Paul Stefanski, Tower Grove South
Dick Zerega, St. Louis Planning and Urban Design Agency

Dick Zerega began with a review of the memo "St. Louis and other City's Parking Requirement". The City's Off-street Parking Standards are much lower than the suburban standards included in the Phase I South Grand Parking Study Document. The city's standards are the minimum required and the suburban standards represent competition. Parking Requirements from other Cities range from slightly higher than the City of St. Louis, up to the requirement similar to suburban standards.

Dick agreed that the suburban retail parking standards often result in many vacant parking spots for the majority of the year. The city's parking standards are substantial for fast food restaurants while being much lower than the suburban standards for other restaurants.

Dave McCreery - the parking standards must address efforts to improve the quality of life for everyone by providing enough parking to attract quality commercial tenants.

There was general agreement that the city's standards are low for some types of businesses and that the suburban standards are too high. Also, the demand for parking will range from a low to meet the existing occupied building space up to a higher figure to fill vacant space.

A popular suggestion was to graphically chart current commercial uses to see what the parking requirement would be using the City's Standard for the low end, the Suburban Standards for the high end, and a standard for the study at some sort of midpoint. The standard for the study should take into account both on and off street parking in the study area. Note that while the City Standard is for off-street parking based on substantial on-street parking, the Suburban Standard is for off-street parking based on no available on-street parking.

The Steering Committee struggled with trying to come up with a South Grand Commercial District standard that addresses levels of actual use as well as the issues of competition from other districts. The Steering Committee would like to look at a chart (range) of parking need for specific city blocks in the District and pick a standard that seems reasonable for the location. The committee would like to discuss the resulting deficiencies on a city block basis, instead of for the entire district.

The Committee moved on to discussing the Draft List of Ideas of Possible Solutions provided by the Consulting Team. All comments submitted to Emily Andrews were incorporated into the list, so the comment directly followed the list item it referred to. This allowed Emily to easily look over the Draft List and determine which ideas were generally agreeable to all who commented, which ideas were disagreeable to all who commented and which ideas those commenting disagreed on.

The Steering Committee discussed the Draft List generally:

Dave Drebes stated the importance of not only creating additional and improved parking, but also creating an environment that encourages people to walk further to their destinations. This was supported by the Committee.

Dave Drebes also thought there should be a strong statement from the Steering Committee conveying their wishes for the Commerce Bank lot.

There was a long discussion on the Commerce parking lot and how it could become a parking resource for a portion of the commercial district. A majority of the Committee favored clearing the three residences at Juniata and Arkansas (the southeastern end of the Commerce parking lot) for parking or commercial uses. Patrick Moore made it clear that residents of the adjacent blocks want the three buildings rehabbed and support constructing new residential units at the east end of the block.

The Steering Committee thought that in general the Draft List provided by the Consulting Team advocates new parking facilities behind the South Grand businesses towards the residential area rather than using and upgrading existing parking lots, including the Commerce lot.

The Steering Committee decided to make several strong recommendations to the Consulting Team. They would like to see the following clearly included in the final Parking Study:

1. Utilize as much as possible of the existing Commerce Site for enhanced parking.
2. It will take a large community effort to improve parking using various solutions.
3. Improve (pave, line, fence, meter, landscape, etc.) existing city lots.
4. Approach the First Divine Church of Science (on Wyoming) to reach an agreement about shared parking for this lot.
5. The idea of paving backyards for parking should only be used if the residential buildings are converted to commercial uses.
6. Instead of creating a Transitional Zoning District process, stick with the City's existing conditional use process. The Transitional Zoning District process is viewed as a slippery slope that can lead to parking garages fronting on side streets, an unpopular solution. The conditional use process works! And it allows the property to revert back to original zoning when the property changes ownership or use.

The Steering Committee then discussed each Draft List item on which there was disagreement in order to come to consensus. Some items were moved to the "agree" list, some to the "disagree" list and others were agreed upon with some changes and/or conditions.

At the end of the meeting there was some discussion about the old Post Office building on the 3600 block of Hartford. It was not included anywhere in the Draft List, but could be a potential solution, especially since it links up to the City parking lot between Mangia and the King & I.

Questions? Please contact Emily Andrews @ SLACO, 314-533-9104 x 205 or emlandrews@hotmail.com.