flickr.com/photos/peteashtonThe days are getting longer and warmer. Perfect time to work in the garden, take in a ball game, eat ice cream and participate in that oh-so-St-Louis activity, brick rustlin'. As preservationist Michael Allen reports in his blog Ecology of Absence, the brick thieves are out of hibernation and making short work of an abandoned home on Maiden Lane near the intersection of Jefferson and Cass avenues. The house, according to Allen, is owned by McEagle Properties -- a deve
flickr.com/photos/dduckworthEd Golterman, your ship has come in. This morning, the St. Louis Board of Aldermen approved a plan to subsidize $29 million of the $74-million redevelopment plan for the Kiel Opera House. The city's money will come from an amusement tax on Blues hockey tickets. Developer SCP Worldwide, owner of the Blues and Scottrade Center, are also seeking $29 million in state and federal tax credits.Read more about the redevelopment (plus see incredible photos of the Kiel being bu
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bogdansuditu/ / CC BY 2.0Somebody recently rounded up 100 St. Louisans. Made them fling a dart at a map of the city. Gave them a month to travel to that spot and snap a photograph. Posted the photographs online at dartstlouis.com. (The Daily RFT got wind of this from Michael Allen's Ecology of Absence blog).First of all: That's a genuinely cool idea. Secondly: Some of the resulting shots of St. Louis (to my untrained eyes) were so gorgeous and haunting they made me i
stlcin.missouri.org/forsaleIf you're freaked out about massive land-grabs on the north side, this might fuel your fears slightly. Remember how the Post-Dispatch reported on June 7 that a holding company called Urban Assets LLC had snatched up 240 properties on the north side?And that Urban Assets was registered to Harvey Noble, whom the PD described as a "longtime St. Louis real estate broker who helped [Paul] McKee assemble the land he was
buying for his just-unveiled NorthSide project"?Well,
stlouispatina.blogspot.comIn deciding the controversial fate of the San Luis Apartments in the Central West End today, Judge Robert Dierker ruled that local preservation groups have no say in deciding whether a building should or should not be demolished. In this case in particular, the judge ruled, the Archdiocese of St. Louis had already received all the proper clearances from the city to tear the, ahem, structure down and build a surface parking lot in its place.Here's the pointed lan
Last time we checked in on the saga of the San Luis Apartments in the Central West End, a St. Louis circuit court judge had just ruled that the Archdiocese could demolish the building to construct a parking lot and that local preservationist groups had no right to stop them.Seems like a pretty clear cut case of game over, move on, time to pick a new building to save, right? Nope.The "Friends of the San Luis," led by Ecology of Absence blogger Michael Allen, are hosting a benefit concert at Off B
Brendan Ryan reacts to news that he's a finalist.The St. Louis-based American Mustache Institute has just released the finalists for its annual Robert Goulet Memorial Award, honoring the man (or woman) who's done the most this year to promote and uphold the mustache as a lifestyle/fashion statement. Among the eighteen nominees are Cardinals shortstop Brendan Ryan, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Airways pilot Sully Sullenberger and this mayor from Murray City, Utah. Other nominees are
Portland: A place white people like.Those are the questions essentially posed by urban affairs blogger Aaron Renn in his latest posting, titled "The White City." Renn takes a look at the mid-sized cities of Portland, Austin, Seattle, Denver and Minneapolis that are routinely hailed as being hip, progressive towns. He then holds those five places up to U.S. Census Bureau statistics, and finds that in each case the city (and its core county) falls below the national average for African-Ame
