NextSTL

I didn’t think I was going to be able to write another post like this this year since the Missouri Legislature passed a fuel tax increase last session after voters rejected a sales tax increase in 2014 and a fuel tax increase in 2018. For the first time in 25 years, the state’s fuel tax […]

The post Gas Tax Cut Again in Missouri? appeared first on NextSTL.

St. Louis’s controversial decision to vote down a resolution that would have banned legislators from voting over Zoom while driving — a measure which one lawmaker debated while actively operating a car — is sparking a heated conversation about distracted driving, and how little America does to stop it. Last week, the St. Louis Board […]

The post St. Louis Lawmakers Refuse to Ban Legislating While Driving … While Driving appeared first on NextSTL.

Franz Park is a south St. Louis neighborhood roughly bound by Dale to the north and east, Manchester to the south and the city limits to the west. The 2000 census data counted 2,621 residents (down 10% from 1990’s count) of whom 11% were black, 85% white, 1% Asian and 2% Hispanic/Latino. There were 1,318 […]

The post Groth Guide to Franz Park appeared first on NextSTL.

Crowned by Streetsblog readers in 2015, America’s Sorriest Bus Stop is no more. The stop ran away with the title, garnering 42% of the votes in a field of eight. Streetsblog – St. Louis Stunner Runs Away With the Vote for America’s Sorriest Bus Stop The stop was removed as part of a bus system […]

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Lindenwood Park is a southwest neighborhood of St. Louis south of Arsenal, north of Chippewa, east of I-44 and the city limits and west of Hampton. Lindenwood Park lost 3% of it’s residents from 1990-2000 where 10,207 were counted, 95% white, 2% black, 2% Hispanic/Latino, 1% Asian. 96% of its 5,032 housing units are occupied, 71% […]

The post Groth Guide to Lindenwood Park appeared first on NextSTL.

178 people have died as a result of traffic violence in 2021. For the 4th year in a row pedestrian fatalities have risen in the City of St. Louis and for the first time, total traffic fatalities eclipsed 100 in St. Louis County. Trailnet, a local walking and biking advocacy non-profit, believes that all traffic […]

The post St. Louis Needs to Address Traffic Violence appeared first on NextSTL.

On Sunday, The New York Times wrote that “the next affordable city is already too expensive.” The article provided some important cautionary tales about constraints on housing supply and the tensions between old-timers and newcomers borne from housing scarcity. Spokane, Washington, “the next affordable city” saw its home prices rise 60% in the last two […]

The post Why aren’t more people talking about the “next affordable cities” being in the Midwest? appeared first on NextSTL.

While checking out the developments in Olivette I came upon the typical state of sidewalks abutting a contraction site in the St. Louis area. The sidewalk was closed between Fries and Tower Hill with no provision for a detour. Taking a lane from cars on Olive would be too much to ask, despite there being […]

The post The Fragility of the Dendritic Hierarchical Street Network appeared first on NextSTL.

Perched on the corner of Olive and Boyle one Wednesday afternoon, I watched a few dozen cars roll stop signs on their way to somewhere that must have been important. Somewhere. But that somewhere wasn’t Olive and Boyle. It was a place to pass through as quickly as possible (so much so that at some […]

The post The societal cognitive dissonance of demolition and reverence in St. Louis appeared first on NextSTL.

Our city. Our schools. Our future. This city’s future is as bright or dark as the quality of its schools. When St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) was founded in the mid-19th century, it quickly rose to prominence as one of the finest school districts in the nation. This contributed to the economic and cultural boom […]

The post Our future: It’s time for St. Louis to get behind St. Louis Public Schools appeared first on NextSTL.

Construction continues in full swing at many job sites big and small. Below is a sampling. Olive Crossing 14.8 ACRES 180,000+ SF OFFICE SPACE  181 APARTMENT UNITS 160 HOTEL ROOMS | DUAL-BRAND MARRIOTT  30,000+ SF RETAIL, DINING, & SERVICES These buildings in Clayton aren’t long for this world. NextSTL – Green Street Proposes Tower in […]

The post Construction Photo Roundup February 2022 appeared first on NextSTL.

When our flotilla of five canoes pushed off from Louisiana, Missouri, on a Friday afternoon in September, the sky was flat gray, and a promising forecast had turned into warnings about heavy rains coming our way. This wasn’t the introduction to the joys of paddling on the Mississippi River that I had hoped for. Six […]

The post Paddling on the Mississippi River appeared first on NextSTL.

Update – The Post Dispatch reports that the permit application was unauthorized – Cotton Belt demo permit application unauthorized, building owner says Valentine’s Day brought no love for the Cotton Belt Depot in the Near North Riverfront neighborhood. Instead of flowers, the Grim Reaper was spotted lurking in the area. Justine Peterson submitted a $910,000 […]

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Is it a wall for a prison? Or a fortress? A wall to keep out the Others? No it’s a retaining wall for the Market at Olive anchored by CostCo that welcomes visitors to University City on Olive Blvd. We knew from the rendering it would be bad, but seeing it in real life is […]

The post Welcome to University City appeared first on NextSTL.

DWC Enterprises LLC is planning a mixed-use conversion and vertical addition at 2101 Miami in the Marine Villa neighborhood. They sought a zoning change to “construct residential housing consisting of 10 one-story and two-story residential units, as well as a potential restaurant and/or commercial use on the first floor on an existing structure that used […]

The post Apartments Planned for 2101 Miami in Marine Villa appeared first on NextSTL.

On summer weekends, hundreds of recreational boaters motor around the islands and side channels of the Mississippi River near Dardenne Slough off St. Charles County, Missouri, some forty to fifty river miles north of St. Louis. Boaters can rent a slip from one of the twenty-one marinas along the Mississippi from St. Charles County to […]

The post St. Louis Deserves a Marina appeared first on NextSTL.

I teach American Literature at Metro High School in St. Louis Public Schools. In a recent lesson, students analyzed Carl Sandburg’s “Chicago” and James Weldon Johnson’s “My City” to better understand the early 20th century city in addition to a number of literary focuses. After reading the two poems, I tasked students with penning a […]

The post My City: Poems on St. Louis from Metro High School students appeared first on NextSTL.

I recently read a quote: “Historic preservation is often linked, hand in hand, with ideas of placemaking, where preservationists embed their work in a neighborhood, community, or landscape to highlight what makes that place unique and preserve its character. In doing this work, preservationists make evaluations about a place’s beauty, integrity, and significance. In the […]

The post The Chinese-American Experience in St. Louis and how Preservation Cements Our Stories and Sense of Place appeared first on NextSTL.

Welcome to the Murder Capital. As an epithet, it’s right up there with Gateway to the West and Mound City. Cursory Google searches about St. Louis tend to highlight the danger inherent to this place. Historic white flight and modern Black flight are, in part, predicated on a notion and narrative that St. Louis is […]

The post Dissecting homicide statistics in St. Louis City and looking at 2022 projections appeared first on NextSTL.

Context for the proposal St. Louis’ West End neighborhood is destined for a positive decade. It was one of few northside neighborhoods to witness population growth in the 2020 census adding almost 300 residents. The neighborhood is also 70% Black and saw increases in both Asian and Hispanic populations. It sits on the north end […]

The post What should be: Ruth Porter Mall appeared first on NextSTL.