Eminent Domain By Any Other Name

The helpful city of St. Louis wants to relocate a corporate citizen:

After a raging fire destroyed the Praxair Inc. plant on Chouteau Avenue in June, St. Louis officials pledged to help the firm find a new location.

Pledge to help, of course, is a synonym for not renewing permits and, through regulatory rigamarole, preventing the corporation from repairing and reopening the facility in its present location. Because of an industrial accident that scared people, but ultimately didn’t hurt or kill anyone.

Fortunately, though, the city had some choice property on its hands that it could unload offer to the ungrateful company:

On Wednesday, the company said thanks, but no thanks. It said the site proposed is contaminated by remnants of the Manhattan Project.

“Praxair is not interested in building a new facility on a floodplain within a Superfund site where, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has indicated, there may be risks of radiological exposure,” Praxair Distribution President Wayne Yakich said in a statement.

So, as a result of this helpful assistance from the city of St. Louis, it will drive a private business from its municipality along with the employment and tax revenue that come from private businesses employing people. As a result, the city of St. Louis will break ground on another entertainment destination with a half life of 18 months to provide, briefly, low-paying service jobs or the city of St. Louis will offer tax breaks, incentives, and other regulatory foolery to draw some other business which has not caught fire recently to the city.

All in a day’s work for your city officials, who get a headline two-fer for driving out the evil, stand-alone corporations and bringing in the parasitic crony capitalist corporations.

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City of St. Louis Says, "Good Luck, You’re On Your Own"

Sign, downtown St. Louis:

Park Smart - Store your Valuables Out of Sight sign in downtown St. Louis
Park Smart – Store your valuables out of sight

I grieve this sign, for it announces that the city of St. Louis cannot protect your car from break ins and that it’s easier to go after the potential victims to indirectly admonish them for making themselves available for criminal activity. I mean, sure, it’s a good idea to store your valuables out of sight, and it’s an even better idea to not keep valuables in your car and to keep your doors unlocked so the criminal element won’t have to break the windows to look for their absence.

But why lament the powerlessness the city of St. Louis embraces by spending money on these signs? That’s counter-productive. Instead, I offer if not my support, than my other suggestions for further signage, including:

Look Smart
Don’t make Eye Contact
with the
Muttering Shambler


Dress Smart
Don’t Ask
for It,
You Tramp


Drive Smart
Lock your Doors
and Don’t Stop
Until You Reach Clayton



Because I, too, am a helpful city booster.

(Feel free to offer your suggestions in the comments.)

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Sic Semper Public Privatus

Another public/private investment on the brink of failure:

The financing for the Renaissance hotel complex downtown took years to put together, but the hotels’ owners have only a few months to restructure their debt in an attempt to avoid a default.

The owners of the Renaissance Grand and Renaissance Suites owe bondholders $3.5 million of interest on Dec. 15, a payment that may exhaust the hotels’ debt-service reserve. With that exhausted, prospects for making the next payment in June would be bleak.

Enter Steven Stogel, a St. Louis developer who helped to structure the original financing. Stogel has agreed to serve as an unpaid go-between in negotiations among the hotel owners, bondholders and other interested parties, including the city of St. Louis.

Municipal governments do tend to put their investments in particularly sketchy endeavours that lose money, like sports teams and other attractions, but unfortunately, they’re investing in utopias, not looking at bottom lines.

The long-term answer to the hotels’ problems, of course, is to attract more conventions to St. Louis. The city has attracted only half as many meeting-goers as planners expected when the hotels were built.

If you build it, they will come is not so good of an investment philosophy. Particularly since they’d have to travel down some awfully rutted roads to get there and once they got there would have to pay punitive taxes for the privilege.

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Urban Planning Yields Its Fruit

When “team of architects, urban designers and engineers charged with making the city’s downtown shoreline more than just the space underneath the Gateway Arch” get together to spend the public’s money, you know the result is going to be absurd:

“The theme of the design is really to put the people in contact with the river,” said Diana Balmori, a New York-based landscape artist who led the design project. “As much contact as possible.”

Her design certainly provides that – any more contact with the river would require a snorkel.

The vision is to have the riverfront extend into the river itself onto two groups of floating islands that reach into the water like a pair of giant butterfly wings. The islands, which would be connected by floating bridges, would feature walking paths, bike trails and even a swimming pool that would be converted to an ice skating rink in the winter.

Purple, green, red and yellow lights could illuminate the islands, with both island groups shaped in a curve mimicking the Arch. Eero Saarinen’s monument would then be literally and figuratively reflected in the river.

The hope, Balmori says, is to bring people back to the river that played a defining role in shaping what St. Louis is today.

Balmoni said that whenever people find themselves surrounded by water, it’s “magical.”

Of course, the defining role the river played and the contact people had was industrial and logistical. Loading barges, unloading barges, and acting as a hub for agricultural and manufactured goods as they came into or left the middle of the country.

But urban planners who concoct revitalization plans around entertainment venues, sports teams, and shimmering parks on the hill might not know why these things continue to fail to revitalize urban centers. Perhaps they instinctively create money-wastrels that will fail, as their continued struggle against urban decay does keep the money flowing into the teams, the commissions, and the districts from which they draw their own paychecks.

You want to revitalize downtown St. Louis? Remove onerous restrictions on business, reduce taxation, and rebuild the infrastructure. You know, smooth streets, better fire and police and fire protection, and the other things only government can provide. But the governors, too, know that they don’t get as many contributions from individual citizens as they do from the unelected Elect, nor do they receive luxury boxes and buffets for schools that maintain accreditation without a revolving door of administrators.

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Excellent Day to Use Tax Money to Prop Up Sports Franchises

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and its columnists have chosen an excellent day to expound on the need for tax money incentives to sports teams.

While St. Louis city streets collapse:

St. Louis street crews are working to repair a sinkhole that was nearly big enough to swallow a car. City Streets Director Jim Suelman says the hole on Memorial Drive near the Old Cathedral is about five feet in diameter and nearly a foot deep.

Collapsing streets, schools skating the edge of their accreditation, but hey, great sports venues for the suburbanites to enjoy.

(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.)

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St. Louis Post-Dispatch Lauds Forgivable Loans to Executives

So let me get out my conceptual transmogrifier:

  • Forgivable loans to executives to buy stock, houses, and so on, bad.
  • Forgivable loans to executives to buy condos in the city of St. Louis? Good!

Mandy and Kevin Kozminske wrote out a hefty check recently as a down payment on a loft condominium in downtown St. Louis. But her employer covered their closing costs – $5,000.

Mandy Kozminske, an assistant vice president for U.S. Bank, qualified for the money through the bank’s employer-assisted housing program. The $5,000 is a loan; it’s forgivable as long as she stays on the job – and in the home – for five years.

Hey, U.S. Bank can do what it wants to retain its employees; however, I hope it offers $5,000 in free cash to every teller, janitor, and maintenance man in its direct employ. Otherwise, the Post-Dispatch displays that its commitment to the Little Man ends where its commitment to championing the movers and shakers in the city of St. Louis government/developer cabal begins.

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Post-Dispatch Beats the Merger Drum Louder

Do it for the jurors!

But perhaps nowhere would such a merger be more welcomed than in the city’s courts, where the average juror repeats service every 39 months. That kind of civic burden is unheard of elsewhere in the St. Louis area.

No, wait, who would benefit from a merger?

In his inaugural speech last month, Mayor Francis Slay suggested it might be time for the city and county to reunite. St. Louis split from the county in 1876.

Rejoining the two could save money for both by combining services such as fire and police. It would also go a long way in helping officials share the burden of parks and stadiums enjoyed by residents across the region.

The city wants to “share the burden” of parks and stadiums (and arenas) with neighboring areas. The city could use the money, and undoubtedly is really very sorry about leaving the county in 1876, when it didn’t want to waste its money on the surrounding area.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch continues to bang this drum on its own to, well, drum up support for the idea, but I don’t think it will (and sincerely hope it won’t) convince the more populous county to link up with a carcass whose politicians have sucked it dry and are still hungry.

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Lead Recall Effort for Alderman, Get Sued

A controversial St. Louis Alderman, facing a recall, sues the leaders of the recall effort for defamation:

A petition to remove Bauer from office is gaining momentum, even as Bauer levels a $2 million suit against the organizers. Records show that Bauer himself has profited from development in the ward. While the deal appears not to have violated any rules, some of Bauer’s colleagues frown on investing in their own ward because of the potential for conflict.

The alderman defends himself:

For his part, Bauer says he is the target of a “civil conspiracy” spreading lies to besmirch his name.

“There are some people who have a personal agenda – they want to prevent good things from happening in Dogtown,” Bauer said.

A civil conspiracy? Is that the new euphemism for accountability to voters and elections in the parlance of the Elect(ed), who feel they should be above reproach?

I fully expect this lawsuit to be dismissed (SLAPPed down, as it were), but I imagine its headlines will have a chilling effect on some opposition as the lawsuit gets big fonts but the dismissal does not.

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David Nicklaus Promotes Crony Capitalism

I’ve often said that David Nicklaus is the best columnist in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which doesn’t mean I cannot disagree with him, especially when he embraces crony capitalism, like in the column today entitled “Missouri seems too stingy to be slick on luring jobs“. Here’s the lead:

The great economic war between the states has two kinds of combatants – the stingy and the slick.

Missouri has always been among the stingy. It tries to lure employers with its low-tax environment, and it might sweeten the pot with a few tax credits.

With that table-setting, he proceeds to explain why Missouri is lacking because it doesn’t dangle large incentives before companies to make them relocate here or to keep from relocating elsewhere.

Nicklaus seems to argue that the Missouri state government should spend state tax money to buy businesses’ loyalty, or at least their location in Missouri. While having businesses and employers in the state does affect the citizens positively with jobs and tax revenue for the state which could provide benefits to the citizens, it’s rather circular to use the increased tax revenue to provide tax incentives to businesses.

Crony capitalism occurs when government officials favor certain businesses with sweetheart deals at the expense of others, and that’s what tax incentive packages do; they give certain large (and powerful) companies advantages over the rest of the field, especially the businesses too small or inconsequential to inspire the state government’s lust.

So pardon me if I disagree, Mr. Nicklaus. Although other states’ governments enjoy squandering their residents’ tax money to benefit the few (the employees who work for the company and the state’s employees who get more money to spend), I don’t think that the Missouri state government should competitively transgress against us taxpayers. Although Missouri might lose a couple big fish, ultimately it will benefit from a continued low-tax environment that encourages entrepreneurs to start their businesses here and to maintain their businesses here.

Even if our only benefit as citizens comes from the satisfaction in knowing that our state understands its limitations, almost.

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Thinking Inside the Box

isn’t doing so well:

Randy Knight set a new record at his Union Station kiosk, and it wasn’t a good one. He had a day, earlier this month, when the crystal figurine and tchotchke stand where he works made just one sale: $15.

At the rental rate of $1,600 a month, it may not be long before his brother-in-law, who owns the kiosk, becomes another failed businessman at the converted train station.

Business is slow at Union Station and seems to be getting slower, shopkeepers say. It doesn’t help that the St. Louis Blues aren’t playing this winter at the nearby Savvis Center. Krieger’s Sports Grill, which opened just a year ago, shut its operation after New Year’s Eve.

Union Station, beautifully restored 20 years ago with a soaring, glass-enclosed shopping area adjoining the former train depot, recently was taken over by a new management company, Jones Lang LaSalle, one of the nation’s largest managers of shopping centers. General Manager Byron Marshall and Marketing Manager Frances Percich have been on the job for less than two months.

“We’re going to come up with a plan,” Marshall said. “We’re very optimistic we can come up with change, some positive change.”

Meanwhile, even though train tracks continue to butt up against the mall so that people who can afford it can ride a to eat and drink well while enjoying the vistas of the junkyards of East St. Louis, rail travellers in St. Louis will visit a new temporary rail station since Amtrak is replacing the previous 25-year-old temporary structure (the Amshack).

So when faced with no shopper traffic in a “revitalized” former train station chock full of shops and kiosks that sell t-shirts and St. Louis souvenirs but very few necessities of life (unless you subsist on coffee and fudge), undoubtedly the obvious answer demands that you turn some of the empty shop space into condominiums.

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By Any Other Name

The Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center, a
brand new struggling venue for arts no one wants to see on the UMSL campus presents Over the Rainbow:

Honoring the 100th anniversary of composer Harold Arlen’s birth, this multi-media musical concert delves into Arlen’s life with behind-the-scenes clips from “The Wizard of Oz,” home movies and photos. Broadway stars Tom Wopat and Faith Prince join forces for an entertaining walk down memory lane.

What, no mention that he is best known to most of America as Luke Duke (that’s from the The Dukes of Hazzard, you damn kids) ?

I guess the trustees of Blanche M. Touhill are keeping their target audience separate from the taxpayers who funded the underused, underattended facility.

Kudos, too, for adding their own service charge to tickets. Classy.

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Euphemism

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, high-priced law firm Bryan Cave gets a loan from the city:

The law firm still will receive a forgivable loan of $300,000 from the city to offset some of the cost of expanding and renovating its offices.

To those of us outside of the public-private partnership working together to suck money from taxpayers for the betterment of the public-private partners, this sounds an awful like corporate welfare. But it’s just a loan, the city insists, waving its hand to implant that thought into the mind of the weak or the inattentive.

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The Sound of One Hand Washing the Other

The city of St. Louis is offering tax incentives to keep a heavy-hitting, politically connected law firm downtown: City offers incentives to keep Bryan Cave downtown:

The city of St. Louis is offering one of the area’s oldest and most prestigious law firms up to $25 million in tax breaks to stay downtown.

While the city frequently uses tax incentives to lure or retain businesses, the benefits extended to Bryan Cave exceed “to a significant degree” those that have been offered to other businesses in the past, according to a confidential letter obtained by the Post-Dispatch.

The city is hoping to lure the firm into a new building. In return, the city would give partial tax abatement for up to 25 years, cut in half the taxes due on equipment such as computers and furniture and provide breaks on payroll and earnings taxes.

Additionally, the city is considering using a consultant paid for by Bryan Cave instead of city workers to do the building inspections for the new property. Such a step has never been taken before in St. Louis.

Not that I am trying to tell St. Louis how to handle its business, but perhaps downtown would have more businesses coming to it if it abated that 1% payroll tax and spent its tax revenue on infrastructure instead of sports venues.

But I work in the real world and don’t have an advanced poli-sci or urban planning degree, so what do I know?

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Citywide Controversial Redevelopment

From a story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch entitled “Demolition gets under way on 108-year-old building“:

Demolition of the Century Building downtown began this week, a major first step in the controversial redevelopment of the 1884 Old Post Office.

The first signs are evident. Piles of rubble lay on the sidewalk – the remains of what was a corner of the 108-year-old building.

You know, I’ve been a resident of the St. Louis area for well nigh eleven contiguous years now, and that description–rubble on the sidewalk and whatnot–sounds like how much of downtown St. Louis has looked for as long as I remember. Year after year, the same buildings with scaffolding, safety nets, or closed sidewalks to prevent the unused, crumbling buildings from killing passersby.

First signs of redevelopment? That’s a good and optimistic way of thinking about it.

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Cardinals Coalition Update

Well, another conspiracy theory blown. Man, if I keep this up, people are going to realize I’m a crackpot once their cover was blown, the liberal sports establishment changed the script quickly, ainna?

Well, I guess we’ll have to settle for beating the Red Sox in the World Series since those Yankees had early tee times this winter.

Which reminds me, I don’t own any apparel with the Cardinals logo on it, and it’s probably a little late to go looking for it this year. It’s been almost fifteen years since I had a Cardinals shirt, although I did have possession of a Cardinals hat briefly in 2001 during a five hour rain delay (before the hat became a Christmas gift).

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Many Layers to A Story

This story begins like a feel-good libertarian story of the year:

Two girls found the lemonade business sweeter than ever Wednesday, after the St. Louis Health Department shut their curbside stand the previous day.

Mim Murray, 10 and Marisa Miller-Stockie, 12, of St. Louis, have been selling lemonade together for three summers in their neighborhood north of Forest Park. The two friends hope to save enough to buy laptop computers before starting seventh grade in a few weeks. Last summer, they made more than $100.

But on Tuesday afternoon, a city Health Department inspector told the girls they lacked the proper business licenses and were selling unsafe ice cubes, the girls said. The girls were selling Country Time lemonade from a powder mix and store-bought ice cubes near the corner of Des Peres Avenue and Forest Park Parkway.

Yay! Laissez-faire! But wait, this is in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, so I am suspicious there must be some angle within it to turn my libertarian blood hot.

Oh, here it is:

A nearby resident, O.V. Carreathers, 48, of the 5900 block of Pershing Avenue, had complained about the stand on Friday to the city’s Citizens Service Bureau. The girls took the day off on Monday, but the inspector tracked them down on Tuesday.

“I just didn’t want them on my property,” Carreathers said Wednesday. “I just didn’t want them blocking my walkway.”

Mim and Marisa said their stand had been on the grass between the rear of Carreathers’ property and the parkway. They said Carreathers had threatened to spray them with a garden hose if they didn’t leave.

“That’s not the American way, dude,” Mim said Wednesday.

Those damn kids are nothing nothing but squatters who seek to profit from using some capital owner’s resources for free. Now that’s a story the Post-Dispatch can trumpet. The Man takes it again! Yay, plucky pint-sized property rights usurpers!

Sounds like Mim has learned the American way, dude, and it’s not her great-grandfather’s American Way.

Bleh. I think I am drinking too coffee, which heats my libertarian blood rather quickly.

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Is the Worm Turning?

As you might know, I’ve always said that one of the earmarks of a good downtown area is grocery stores. I haven’t determined if it’s a symptom, cause, or symbiosis that vital downtown areas with actual, you know, residents, have grocery stores. For much of my adult life, downtown St. Louis has been bereft of basic foodstuffs and residents. Now, however, the loft dwellers and homeless will have somewhere to shop, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Downtown bags two hungrily awaited groceries [sic].

Now, how about some housing that’s not provided by Larry Rice or that costs $300,000?

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A Lemay Accent at the Wrong Time

St. Louis denizens will tell you about the peculiar South St. Louis (County) accent that adds terminal Rs to non-terminal syllables, which turn wash into warsh and toilet into torlet.

So as I was in Lemay this morning, speaking with an aunt, she mentioned coming out of retirement to earn a few extra dollars. “But I don’t want another orffice job,” she said.

We in your family salute your decision, dear. Be forewarned we shall remind you of this decision into the unforeseeable future to make sure your commitment remains.

Thank you, that is all.

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A Nickel’s Worth of Free Advice

The St. Louis Regional Commerce and Growth Association has commissioned a highly-paid professional to come up with some suggestions about improving the business environment in St. Louis, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The consultant offers a couple of suggestions as well as a couple of head pats for what this charming provincial little city on the frontier is doing right.

To summarize:

Those assets include affordable living, a renowned medical school and several unique cultural and historical amenities such as Forest Park, he said.

That’s the head pat. This metro area of two million people has cheap housing, a medical school, and “unique” amenities like Forest Park. That sounds more like Columbia, Missouri.

The biggest drawbacks?

  • Often, however, talented workers leave the region because its corporate culture stifles entrepreneurs and leaves little opportunity for up-and-coming, creative employees, Kotkin said.
  • But in order to compete effectively with cities like Kansas City and Minneapolis, the region must first address several obstacles, including “standoffish attitudes toward outsiders, as well as a legacy of racial divisiveness,” Kotkin said.

Uh huh. Neckties too tight, xenophobia, and racism. Platitudes, platitudes, and more platitudes for $75,000. I think I want to start a company called PlATTITUDES! and get in on this racket.

Here’s my nickel’s worth of free advice, St. Louis (and I address the city because no one else in the country understands the extreme difference between the city of St. Louis and the rest of us in St. Louis County):

  • Elevate the level of the elected officials in St. Louis. Let’s face it, if they’re peeing in trashcans during debates or pouring a pitcher of water on the adversaries as directed by the voices in your head, they’re not governing, and they’re only serving as trivial punchlines. This is what people from around the country see in your city.
  • Instead of world-class, tax-funded sports facilities for football, baseball, hockey, basketball, la crosse, volley ball, arena football, soccer, and tournament bridge, how about some world-class roads instead of the cheese graters you have downtown? I don’t have an off-road vehicle. And I don’t go downtown.
  • Hey, how about some tax cuts? I mean, I don’t live or work in the city because I don’t want to pay the one percent of vig the city taxes off of my earnings to pay for commissions that recommend world-class sports facilities and then paying for luxury boxes in said sports facilities for said commissions into perpetuity.
  • Hey, has the state removed the accreditation for your schools yet?

Hey, my advice’s free, and it’s better than the stuff assembled as a discussion of the $75,000 answer:

Some ideas already have been developed by a group of young professionals assembled by the RCGA to discuss the report. Those ideas include creating a system to welcome new workers to the area, devising a mentoring process to link executives with younger workers and establishing an annual entrepreneur contest.

That’s what you get when you assemble young professionals whose neckties are too tight.

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Barbecuing Your Own Pork

Apparently, the St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority that was formed in 1989 to build a megolithic publicly-funded dome stadium to lure a football team is still in business, even though its job was completed in 1995. It’s paying six figures to its members, maintaining a luxury suite in the Trans World Edward Jones Your Name Here! Dome, and setting itself up to be a gravy train for two more decades.

What, you mean the vaunted Civic Leaders are in it to feather their own nests at the expense of the taxpayers? I am shocked, shocked I tell you!

How long until Richard “Il Dick” Gephardt can join in now that his small-potatoes, low-paying political career is over?

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