A while after I had stopped grumbling to myself about it, walking by it every day while taking my kids to school, the signage that folks constructed last spring on the storefront at 196-206 Dickinson Street in Forest Park finally came down yesterday. I documented the sad tale of this too-tall skeletal structure early last June (scroll way down on the link).
Let’s be honest, the storefront itself is no pristine beauty. It’s seen better days. Adding a freaky metal skeleton to it is a bit like putting braces on a pimply pre-teen.
But these braces were illegal. The problem was that architect Ben Schenkelberg had submitted design plans for the signage, for which a building permit was issued in 2004, but the construction itself was "totally different" from the design, according to building inspector Charlene Baiardi. The other problem was that the owner had not paid back taxes in three years.
When I talked about the height problem with Baiardi, she mentioned that the signage construction was actually two-thirds taller than the design plans indicated. I told her I walked by the location twice a day to get to my kids’ school. "You might want to walk on the other side of the street," she told me at the time, joking. Or was she? Not being sure about the relative safety of the whole skeletal freaky thing, I avoided that side walking to the school in one direction, but came up next to it going the other way. We may even have walked under ladders. I have a morbid fascination with risk.
What the building inspector didn’t address was the awful craftsmanship in plugging up some holes on the storefront’s facade with irregular pieces of plywood, seemingly pasted on willy-nilly. Nothing quite matched up on the level, apparently, so to get those big metal braces on, workers had to use what some might consider shims just to have something to stick a nail through. No attempt was evident in making these slapped-on bits of wood appear blended-in. Plus, the architectural style—whatever it is, I’m not sure, but it’s a 100-plus-year-old building—was profoundly ignored, whether by design or by shoddy work. While this structure stood thusly denigrated, I felt embarrassed on its behalf, and that’s saying something, because it already looked pretty bad.
So now its braces are off, and it looks much more attractive. A somewhat surprising result. (The photo below is pre-braces.)
A neighbor of mine was inside the building when I walked by yesterday afternoon. It is possible that he owns the building, but I haven’t asked yet. What I did ask was, "What’s this place going to be?"
He was hauling around big sheets of plywood indoors, where the floor was rather clean. He stood smoking a cigarette (he is often smoking a cigarette) with another man helping him move plywood sheets. Outside the back door of the place, in the side yard of the neighboring property, a large pile of junk taller than a man stood there accumulating debris, like old doors and overflowing garbage bags.
"It was going to be a restaurant," he said, "but now… it will be a store. What kind of store, I don’t know."
"The crossing guard over there thinks you should turn it into a laundromat," I offered. He laughed readily. My kids crowded around me and tried to get in, but I stuffed their heads back out of the doorway. "She says you’d make a killing."
"People can go down to the X!" he protested mildly, smiling. I pictured him briefly reclining on a chaise longue at Versailles, waving off the masses for laundromats further afield.
I persisted. "Did you know that folks right around here actually take a cab to do their laundry? There’s no place close they can walk to, with big loads of clothes, and kids." He regarded me soberly as though saying, you’re really serious about this.
Not that I think it should be a laundromat, even though it would get a lot of use. I think it should be a used book store. What’s clear from the zoning ordinance is that this location cannot house any business that would serve food, but retail is okay.
Today, passing through after I walked down to the Holy Name Social Center to vote, I heard more banging of hammers coming from inside the building, and had another chance to contemplate that pile of trash.
What do you think—what retail use would work here? Email me and I’ll compile answers, and then give them to my neighbor. I’m sure he’ll appreciate the input.
