New Target Under Construction
Hampton & Chippewa, St. Louis City
As a person who procures rather than shops, I only care about retail if it’s dead or dying, but the sight of the new Target going up makes me happy. I prefer to spend my money within the city limits, and with this store down for renovation, I’ve had to either drive to the county for necessities and sundries, or go to Walgreen’s. Aside from Walgreen’s being over-priced, they have a propensity for devouring south side bowling alleys, so I’m real uncomfortable about shopping there. I never realized how important that one city Target was to my financial, political and geographical life until it was gone. October 9th can’t come soon enough!

Major Brands’ Warehouse
Southwest Ave. @ Hwy 44
A section of aluminum siding came loose, exposing the glass that’s hidden beneath it. Every time I pass it, I imagine the very moment the siding came off…
Blasts of sunlight found the workers within, all of them looking up quizzically to the rays of light pouring through the tiny rectangle patch. Then their eyes twinkled with hope as a celestial choir sang of the beauty of blue skies, fresh air and natural light.

Directly behind the beverage distributor’s warehouse is the exact same version belonging to BSI Construction . They decided to leave the rows of glass exposed, and it’s a handsome reminder of America’s factory architecture, which had a utilitarian grace of its own. All that natural light cuts down on the lighting bills, operable windows can cut down on cooling bills. Nowadays, these kinds of measures are called Green Architecture; it used to be plain old common sense.

Revisiting Inappropriate in Brentwood
It now has a For Sale sign up, meaning it’s a spec house. Suprised, because I assumed it was being built for a specific childless family, since it has no backyard at all.

About 3 blocks south of this intersection, at High School Road & Litzsinger, are some completed houses that sprang up from a teardown. Since this market trend is only getting stronger, I hope other developers can be as conscientious about what they insert into existing neighborhoods as the developers who built the examples below. The scale, proportion and placement of surrounding homes was taken into consideration, and the new houses have made a genial effort to slide in gently. Here’s proof that it can be done appropriately, which makes the inappropriate even more offensive.