[chesterfield]
There’s a 10-acre field of dreams in Chesterfield, near the Premium Outlets. And local owner Wolfe Properties, along with GoodSports Enterprises, is confident that a mantra from that baseball movie will come to pass for them: If you build it, they will come. In this case, the would-be reality is a 130-room hotel and adjacent 85,000-squarefoot sports complex, sort of an Olympic village in miniature. The $22 million development is projected to open by spring 2015. Florida-based GoodSports plans for about two dozen such developments nationwide, of which this will be the third, to serve a rapidly growing sports market segment. GoodSports says the $7.1 billion ‘traveling sports market’ has 53 million participants. Training young athletes can be an expensive proposition. Just ask any parent of a budding hoopster, soccer player, softball ace, gymnast or volleyballer whose team travels all over the Midwest and beyond, from here to Indiana, Iowa and Nebraska for tournaments. After all, they have to stay, play—and pay somewhere.
[clayton]
Complete Streets they are, or will be, since the County Council passed the initiative after a few months of tailoring. Both sides of the issue cyclists and pedestrians versus citizens who believe we’ve made plenty of accommodations already—acknowledged it was a compromise, but one they could live with. According to advocate Trailnet, the measure enables the county to enhance existing roadways with a vision toward making the county ‘more walkable, bike-able, and transit-friendly’ and will allow the county departments of Planning, Parks & Recreation and Health ‘input into the transportation system that connects children to schools, people to parks, and neighborhoods to services.’ The national Complete Streets Coalition encourages street design and reconfiguration not just for automobiles, but holds that streets ‘ought to be for everyone, whether young or old, motorist or bicyclist, walker or wheelchair user, bus rider or shopkeeper.’ Who could argue with that, so long as everyone picks up after their dog?
[creve coeur]
Anyone with their hands in the till must suffer severe pangs of guilt for making off with someone else’s money … right? Well, that’s probably entirely too generous. Crooks, often 100 percent conscience-free, probably suffer from high anxiety only over the possibility of getting caught. Make that the probability of being caught. The former treasurer of the PTO at Spoede Elementary School in Creve Coeur has been charged with felony stealing after other Spoede School Association members discovered discrepancies with her accounting. The Olivette woman, 36, is suspected of pilfering more than $50,000 from the organization which, presumably, is there to help her children too. Oh, the extraordinarily dumb things people do when money is involved.
[frontenac]
After security breaches at Neiman Marcus and Michael’s, more consumers wonder what sort of world it would be if certain computer geeks used their vast technical expertise for good rather than evil. Meanwhile, what’s a shopper to do besides wait it out? Not much, authorities say, beyond keeping an eye on account activity and alerting your credit-card company if you suspect any fraudulent purchases. Neiman says about 1 million accounts might have been compromised throughout the chain; Michael’s, the nation’s largest retailer of arts-and-crafts supplies, wasn’t forthcoming about its numbers (it may be circumspect because it also had a breach in 2011 and presently is preparing for an IPO). At any rate, it would be hard to top the hacker-created woes of Target, which unwittingly exposed the data of some 40 million shoppers during the holidays. Interesting to ponder: Could the nefarious possibilities presented by 1 million hacked Neiman Marcus accounts represent more moolah than those of all 40 million Target shoppers?
[ellisville]
Bullies. They should all be taken to an island somewhere to hate amongst themselves and just leave the rest of us alone. Well, bullies might lose a little muscle since a seventh-grader at Crestview Middle in Ellisville won a national contest with her anti-bullying video. Claire Raney’s piece netted her an iPad, and the Rockwood district $1,000 worth of software to set up an anonymous method for students to report bullying. (It’s called the CyberBully Hotline, and if a school or district doesn’t already have one, the PTO or board might do well to look into it.) Alas, bullies are persistent, and their behavior can get very, very ugly. After tormenting another girl, a freshman, for months last year, an older girl in the Francis Howell district has been sentenced to five years probation and transferred to the district’s ‘alternative school.’ (I guess law enforcement authorities and school administrators can’t send ‘juvenile delinquents’ to ‘reform school’ like they did in less politically correct times.) And if any bully needed to be removed from the regular classroom, this one did. Reportedly, she punched the girl at least twice—and, when given the opportunity in court to apologize, she refused! Anyhow, back to the island: I hear Alcatraz is lovely this time of year.
[kirkwood]
State Rep. Stacey Newman’s proposed legislation is a bit like closing the barn door after the horse has trotted off … but in the wake of the lockdown at Kirkwood High caused by a KSDK-TV investigative reporter, you have to respect the intent. Newman, a Democrat whose district includes most of Clayton and Ladue, has introduced a bill that would make it a felony to intentionally threaten a school with the sole intent of exposing security flaws. Yes, it would prevent other media outlets from trying a similar hare-brained stunt. But who’d try to follow NewsChannel 5’s lead after all the ruckus that caused? Before ever venturing unannounced into a school, they’d probably rather do hidden-camera reports on the secret lives of roadkill shovelers. RFT’s blog snarkily suggested several other hidden-camera investigations for KSDK, like trying to sneak a knife past airport TSA screeners in a fashion that was, well, very colorful.
[o’fallon]
The sun will come out, tomorrow, or in April anyway. That’s when Ameren plans to start construction on a solar-energy generating station next to one of its traditional electrical substations in O’Fallon. The project, on 19 acres, should provide the company a way to measure the efficiency of solar power on a fairly large scale. By December it will go online to add megawatts to the grid … whenever the sun shines. The company estimated the construction cost for the facility, which will include some 19,000 solar panels, at between $10 million and $20 million. This represents baby steps for the public utility: Ameren officials anticipate the station will generate enough power for 650 homes in the area. Federal officials predict that by 2015, solar power on a utility level will comprise only a minuscule amount nationally, less than half of 1 percent. But what of those who are ‘off the grid’ and generate power for themselves via the sun or wind? Well, they’re off the grid. At any rate, by now you’ve surely seen billboards or other roadside distractions, e.g. those blinking portable speed-limit warning signs, that operate off their own attached panel(s)? Sure must help not to have to invest in several miles’ worth of extension cord.
[saint louis]
Calories be damned: There are those who take stock in the slogan, ‘Eat Rite—Or Don’t Eat At All.” Well, those diehards will either starve or have to take their appetites elsewhere while repairs are made to the Eat-Rite Diner at Chouteau and Seventh streets in downtown St. Louis after a car smacked into the tiny brick-and-cinder block building. Witnesses told authorities a vehicle ran a red light and struck another car, whereupon one of them missed a fire hydrant by inches and crashed smack into the diner’s entrance. No one was hurt, but diners could’ve gotten a case of the hiccups when startled from their greasy reverie inside. Although there’s another Eat-Rite in a South County strip mall, it’s miles away from where hunger strikes in the wee hours of the morning after a night out on Washington Avenue. Many fast-food joints have closed down their late-night dining rooms, but their drive-thru windows do a brisk business once the bars have all closed, or so I’m told. Hopes were for this All American greasy spoon to resume slinging hash 24/7 by March 4 … Mardi Gras.
[university city]
U. City is among numerous school districts throughout Missouri that represent a drop of 23 percent statewide in ‘weapons-related’ incidents in recent years. (Read: guns found at school.) If that seems to be somewhat of a dubious distinction, it’s an improvement that was measured over four years: There were 600 incidents last year statewide, which is still astonishing and egregious, of course. U. City had 17 incidents in 2010 compared to five last year—a drop of 71 percent. St. Louis City schools were also responsible for the drop, a 55-percent decrease from 111 in 2010 to 51 last year. Among reasons for the lower numbers, authorities say, is beefed up police training of school security personnel.
