Maplewood resident Andy Barnes, before the QuikTrip relocation to the corner of Manchester and Big Bend was approved by voters in April, was tired of hearing what folks in Maplewood didn’t want, according to an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Sunday.
He told the Post-Dispatch that a NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) attitude increases the risk for new businesses. Barnes and his wife, Katrina, started the Maplewood YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) Facebook page to promote Maplewood business.
“For four or five months, all we heard about was how Maplewood didn’t want something,” Barnes told the Post-Dispatch. “I think we should be known for what we do want and not what we don’t want.”
Since then, the page has continued to be a forum for promoting Maplewood businesses and business ideas.
Read the full article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch.
Demolition of the Auto Ford Plaza building, to make way for the new QuikTrip, is set to begin Tuesday.
Doug, is there any way to have the comments run in chronological rather than reverse chronological order?
Thanks for your response, Andy. I appreciate it. My problem with the term NIMBY certainly doesn’t date back to your use of it. I’ve just noticed over the years it used in so many different ways that it has lost most of its original meaning. Basically, anyone who has ever said no to a project can be labeled negatively as a NIMBY, regardless of whether the reasons for saying “no” are for the overall good of the community.
I’m glad you and others are involved in this discussion, but the problem with your scenario is that this leaves very little space for us “regular folk” to have a say. Without the Patch, none of us would have even known about Quiktrip at all, and it seems as if most people don’t even learn about project until it is too late to stop it. How can we remedy that? If that is the goal of Maplewood YIMBY, then I am all for it.
Having said that, the Quiktrip opposition group got awfully close to stopping it. I’m glad that it happened, because it sent the message to City Hall and the Council that many of us had a different vision for the city as a whole. I would hope that this would lead to more dialogue, but I’m not hopeful. This year I found out about a City Hall decision very late in the game that directly affected my life – far too late for me to change it. I noticed a strong degree of intractability in the people I communicated with at City Hall that left me feeling very discouraged and as if they only wanted to hear from me when I agreed with them. This doesn’t leave me feeling hopeful that when the next public “debate” (and I put that in quotations because I still think the debate is hollow for the reasons you stated about overall planning) things will be any different.
I would hope that the spirit of YIMBY is more than just saying “yes” to everything and praising the city even when we hoped for better.
And I don’t think all so-called bad press about a city is really detrimental. I personally applauded when Ellisville said “no” to Walmart and also was intrigued when Webster Groves said “no” to Webster University. One person’s NIMBY might be another person’s “yes” to an alternate vision of their community.
NIMBY has in many respects just become an epithet that people use to criticize people who don’t agree with them – kind of like the term “haters” on the internet. Even if Mr. Barnes didn’t notice it, I recall many people on the Patch and elsewhere having real discussion about what they did envision for that corner. I don’t think it’s fair to paint everyone who was against the Quiktrip on the corner as being against Maplewood business. If the goal of the YIMBY Facebook page is just to say “Rock on, Maplewood!” (which it usually appears to be based on my observations), then I’m not sure it’s that productive. It might be uplifting, but not really that productive. Much of the opposition to the Quiktrip centered around a wish for Maplewood to look and feel different than other more cookie-cutter communities. This is a discussion that is very much necessary. I think it’s a shame that this was not noticed by Mr. Barnes, and I wouldn’t have joined the Facebook page if I’d known that was the overall tone. If this article is really a reflection of how Mr. Barnes thinks about how community development happens, then it’s rather facile. For a community to figure out what they do want, they also have to figure out what they don’t want.
Jane,
I hope you read the Post article also, I think they did an excellent job of framing the overall argument. I was aware of the entire discussion around the Quick Trip, including what people wanted, but my overall impression was the discussion was mostly in the negative. Which is not how we will find ourselves progressing. And I do understand Community Development. I am heavily involved it the Urban Land Institue whose goal is to foster leadership in the responsible use of land to create and sustain thriving communities. It is a collection of community development folks, land use planners, real estate developers and service providers like me that all believe that we can make a difference in our communites through the built environment. So here’s what I understand about community development, it starts WAY before a project makes it to the P & Z committee, it starts with discussions in the community about what types of uses we want and where, those uses get encoded into the zoning laws and then businesses buy, sell and develop according to those laws. Am I excited about the Quick Trip, not at all. Do I want something better for our community there, I do. But it is a properly zoned use and QT got a ground lease based on that use and took a risk and spend cash on plans and lawyers…by the time the opposition mounted it was really too late for a discussion. That is the problem with NIMBY, it is reactionary and negative. Maplewood YIMBY was set up to counteract that tone and start the discussion on the right foot. Could it be better? Yes. But Maplewood was just on the front page of the Sunday Post in an entirely positive light. That is a victory!
So thank you for continuing the conversation, I plan on bringing this discussion back to the Facebook page, I hope that you stick with us, but if you don’t I completely understand.
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