Community Corner

Is Downtown Clayton an "Office Park With Access Roads"?

With up to five lanes of traffic, elevated plazas and narrow sidewalks, Alex Ihnen of nextSTL.com says downtown Clayton offers "a bad pedestrian experience."

We all know that Clayton has plenty of pride points. Just look at the level of civic engagement, diversity of restaurants, residential offerings and quality of schools, for example. 

Even in his criticism of the city's downtown area, Alex Ihnen recognized some of these accomplishments in a nextSTL.com blog post

But there are areas for concern too, Ihnen writes. He specifically points to a lack of walkability in downtown Clayton, writing that it offers "a bad pedestrian experience."  

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"Crossing four or five lanes of traffic isn't fun. Narrow sidewalks and fast traffic discourage strolling. Passing blank walls, elevated plazas and surface parking lots is uninviting," Ihnen writes

This helps explain why so much retail space is left vacant, Ihnen writes.

Find out what's happening in Clayton-Richmond Heightswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

His post, which was published on Thursday afternoon, is titled, "What's Wrong With Clayton? That's Easy, But Does Clayton Care?" There's an interesting conversation occurring in the post's comments section too.

I'd be interested to hear from our readers who live or work in Clayton. Does the nextSTL.com blog post resonate with you? Why or why not? 


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