Outdated and redundant building codes plague St. Louis area development

Local governments in St. Louis County, Mo. have outdated and redundant building codes that frustrate commercial and residential developers, according to a report by St. Louis REALTORS.

The report focused on commercial and residential codes and electrical, mechanical, and property maintenance. It found that no single list compiled building codes for the county.

The report examined 42 codebooks from 89 communities totaling nearly 17,000 pages. The St. Louis region’s combined codes are nearly double the length of the Internal Revenue Service Code, dwarfing the optimal length of a consistent countywide code, which should total around 3,000 pages, the report says.

The report outlined several potential solutions. One option would be for a countywide vote to approve a consistent standard, but the authors noted a similar proposal was rejected by voters 50 years ago.

New York City has two very large buildings dedicated to answering the 911 calls of its five boroughs. With more than 11 million emergency calls annually, it makes perfect sense. The second of these buildings, the Public Safety Answering Center II (PSAC II) is located on a nine-acre parcel of land in the Bronx. It’s an imposing 450,000 square-foot structure—a 240-foot-wide by 240-foot-tall cube. The gleaming aluminum cube risesthe equivalent of 24 stories from behind a grassy berm, projecting the unlikely impression that it might actually be floating. Like most visually striking structures, the building has drawn as much scorn as it has admiration.