ST. LOUIS • Dan Wald is hoping to find out today how to get police and city officials off his back.
Wald owns the Hillvale Apartments, a 146-unit federally funded housing complex in the 5800 block of Selber Court. This year, police have fielded 175 calls for service there — putting it on the city's list of nuisance properties and making Wald the recipient of multiple letters demanding he improve the property or face fines or legal action.
Wald is joining six other property owners from throughout the city — most in the same position — today to learn ways to reduce crime through better urban design during a presentation at police headquarters at 1:30 p.m.
The effort, called Design Out Crime, is a collaboration among the mayor's office, Police Department and Washington University, which paired design students with officers to determine ways to make properties safer.
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"We asked them to give us the sites that are giving them the most headaches," said Andrew Faulkner, who teaches a community dynamics class at Washington University and is a member of Mayor Francis Slay's advisory Vanguard Cabinet.
And if suggestions, such as adding more lighting here or trimming some trees there, reduce police visits and threatening letters from the city, Wald said he is all for it.
"I am more than happy to have one less person calling me or one less meeting to go to in my life, especially from a group that doesn't necessarily help me," Wald said. "We work together when we can, but it's not like they call you to say, 'Look, we want to help you out.' They say, 'You better take care of this, or we'll fine you or take the property away.'"
The students' work could extend beyond modifications to the seven properties and into the realm of criminology and city codes.
Faulkner wants to repeat the project with different students and different properties every spring semester.
"Some crime is drawn to circumstance," Faulkner said. "We're trying to get at those circumstances from a design standpoint so that a community isn't as attractive to a criminal as it once was."
Along with Wald's property, the students studied:
• A surface parking lot at Locust Street and North 14th Street.
• The Mansion House parking garage between Fourth Street and Memorial Drive.
• Family Dollar near Gravois Avenue and Morganford Road.
• Southwest Crossing Apartments at Germania Avenue and Interstate 55.
• A gas station near Kingshighway and Delmar Boulevard.
The seventh property, Highland Plaza near Hampton and Oakland avenues, joined the effort even though it is not a nuisance property. Its owners want to keep an undeveloped portion of their complex crime-free and incorporate crime-deterring design into the next phase of construction there, said Officer Mike Dempsey.
For Wald's Hillvale Apartments, the suggestions students such as sophomore Grant McCraken, 20, made include improved lighting, altering the main entrance and landscaping the courtyard so it feels like part of the complex instead of an island.
For the other properties like the parking lot, the suggestions included revised signage to designate public and private sections, and fencing.
And at the Family Dollar, the students urged design changes to discourage thefts, such as shelving that clerks could see across.
Research shows such seemingly slight changes matter, said Mike Deckard, a graduate research assistant in criminology for the University of Missouri-50¶È»ÒÊÓƵ who also is working on the project.
He cited a 2004 study in which researchers in Britain discovered that closed circuit surveillance cameras and improved lighting were equally effective at reducing property crime.
"Environmental criminology is one of the leading theories of crime prevention that comes in and out of fashion every few years, but there are already elements of it throughout the city," he said.
He cited as an example MetroLink's method of regulating its entrances and exits depending on the flow of people during events like Cardinals games. The move means fewer exits from which a lawbreaker could escape during nonpeak hours.
To track the success of the Washington University students' suggestions, the Police Department's crime analysts will be asking property owners to report when they make changes and what changes they make. That way, the department can determine what changes made the biggest impact.
Wald said he is open to the students' work but is also cautious. To address problems at Hillvale Apartments, he said he employs off-duty police officers, has installed card readers to monitor who comes and goes, and has erected fences.
"You think you're going to stop crime with 146 Section 8 units? Probably not," he said. "But I think this is fantastic. I've owned the property since 1985, and anytime you have new eyes looking at something is positive, especially someone who comes from outside the box.
"They're looking at the problem from a different angle that I may never think of or see."