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Rebels in Germany’s junior governing party on Friday failed to turn it against eurozone efforts to set up a permanent rescue fund, an outcome that averts a possible political crisis for Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Dissenters in the struggling pro-market Free Democratic Party had forced the ballot on whether lawmakers in the party should support the euro500 billion ($650 billion) European Stability Mechanism, which is due to take start work next year.

However, the party’s embattled leader, Vice Chancellor Philipp Roesler, said that their motion was defeated by 10,841 votes to 8,809. There were 280 abstentions in the ballot, conducted by mail over recent weeks.

“The FDP is, and remains, a party with a clear pro-European direction, with the necessary economic policy good sense,” said Roesler, who is also Germany’s economy minister.

Leaders of the party have talked tough on Europe’s debt crisis but support the rescue fund, a cornerstone of efforts led by Merkel to get the situation under control.

Health Minister Daniel Bahr, an FDP member, questioned earlier this month whether the governing coalition could continue to work if party members voted against the fund. No date has yet been set for a parliamentary vote on it.

Had the ballot gone the other way, rebels would have needed a third of party members, which number 65,000 in all, to participate for the result to be valid. But they also missed that target.

The rebels’ failure gives Roesler, 38, a respite after a difficult week in which speculation swirled that his days as party leader were numbered.

Roesler took over only in May, promising that the FDP would “deliver,” but he has failed to lift the party out of a poll slump.

Roesler annoyed dissenters by declaring on Sunday, two days before voting ended, that they had failed because it appeared too few votes had been cast in the ballot. A complicated voting system also attracted criticism.

One of the FDP’s top officials, general secretary Christian Lindner, quit unexpectedly on Wednesday, saying that he wanted to “make possible a new dynamic.”

The FDP joined Merkel’s conservatives in government in 2009, winning nearly 15 percent of the vote after an election campaign focused heavily on income tax cuts _ a pledge that has been ground down to almost nothing.

The party has attracted much of the blame for frequent infighting in the coalition and has been punished by voters in state elections this year. Nationally, it regularly polls below the 5 percent needed to win seats in parliament.

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Europe’s stock markets fell again Wednesday as worries over the ability of governments to get a handle on their debts also pushed the common currency to an 11-month low below $1.30.

The euro dropped 0.4 percent to $1.2996 at midday, the first time the 17-nation currency bloc’s currency has traded under $1.30 since January, in a fresh sign that Europe’s deal last week to enforce more budgetary disciplines on the 17 eurozone countries is meeting with skepticism in the markets.

Meanwhile Europe’s unresolved debt crisis kept the pressure on its indebted governments, with Italian borrowing costs rising again. The Italian government paid 6.47 percent interest to borrow euro3 billion ($3.95 billion) for five years at a bond auction, up from 6.30 percent just a month ago.

The Italian auction provided further evidence that the European deal last week to tighten rules on euro countries has not dealt with the underlying debt problems.

“The structural problems in the eurozone remain the market focus, as the governments that have signed up to the plan are now expressing doubts over the ratification process and whether parliamentary backing could be secured,” said Chris Walker, an analyst at UBS. “This threatens a drawn-out process for fiscal consolidation which markets may not have much appetite for.”

Those concerns have come as the economic newsflow continues to disappoint. In the broader eurozone economy, industrial production slipped 0.1 percent in a further sign of weakness many think will lead to a recession.

Meanwhile in Britain, which is outside the euro, figures showed unemployment hit its highest level for 17 years, with women and young people bearing the brunt of the deepening jobs crisis as the country’s austerity measures and economic weakness began to bite.

Germany also reactivated its financial sector rescue fund in response to new questions about how its banks can cover their capital needs amid the continuing eurozone debt crisis.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said the Cabinet decided to reopen the euro360 billion ($474 billion) fund, first established at the height of the 2008 financial crisis instant payday loan.

The fund closed to new applications at the end of 2010. But much of the money _ which totaled euro60 billion for potential capital injections and euro300 billion for loan guarantees _ remains untapped.

European authorities have determined that German banks require a total of euro13.1 billion in new capital to comply with tougher new requirements. The country’s second-biggest bank, Commerzbank AG, has been told it needs euro5.3 billion.

In Europe, Germany’s DAX 1 percent lower at 5,718 while the CAC-40 in France fell 1.4 percent to 3,035. The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was 0.9 percent lower at 5,439.

Wall Street was poised for a modest retreat _ Dow futures were down 0.2 percent at 11,869 while the broader Standard & Poor’s 500 futures fell 0.2 percent to 1,218.

Sentiment also remains undermined by the U.S. Federal Reserve’s statement Tuesday that the U.S. economy, while improving, is still weak. Unemployment remains high, and it remains vulnerable to the European debt crisis, which could push the continent into a recession and slow U.S. growth.

Analysts said markets were disappointed that the Fed refrained from a third round of large-scale purchases of Treasury securities, dubbed quantitative easing III or QE3.

Earlier, Asian shares closed lower. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index fell 0.4 percent to end at 8,519.13, its lowest close in two weeks. South Korea’s Kospi lost 0.3 percent at 1,857.75 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng shed 0.5 percent to 18,354.43.

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AP Business Writer Pamela Sampson in Bangkok and AP researcher Fu Ting in Shanghai contributed to this article.

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Sensing a political opening, congressional Republicans are moving toward a high-stakes showdown with President Barack Obama over a plan to link fast-tracked approval of an oil pipeline to a measure renewing a payroll tax cut.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the proposed Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to Texas will help the president achieve his top priority _ creating jobs _ without costing a dime of taxpayer money.

“There is no reason this legislation shouldn’t have the president’s enthusiastic support,” McConnell said Monday on the Senate floor. “The only reason for Democrats to oppose this job-creating bill would be to gain some political advantage at a time when every one of them says job creation is a top priority.”

The State Department said last month it was postponing a decision on the pipeline until after next year’s election. Officials said the delay is needed to study routes that avoid environmentally sensitive areas of Nebraska.

The GOP language that would require approval of the pipeline within two months unless Obama declares it is not in the national interest.

The State Department warned Monday the congressional interference in the approval process would likely lead to a rejection of the pipeline. The State Department has authority over the project because it crosses an international border.

“Should Congress impose an arbitrary deadline for the permit decision, its actions would not only compromise the process, it would prohibit the department from acting consistently with National Environmental Policy Act requirements by not allowing sufficient time” for the project to be considered, the State Department said in a statement.

In that case, “the department would be unable to make a determination to issue a permit for this project,” the statement added.

McConnell and other Republicans dismiss such procedural objections.

“The only thing arbitrary about this decision is the decision by the president to say, `Well, let’s wait until after the next election,’” said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Boehner and other Republicans say many Democrats support the pipeline, noting that 47 House Democrats voted in a favor a bill this summer to speed up the permitting process. GOP lawmakers say the White House opposes the pipeline provision in the tax bill so Democrats can gain political advantage by blaming Republicans for defeating the popular payroll tax cut. The tax bill is expected on the House floor Tuesday.

The two parties generally agree on the bill’s fundamentals: preventing the Jan. 1 expiration of payroll tax cuts and extending coverage for the long-term unemployed. Obama has said he will reject the overall bill if it includes language speeding up approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry oil from western Canada to refineries in Texas.

Obama’s threat has increased conservative support for the overall measure, with Republicans hoping to use Obama’s opposition to portray him as favoring environmentalists over jobs.

Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., called the Keystone XL project crucial to getting thousands of people back to work.

“This is an important jobs and energy security bill which just makes plain sense,” said Terry, author of the pipeline provision. “The American people want us to stop buying Venezuelan oil. The Keystone pipeline is a key component to making that happen.”

Environmental groups, who celebrated the administration’s announcement of a delay in the Keystone project last month, accused Republicans of forcing a premature judgment on the pipeline in order to curry favor with the oil industry.

“To get their way, House Republicans _ with some support in the Senate _ are even willing to block the much-needed extension of the middle-class tax cut,” said Suzanne Struglinski of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.

Struglinski called the pipeline push a “fool’s errand” because of Obama’s threat to reject the measure, and said its likely inclusion in the House bill showed that House leaders have embraced the “extreme agenda” pushed by the tea party.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said last week that House leaders were wasting time, because the Keystone provision will not pass the Democratic-controlled Senate.

The State Department decided last month to delay the project until 2013, to allow the project’s developer to figure out a way around Nebraska’s Sandhills, an ecologically sensitive region that includes an aquifer that supplies water to eight states.

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After nearly 40 years in public education, Patrick Godwin spends his retirement days running a horse farm east of Sacramento, Calif., with his daughter.

His departure from the workaday world is likely to be long and relatively free of financial concerns, after he retired last July at age 59 with a pension paying $174,308 a year for the rest of his life.

Such guaranteed pensions for relatively youthful government retirees _ paid in similar fashion to millions nationwide _ are contributing to nationwide friction with the public sector workers. They have access to attractive defined-benefit pensions and retiree health care coverage that most private sector workers no longer do.

Experts say eligible retirement ages have fallen over the past two decades for many reasons, including contract agreements between states and government labor unions that lowered retirement ages in lieu of raising pay.

With Americans increasingly likely to live well into their 80s, critics question whether paying lifetime pensions to retirees from age 55 or 60 is financially sustainable. An Associated Press survey earlier this year found the 50 states have a combined $690 billion in unfunded pension liabilities and $418 billion in retiree health care obligations.

Three-quarters of U.S. public retirement systems in 2008 offered some kind of early-retirement option paying partial benefits, according to a 2009 Wisconsin Legislative Council study. Most commonly, the minimum age for those programs was 55, but 15 percent allowed government workers to retire even earlier, the review found. The study is widely regarded as the most comprehensive assessment of the issue.

Police and firefighters often can retire starting even younger _ at around age 50 _ because of the physically demanding nature of some of those jobs.

Yet with cities, counties and states struggling to pay pension bills, changes are afoot.

In November, San Francisco voters supported a local ballot initiative to hike minimum retirement ages for some city workers. Since that time, laws increasing retirement ages for government workers were signed in Rhode Island and Massachusetts in efforts to address underfunded pension systems.

Earlier in New Jersey, part of a legislative deal struck between Democrats and Republicans raised the normal retirement age from 62 to 65.

An initiative circulating for California’s 2012 state ballot seeks to increase the minimum retirement age to 65 for public employees and teachers, and to 58 for sworn public safety officers.

Godwin said all the antagonism toward public retirees is misplaced. His pension payout follows 36 years as an English teacher and school administrator in California, with two years’ sick-leave credit added for never being absent.

He said lack of accountability on Wall Street and exorbitant corporate salaries are a more justified target of the public’s anger.

“Those things I think are a much larger problem than what a public employee is making as a pension,” he said. The AFL-CIO labor coalition’s Executive PayWatch project estimates chief executives went from making 42 times the average blue collar worker’s salary in 1980 to 343 times as much last year.

Overall, Americans are working to older ages _ even with the expanded ability for some to collect partial pensions younger if they retire. Over the past 20 years, the average retirement age for men has edged up to 64, for women to 62, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

Data compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show 29 percent of people between 65 and 69 worked at least part-time last year, up from 24 percent a decade ago and 21 percent in 1994. Almost 7 percent of people 75 or older were employed in 2010, compared to less than 5 percent 15 years ago.

Experts say no reliable figures exist that could show whether public sector workers retire younger than their private-sector counterparts. That’s because the Bureau of Labor Statistics has no way of defining “retirement,” and nearly all analyses involving the American workforce begin with the bureau’s data.

It is clear, though, that most private-sector workers no longer receive defined-benefit pensions that will pay them for life. Most must wait until age 65 or 67 to collect their full Social Security benefit or draw from 401(k) accounts that are invested in the stock market and, in many cases, have sustained significant losses during the recession.

It is this shift in the style of benefits, and not the age of retirement, that should be scrutinized, said Hank Kim, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems, which advocates for government pensions.

“I think the biggest difference between the private and the public sector is that, for whatever reason, the private sector has largely abandoned the pension system,” he said.

Kim believes that shift has left a generation of private employees _ who make up the bulk of the American labor force _ unprepared for retirement. In 2010, there were 18 million government workers and 94 million private sector workers in the U.S.

Rising retirement ages and reduced pension payouts for many private-sector workers are emboldening those seeking to rein in the obligations of overextended public pension systems.

Former California state Assemblyman Roger Niello, a Republican, is backing the proposal to take the age issue to California voters next year.

“It’s a huge concern, arguably maybe the biggest concern aside from things where the system is being abused, like pension-spiking,” said Niello, referring to the practice of artificially inflating retirement benefits by boosting pay at the end of an employee’s career.

Defenders say union-negotiated retirement packages help attract and keep people in jobs necessary to society, whether teaching, environmental protection, law enforcement or garbage collecting.

Maureen Reedy, a long-time elementary instructional specialist in Upper Arlington, Ohio, a Columbus suburb, said benefits form part of the financial equation workers use to decide whether to go into public service.

“After 20 years, most teachers are making $50,000 _ woo-hoo,” she said. “Our pension and our security are part of the long-range outlook of our profession.”

Ohio, New Jersey and Wisconsin were among states this year that sought to limit the power of public employee unions, in part out of concern over rising pension costs. Reedy, 53, was considering retirement before Ohioans voted in November to repeal a new law making sweeping changes to the collective bargaining abilities of unions representing 350,000 public workers. Pension changes are still on the state’s agenda.

Some states began raising retirement ages around five years ago, before the issue had garnered wide public attention. Illinois and Missouri, for example, increased the normal retirement age to 67. Before the change, Illinois workers could retire with full benefits at 60 after just eight years of service.

Matt Mayer, president of the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, a conservative think tank in Ohio, believes states’ pension woes could be remedied by having their public pension systems operate more like the federal Social Security system.

“Frankly, I don’t have as much a concern about when they retire as I do about when they get access to the pension,” he said. “I believe in the economic freedom of workers. If a teacher wants to retire at 55, fine. They just don’t get their pension until 65.”

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Leaders of 23 European countries desperate to save the continent’s shared currency agreed in all-night talks Friday to surrender some sovereignty in a new treaty _ but failed to get all 27 European Union members to join in.

The split between those in the new treaty and those outside rattles the foundations of a union created to foster peace and prosperity across a bloodied Europe after World War II. The EU has struggled to unite to stem a 2-year-old spiral of debt that started in Greece, has plunged the eurozone into crisis, and now threatens to send the global economy back into recession.

Even after Friday’s long-awaited deal, watched by governments and markets worldwide, the European leaders have huge hurdles still ahead. They are meeting again later Friday to work out what exactly their new treaty will contain and how violators of its strict budget rules will be policed. They want it written by March.

Asian stocks _ already trading when the Europeans announced their 11th-hour deal _ tumbled Friday as investors grew increasingly pessimistic that European leaders would conclude this week’s crucial summit without finding a solution radical enough to fix the debt crisis.

Britain, which doesn’t use the euro, led the push against a treaty tying all 27 EU countries to tighter fiscal union, arguing that it would threaten sovereignty and London’s esteemed financial services industry. Germany and France, the eurozone’s biggest economies, had pushed for a 27-nation accord.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy laid the blame at the feet of British Prime Minister David Cameron.

“David Cameron made a proposal that seemed to us unacceptable, a protocol to the treaty that would have exonerated the United Kingdom from a great number of financial service regulations,” Sarkozy said shortly before dawn, after what he called a “difficult” dinner meeting had dragged through the night.

“We couldn’t accept this. We consider to the contrary that part of the troubles of the world come from the lack of regulation of financial services,” Sarkozy said. “If you want an opt-out clause to not be in the euro and ask to participate in all decisions of the euro … and even criticize it, this is not possible.”

Cameron defended his stance.

“What was on offer is not in Britain’s interest so I didn’t agree to it,” he told reporters in Brussels.

“We’re not in the euro and I’m glad we’re not in the euro,” he said. “We’re never going to join the euro and we’re never going to give up this kind of sovereignty that these countries are having to give up.”

The French president said work was proceeding on an “intergovernmental accord” among the 17 countries that use the euro plus as many as six others, not counting Britain, Hungary, and so-far undecided Czech Republic and Sweden.

Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt signaled after the meeting it was unlikely his country would join the accord.

“It would be very odd signing up to a treaty pointing out as if we were a eurozone country,” he told The Associated Press. “And that was never the aim.”

The governments signing onto the new treaty will have to agree to allow unprecedented intervention in national budgets by EU-wide bodies.

According to a statement issued after the meeting broke up, governments participating in the agreement will need to have balanced budgets _ which is counted as a structural deficit no greater than 0.5 percent of gross domestic product _ and will have to amend their constitutions to include such a requirement.

The treaty will include an unspecified “automatic correction mechanism” for countries that break the rules, the statement said.

In addition, countries that run deficits larger than 3 percent will face sanctions.

To prevent such deficits, countries will have to submit their national budgets to the European Commission, which will have the authority to request that they be revised. Countries will also have to report in advance how much they plan to borrow.

But Cameron threatened to complicate the new 23-member treaty.

“The institutions of the European Union belong to the European Union, belong to the 27″ member states, he said. The new treaty would rely on the European Commission and the European Court of Justice to enforce its rules.

Despite the challenges ahead, European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi said it was a good result for the eurozone, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised it.

“I have always said the 17 states of the eurogroup have to regain credibility,” she said. “And I believe with today’s decisions this can and will be achieved.”

The summit meeting in Brussels was viewed as a critical step in the effort to save the euro. The currency is losing the trust of the international financial markets, who fear that some debt-laden euro countries may ultimately be unable to pay their debts.

That doubt means that the governments of countries viewed as in a precarious state must pay higher interest to borrow the money they need to carry on _ and that, in turn, makes their budget deficits even worse and can be unsustainable in the long run.

EU officials believe that one way of regaining market trust is to beef up the financial governance overseeing the eurozone countries and their budgets. Any intergovernmental treaty will be an effort to ensure that national budgets are brought into balance and large debts are not run up again.

And the officials believe another way to regain the trust of investors is to have enough money on hand to guarantee that eurozone countries won’t default on their debts.

Toward that end, Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, said the eurozone, together with some other EU countries, would provide up to euro200 billion ($268 billion) in extra resources to the International Monetary Fund, to be used to help countries in dire straits. Non-euro countries Sweden and Denmark already said they would contribute some extra money.

Sarkozy also said the EU’s two bailout funds, meant to rescue countries having trouble refinancing their debts _ the European Stability Mechanism, or ESM, and the European Financial Stability Facility, or EFSF _ would be managed by the European Central Bank, though the details still need to be worked out.

The failure to get agreement among all 27 EU members came despite a marathon negotiating session. The 27 EU presidents and prime ministers began their talks at 7:30 Thursday evening and continued past 4:30 a.m.

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World stocks were subdued Thursday ahead of a key summit seen as perhaps the last chance for European leaders to cauterize a crippling debt crisis before it drags the region into a potentially severe recession.

Benchmark oil rose above $100 per barrel while the dollar fell against the euro and the yen.

European shares opened higher on hopes that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy would succeed in drumming up support for a debt crisis plan from key conservative European politicians at a meeting in Marseille, France before moving on to Brussels for a crucial European Union summit.

Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.6 percent to 5,582.63. Germany’s DAX jumped 1.1 percent to 6,061.80 and France’s CAC-40 was 0.9 percent higher at 3,205.60.

Wall Street appeared headed for a mixed opening. Dow Jones industrial futures rose marginally to 12,218 while S&P 500 futures were down less than 0.1 percent at 1,263.50.

Stocks endured a minor drubbing in Asia earlier in the day. Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 0.7 percent to 8,664.58, dragged down by weaker-than-expected machinery orders. South Korea’s Kospi lost 0.4 percent to 1,912.39 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng shed 0.7 percent to 19,107.81.

Benchmarks in Australia, Singapore, Taiwan and India also fell. But mainland Chinese shares rose, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index gaining 0.1 percent to 2,329.82 after losing more than 1 percent earlier in the day to approach an intraday low for the year. The Shenzhen Composite Index gained 0.1 percent to 970.95.

Just hours before the summit of European leaders was to open in Brussels, doubts were surfacing that a lasting solution to the two-year-old crisis would be reached. Failure risks causing a breakup of the euro, a shock that could cause a deep recession in Europe and spread through the world economy.

One point of friction has surfaced over a proposal by France’s Sarkozy and Germany’s Merkel, leaders of the two economic powerhouses among the 17 nations that use the euro. They are demanding far-reaching changes to the treaty governing the European Union to enforce fiscal discipline among its members.

That proposal is being met with resistance by the European Council, an institution that defines the priorities of the entire 27-nation EU. Its president, Herman Van Rompuy, favors going a simpler route _ amending existing rules that apply to the 17 euro countries to avoid the trickier step of requiring every country to approve the new treaty.

The disagreement has soured hopes for an immediate solution to the crisis.

“Normally this kind of talk would take place behind closed doors. The fact that it’s in the open suggests it already has and normal channels have, at least temporarily, broken down,” analysts at DBS Bank Ltd. said in a research note.

Additionally, certain provisions in the Franco-German proposal, such as setting automatic penalties for countries that overspend, are controversial and have the potential to delay an agreement.

The intensifying debt crisis and lack of radical solution _ such as the issuance of eurobonds _ have roiled global stocks for months. Germany has resisted eurobonds due to fears that pooling debt would drive up its own borrowing costs, expose its taxpayers to the bad debt of weaker countries, and remove incentives for struggling nations to get their finances in order.

“Germany and the rest of Europe are going into two directions. The rest of Europe wants Germany to stand behind the euro but Germany does not want to be the lender of last resort,” said Francis Lun, managing director of Lyncean Holdings in Hong Kong. “Because it … will be the German taxpayer to foot the bill and I don’t think that’s what Germany wants.”

Asian shares faced multiple headwinds. Australia unexpectedly eliminated 6,300 jobs in November. Most economists had predicted total employment would rise by 10,000.

Meanwhile, Japan’s core private-sector machinery orders fell a seasonally adjusted 6.9 percent in October, the second consecutive month of decline. Financial markets had expected a 0.5 percent increase, Kyodo News Agency reported. That hurt industrial shares such as Nippon Steel, which lost 1.5 percent, and industrial supplier Mitsui & Co., down 2.1 percent.

Tokyo Electric Power, operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, plunged 11.3 percent after a news report said the government is set to effectively nationalize the utility.

On Wall Street, the Dow rose 0.4 percent to close at 12,196.37. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 0.2 percent at 1,261.01. The Nasdaq composite index fell marginally to 2,649.21.

Benchmark oil for January delivery was up 41 cents to $100.90 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 79 cents to end at $100.49 per barrel on the Nymex on Wednesday.

In currencies, the euro rose to $1.3415 from $1.3394 late Wednesday in New York. The dollar fell slightly to 77.58 yen from 77.66 yen.

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St. Louis-based law firm Bryan Cave will merge next month with Holme Roberts & Owen LLP, based in Denver, the firms announced today.

Terms of the merger were not disclosed. Partners from both firms voted to combine their practices, effective Jan. 1, 2012.

The combined firm, which will have more than 1,100 attorneys in more than 30 offices, will operate under the Bryan Cave LLP name, although initially, the firm will operate as Bryan Cave HRO in Colorado.

Holme Roberts & Owen has 150 attorneys and offices in Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs, Los Angeles and San Francisco no fax payday loan.

“Extending our geographic reach while expanding the range of our services in California are important steps in our firm’s long-term growth,” Bryan Cave’s chairman, Don Lents, said in a statement.

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In one northern Oklahoma county, oil and wind don’t mix.

That’s where plans by St. Louisan Tom Carnahan’s Wind Capital Group LLC for a large wind farm have run into a roadblock

TOKYO

HEAD NORTH: More than just northside visitors, merchants, residents and this colyumnist are impressed with development of the Old North St. Louis community.

St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay and Sean Thomas, head of the Old North St. Louis Restoration Group, are in D.C. today to receive the 2011 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement, which was given to the community by an office of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Old North was given the Award for Overall Excellence in Smart Growth, which is the highest honor that is given out by the EPA’s Office of Sustainable Communities. The award “recognizes an outstanding comprehensive approach to growth,” the EPA said. The selection committee also noted that the award “is for the best overall approach to implementing smart growth on a variety of fronts …”

Among factors that contributed to the community’s selection was the 28 percent population gain the area has seen in the past decade. Winning projects must have an impact on the community, and not merely be a design for development, the Old North restoration group said in a post on its website.

The restoration group is the not-for-profit that laid the foundation for the development, which used strategies that promote walking, rehabilitate vacant buildings and establish green spaces, the EPA said.

A specific effort cited by the EPA was the revitalization of two main blocks of the neighborhood — 14th Street north from Warren Street to St. Louis Avenue (nearly to the door of the Karandzieffs’ venerable Crown Candy Kitchen) — into something called Crown Square. The $35 million project involved the redevelopment of 27 buildings along 14th Street and surrounding side streets. It resulted in 80 new households in an area that had been largely abandoned, and the opening of a growing number of new locally owned businesses.

There are also new sidewalks, benches, trees and lights and newly cultivated community gardens sprinkled through the neighborhood. The area includes a North City Farmers’ Market and a community-owned Old North Grocery Co-op.

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