Elements of Urbanism: Downtown St. Louis

[Overstreet]

As a fellow St. Louis native, I could really go for a Ted Drewes right about now.

mmmmmmm............A "concrete" with spoon stuck in it served up side down. 

[Overstreet]

The wife's house was in South St Louis. The neighborhood was built in the late 20s early 30s. It had porches with small front yards to the sidewalk. We used to sit out on the porch watching the show.  Two doors down was the over...OVERweight woman that would call the dog at all hours. She would alternate yelling at the son. Across the street was the divorced police sargent that lived next to the house where everyone in the family had been in prison at one time or the other. There was the two gay guys on the corner. THere was the Catholic/Wiccan that sold crystals at the swap meet and her pigeons that lived in a second floor room. There was the manic depressent landscaper that chased off an armed robber using a garden rake. There was the drunk uncle that lived in a basement across the street that sometimes didn't make it up the steps without falling back onto the yard. It was a strange mix of neighbors.

But in the evening along with the church chimes on the hour and half hour one  could also hear distant gun fire at times. Everything depended upon which street you were on.

[jbirch82]

A large part of the economic decline was the "merger" aka acquisition of Trans World Airlines (TWA) by American Airlines, and subsequently the demotion of Lambert International to a focus city, then nothing more than a destination served by the airline. The revenues generated from passengers either ending their trips in the city or connecting to other flight provided the city with the means to develop itself, including expanding the airport facilities to handle air traffic. This also led to the construction of Mid-America airport (BLV), to allow for overflow of traffic and to offer an alternative to using Lambert. BLV now is used partially by the Air Force, and no airlines currently serve the airport. I am not saying that this was the only factor to the decline in St Louis, however it did have a significant impact on the city.

[Lunican]

Here are a few excerpts from an interesting article about historic buildings in downtown St Louis being converted to data centers.

Data Centers Offer Hope for St. Louis Office Market

ST. LOUIS - Several recent transactions are raising the possibility that this city’s downtown, a depressed office market with an overall vacancy rate of over 22 percent, may become a regional hub for computer software and data-center companies.

The deals include a decision by Unisys to locate a new software center in a century-old building a block from the riverfront and the expansion of several large data-center operations by other companies.

...

“We wanted a ‘cool’ building,” Mr. Davies said. “We are hiring a lot of younger folks, and they like the look and feel of being downtown.”

The building, in many ways, symbolizes the promise and the problems of the St. Louis office market.
Downtown St. Louis, a district of roughly one-and-a-half square miles that begins at the riverfront, has about 13 million square feet of office space, down almost a third from 20 years ago. (These figures omit single-user buildings.) Much of the remaining space is in buildings from the 1920s and earlier. The last major new multitenant office building went up over 20 years ago.

Which is not to deny the district its charm. There are blocks and even entire streets â€" like Washington Avenue â€" that are unchanged from the days of the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. The district has numerous landmarks, including Louis Sullivan’s 1892 Wainwright Building and Alfred Mullet’s 1884 Old Post Office building.

...

New construction remains a distant dream. “You can count on one hand the sites for new office facilities downtown,” said Richard Ward, a development consultant and urban planner with Zimmer Real Estate Services here, but it turns out that the older buildings with their high ceilings and heavy construction function well as modern data centers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/realestate/commercial/09stlouis.html

[spuwho]

I just finished a trip to St Louis this week.

The  following are my "urban" observations as I visit St Louis periodically.

Downtown is currently being transformed with a significant amount of public works, all improving walk-ability and connectivity.

The largest project just finished and that was the Stan Musial-Veterans Memorial Bridge which re-routes Interstate 70 away from the overloaded Popular Street Bridge (which hosts the merging of 4 Interstate highways into a single span).

I drove over it this morning and enjoy the fresh architecture this bridge brings to the downtown, but still allows plenty of clearance for river traffic.



While the cable stayed design is very similar to the Dames Point Bridge, the use of geometric towers for staying the cables allows it to stand out and when lit at night is just as visually pleasing as our own. It's too bad the Fuller Warren had to use such a generic, almost utilitarian design approach.

Unfortunately the new bridge required a ramp that cutoff the last vestiges of the electric interurban that came into downtown St Louis via Tucker Street. People have tried over the years to get the State of Missouri and Illinois to utilize the ROW and access to downtown as part of METRO. The ROW went underground and the old station yard was still there under the street (as of last year). It used to bring in rolls of newsprint when the Globe Democrat took over the station building. But when the plan for this new bridge came in, the city decided to demolish Tucker Street as part of the project and now any opportunity for NE transit access has been lost.

Today you can still see what is left of the electric railroad even though the catenary was pulled down in 1961. The ROW runs on the Missouri side from the McKinley Bridge to just short of Tucker Street. After it reaches street level, the city pulled up the remaining rail back in the spring.



What did they do with this prime rail access? They buried it!



Probably the next biggest activity (and the most significant) is the major changes being made to the property hosting the Gateway Arch. (Officially known as the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial)

As of today the Arch, the park and Lacledes Landing are essentially "cut off" from downtown pedestrians by the below grading route of the former Interstate 70 through downtown.

Anyone familiar with how this was laid out will see the following changes:

- A new pedestrian only span has been built over the freeway that aligns the Arch with the city interior greenbelt hosting the old capital building


- The existing Arch parking structure (right under the Eads Bridge and the Lacledes METRO Station) will be demolished once the pedestrian bridge is complete. This means ALL visitors to the Arch will only have 2 choices.  Park on the riverbank which is extremely limited, or go where the City of St Louis wants you to go, the city side of the freeway and walk across. Technically, the best way to access the Arch when this is done is by taking METRO!

- The main entrance to the underground museum, which is at the footing of each Arch leg is going to be moved and will face the downtown now.

- The old floodwall facing the river has been demolished and a more architectural pleasing design is currently being built.

- All of the ash trees planted in the 1960's shortly after the Arch was finished have been cut down due to disease brought on by Chinese beetles. This was a bit stunning to see crossing the Popular Street Bridge as in my whole life there has been a small forest around the Arch and to see them in a broken heap was shocking. They will be replaced with a mix of new local tree types according to the Park Ranger I spoke with. The ash trees will be ground into mulch and used with the new trees.

- After much debate about terrorism, the BNSF rail line which was buried in a tunnel in front of the Arch will remain in place as is.

I spoke with a park ranger on what drove most of the changes and he came back and said "connectivity with downtown St Louis". Apparently there were surveys that showed that tourists would come downtown, see the Arch, then leave. Go to Busch Stadium, see baseball, then leave. No one was spending anytime (or money) in the urban biz district. By "turning around" the front door of the Arch, city leaders hope to get more out of tourists.

Here is what it will look like when finished.

Images courtesy of the Gateway Arch Improvement Project website.

http://www.cityarchriver.org/




Also, after years and years of tourists looking out of the Arch into Illinois and seeing nothing but rail yards, grain elevators, coal loaders, they have finally gotten their act together and made a decision to extend the greenbelt across the river.

A new park, the Malcolm Martin Memorial Park has opened squeezed between a grain elevator and a Peabody coal loader, but directly across from the Arch. Included in this is the Gateway Geyser, a large fountain at the back of the park. With the built observation deck, this affords great views of the Arch from across the river.







For years, St Louis has always embraced the river. Illinois ignored it. Now St Louis is turning the door around and Illinois (some 50+ years later) is beginning to leverage its prime location.

What is encouraging is the desire to extend the "urban greenbelt" east and west of the river. As it develops further it will only add to the experience.

What can Jacksonville learn from this? Being a city divided yet glued together by a river, how can we leverage this asset to foster connectivity? St Louis (and Illinois) are finally pulling it together, can we?

[spuwho]

I just found that the ROW in Missouri for the old interurban railroad was sold to the Great Rivers Greenway and will be turned into a vertical greenway exactly like what was done with the New York Central elevated line in Manhattan.

Engineering studies are currently in progress to utilize the trestle. In fact that part the trail will be named "The Trestle".

http://www.greatriversgreenway.org

The McKinley Bridge, which just finished a major overhaul for its 100th year of use, has had 2 biking lanes added to the bridge and the ramp down from the bridge. This will eventually be connected to the remaining trestle and follow the ROW all the way to Hadley street and end at a trailhead where Tucker Street and the ramp to the Stan Musial Bridge was built.

When complete, this will connect central St Louis with several rail trails on the Illinois side.  The plan in Missouri is to connect this with the long planned Mississippi Bike Trail.

So fortunately, while it will never be used for transit again, it will provide mobility and connectivity still.

Below is a picture of one of the high speed streamliners that traveled between St Louis and Peoria in 1954 and used the ROW discussed.

[finehoe]

"St. Louis is a long way from becoming another Silicon Valley. But its sudden emergence as a hotbed of entrepreneurship holds lessons for a country struggling to make a growing economy benefit Americans who don't happen to live in a handful of booming coastal megalopolises. For decades, St. Louis followed the familiar economic development playbook: try to attract big out-of-town companies, or keep local ones from leaving, by showering them with tax breaks and other subsidies. While it hasn't exactly abandoned that old strategy, St. Louis has increasingly shifted to a new one of attempting to grow its own small firms. Metro areas across the country are trying to do the same, in many cases with little to show for their efforts. St. Louis seems to have hit on the right formula, though actions in Washington could determine whether, over the long term, it succeeds or fails."

http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/junejulyaug-2016/st-louis-entrepreneurial-boomtown/