Downtown - a Core of Discovery 1:35 AM

Have you ever heard the phrase "there's nothing to do downtown"?

The National Park Service's answer to this is the Downtown "Core of Discovery".

With the ongoing City Arch River 2015 design competition, it's great to see the NPS express its dedication towards connecting the Arch to downtown in the meantime.

Each attraction has a nice informational page that will certainly be of use to tourists if this website is well-advertised. I particularly like the Flickr photo pools for each listed attraction. My favorite part, though, is the downtown architecture tour.

It's a 20-stop architectural smorgasbord. The tour covers the greatest hits (the Wainwright Building), the modern marvels (the Zinc building), house museums (the Campbell House), and more.

It might seem like a small step on the part of the NPS, but clearly much thought has gone into the design of this site and the marketing of our downtown. I applaud this effort and am excited that I'll be here in person to witness the more radical interventions that will be proposed this fall as a part of the Archgrounds International Design Competition.

City to River - Get Involved! 1:47 PM

Rarely do I copy a blog post and re-post it in its entirety, but I am doing so on behalf of City to River. CTR is the most exciting case of citizen activism in a city that's becoming known for it. We deserve a city for people, not just for cars, and so any Archgrounds redevelopment should remove the barrier of both the elevated and depressed lanes of I-70. Read more on their website. The blog post is below, and is linked here:

What is City to River doing to make the boulevard idea a reality?  City to River is an all-volunteer advocacy organization working on many fronts to bring the idea of highway removal to all the key decision makers in the Arch design competition.

Time is of the essence and City to River needs your help.  Here’s what we’re up to and what you can do to help:

City to River is:

• Meeting with finalist design teams to advocate for the inclusion of I-70 removal as part of the Arch grounds design competition.

• Earning endorsements of our vision from property owners, developers and other stakeholders.

• Encouraging the public to contact both Mayor Francis Slay and Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Superintendent Tom Bradley to express their support for the removal of I-70.

• Communicating with local elected officials to express support for the removal of I-70.

What YOU Can Do:

• Contact Mayor Francis Slay, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Superintendent Tom Bradley, and our  downtown Aldermen to express your support for the removal of I-70 (contact info below).

• Spread the word to family, friends, colleagues. Ask them to follow @CitytoRiver on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/CityToRiver. Send an e-mail to your contact list with a link to www.citytoriver.org, ask them to send the link to others.

• If you have contact with downtown developers, businesses, or property owners, tell them about City to River and the boulevard idea.  If they would like to learn more, connect us with them and we will provide them with information about the effort and how they can help.

Mayor Francis Slay
Phone: (314) 622-3201
Email: mayorslay@mayorslay.com
Twitter: @mayorslay
Address: Mayor’s Office
City Hall, Room 200
1200 Market Street
St. Louis, MO 63103

Superintendent Tom Bradley
Phone: (314) 655-1600
Email: Tom_Bradley@nps.gov
Address: Jefferson National Expansion Memorial
11 N. 4th Street
St. Louis, MO 63102

Alderman Phyllis Young
Phone: (314) 622-3287
Email: youngp@stlouiscity.com
Address: City Hall, Room 230
1200 Market Street
St. Louis, MO 63103

Alderman April Ford-Griffin
Phone: (314) 622-3287
Email: griffina@stlouiscity.com
Address: City Hall, Room 230
1200 Market Street
St. Louis, MO 63103

Alderman Kacie Starr Tripplet
Phone: (314) 622-3287
Email: TriplettK@stlouiscity.com
Twitter: @KacieStarr
Address: City Hall, Room 230
1200 Market Street
St. Louis, MO 63103

A Modest Proposal for Guiding Tourists Around St. Louis 4:10 PM

The Baltimore Visitor Center is located on Light Street, just adjacent to the city's bustling Inner Harbor.

All photographs by Michael Powers

This is a simple, but not un-serious structure to show to visitors. Its contents are much better than its exterior, though.

Inside are booths with brochures grouped by activity. A spacious front desk was staffed by four attendants when I visited. There is even a small theater that plays a Baltimore promo that looks as if it dates to 1997. My favorite part, though, was Baltimore's boasting of its ridiculous number and variety of neighborhoods:

Here are some random shots of the facility:

Baltimore does a great job of branding itself as a maritime/seafood destination. Crab paraphernalia is everywhere, as are sailboats, seen above.

This is the basics: have well organized booths where tourists-on-the-go can grab information about local attractions and restaurants.

The Inner Harbor was absolutely packed when I was there; the visitor center therefore had a good amount of pedestrians strolling through as well.

Two people staffed the welcome desk while two others roamed the floor.

St. Louis needs its own propaganda theater.

Guess what else? The Baltimore Visitor Center is located just outside a splash fountain popular with children...

I would like to see a nice St. Louis Visitors Center on Gateway Mall, specifically the block that houses Twain, better known as the Serra Sculpture. The center would feed into what has become a destination for St. Louis--Citygarden--much as Baltimore's does and could help visitors interpret and interact with the Serra Sculpture more than ever before. In addition, obviously, it would serve all the functions of that any visitor center should. The neighborhood map is a must!

I'm aware that St. Louis already has something similar to the example shown above in Baltimore. I volunteered briefly with the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission at the Visitor Center on the northwest corner of 7th and Washington. This seems like a great spot, connected to the convention center and closer to the Loft District. The space, though, to me was a bit underwhelming and the programming is not as good as Baltimore's. With St. Louis Centre being retooled into a parking garage, perhaps it would be better to pick up operations and move the center to the Gateway Mall, where it could have an interplay with Citygarden and truly show the city at its best.

Using an extant storefront for this purpose would be fine, too. Basically, this post is just a plea for our visitors center to produce video propaganda promoting this city and to put up a neighborhood map. We can do at least that. We can all move along, now. Nothing else to see.

Archgrounds Design Competition: Its Participants and Their Design Philosophies 6:45 PM

St. Louis Energized has a nice write-up on last night's "Meet the Designers" session for the City Arch River 2015 competition, which was held at the Roberts Orpheum Theater downtown.

The author summarized the five teams still vying in the competition along with their design philosophies, presented in brief, 15-minute presentations in which no questions were allowed from the audience.

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  • The Behnisch Team focused on the "needs of people" (stating that a "good city is a city with a human dimension"), as well as the built environment by calling for the Memorial to become an "active catalyst for urban cohesion." 

  
  

  • The approach of the MVVA Team seems primarily landscape-oriented, stressing that landscape (1) accommodates a humane scale, (2) provides continuity, and (3) is affordable.

  
  

  • The PWP Landscape Architecture, Foster + Partners, Civitas team (whose representative personally knew both Eero Saarinen and Dan Kiley) advocated "subtle and respectful" changes that, while transformative, are so natural that they're barely noticeable to the majority of the public.

  
  

  • The SOM, Hargreaves, BIG team stressed "making places for people" (places that are "alive" every day), as well as tying design ideas into a community's bold, long-range plans to "create economic vitality."

  
  

  • The Weiss/Manfredi team referred to three primary design categories, titled "Icon and Setting," "Connections," and "Layering Programs." The interesting facet of this team's approach was an affinity for embracing barriers (such as highways), by turning them into connections and "capturing their energy" without actually removing them.

  
  

Reading Live Tweets from the event, as well as the above summary in addition to others, I must say I am a bit worried that the most obvious problem of the Archgrounds may not receive its due attention and the needed ultimate solution. Interstate 70 from the Poplar Street Bridge all the way to the New Mississippi River Bridge is the obvious problem. Wholesale removal is the needed ultimate solution. I-70 will be re-routed upon completion of the new bridge anyhow, and connecting the Arch to neighborhoods should take this very symbolic and helpful step. An open doorway with a removed I-70 will literally allow surrounding neighborhoods a brand new view of, and connection to, the Arch. I fully endorse this concept and support City to River's effort to make this solution part of any proposal to redevelop the Archgrounds.

It's important here to note the ramifications of the removal of I-70. Does a removed I-70 promise instant development along the old interstate right-of-way? Of course not. The land where the highway once sat, upon removal, might sit as a landscape boulevard with few buildings of note for quite some years. Almost certainly, the entire 1.4 mile stretch of the new Memorial Drive that would take the place of the old I-70 will not be filled with urban-formatted buildings by the time the design competition's winning proposal is completed in 2015. This sounds very pessimistic, right? It seems to defeat the purpose of undertaking something so exciting and momentous as giving a stretch of road back to the city and its people rather than to speeding vehicles. After all, if the "new" Memorial Drive is in fact just a landscaped but largely lifeless boulevard in 2015, City to River will have failed and all skeptics of the City to River concept will have been vindicated, right?

Wrong (at least in my opinion!). An empty, but pedestrian-oriented, Memorial Drive will create an opportunity that does not presently exist--development could then locate on the periphery of the Archgrounds and create a "spine" of activity linking neighborhoods to the north (Carr Square, Columbus Square, Neighborhood Gardens, the Bottle District, Laclede's Landing, the Near North Riverfront, etc.) to their downtown. The present mess made by I-70 as it slices through a once functional grid is reason enough to abandon this alignment. Pedestrians and vehicles alike could safely maneuver a reconstructed street whereas I-70 today merely creates confusion and barriers.

As far as the new Memorial Drive proposed by City to River, and the possibility that it might not attract builders to populate the newly developable parcels, I point you here:

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The year is 1951 and these jets are flying just northeast of today's site of the Gateway Arch, which was completed in 1965. It was in 1947 that Eero Saarinen's Gateway Arch concept won the international design competition. In anticipation of the competition, most of the dozens of square blocks containing an antebellum manufacturing district were cleared in the early 1940s. So, if all building were gone from the site by 1942, and the site was a surface parking lot, as seen above, by 1951, then for at least 14 years the site of the memorial was not truly public. Considering that the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial didn't even officially open to the public until 1967, we see here that the same competition that netted the ingenious Arch design caused a 40-block swath of the city to go out of commission for over a decade. (I don't count parking lots, even publicly owned and maintained ones, as public places). If this is true, then we should allow for the same grace period for a new Memorial Drive in anticipation of its own greatness. That doesn't mean we as a city shouldn't aggressively market this newly available land or that the design competition won't cause an increase in demand for these blocks. It's just a plea for skeptics to realize that sometimes, as the old moniker goes, great things come to those who wait. The old I-70 alignment's erasure will have been more than justified if, in ten or twenty years, a new Memorial Drive is beginning to kick and thrive.

Now back to the buzz over the five teams. Not having seen the actual presentation, it's difficult to pass any substantive judgment on their concepts. As written up by St. Louis Energized, I despise the idea of Weiss/Manfredi. St. Louisans have had to limbo around barriers long enough! There are no LCD screens; no garish light displays; no amount of lush greenery or ivy screens; there is no sculpture large enough; no pedestrian bridge crazy enough; no public-space-beneath-the-interstate-avant-gardeism impressive enough; no single or multiple solutions to screening and/or incorporating deadening infrastructure into the redesign. While this is surely an interesting proposal from a conceptual standpoint, the design will be inhumane, no matter how flashy it is, if it values "concepts" over people and access. So I am turned off by this description of their philosophy entirely.

I am surprised at the suggestion of the PWP, et al. crew to make changes that are "barely noticeable" to the public. We must keep in mind that the Archgrounds are quite large and that, preserving the landscape largely as is requires that activation efforts on all edges of the Memorial be stepped up considerably. People need to be able to appreciate the passive landscaping of the Archgrounds, or otherwise the respect for its presence in this competition is somewhat ill-founded.

Many of the teams correctly identified that the Arch redevelopment, ultimately, should cater to people. This is a great though often overlooked observation--especially as traffic engineers crunch numbers and determine that the needs of cars somehow take precedence over the needs of people in what should rightfully be the region's greatest civic and public space.

I would not mind a design proposal that dedicated most of its time to addressing issues presented by having an interstate as a neighbor. Remove I-70 (do not tunnel it and merely hide the problem for just four blocks). Incorporate retail or tourist-supporting services within the arches of the Eads Bridge piers. Redesign parking for the site so that the northern edge of the Memorial visually and physically connects with Laclede's Landing and points north. Landscape the riverfront itself--certainly it is one the nation's most barren urban riverfronts today. Have water taxis or some sort of pedestrian bridge to connect to East St. Louis; see to it that the East St. Louis Riverfront indeed becomes home to the world's largest architecture museum, as proposed and sought by the St. Louis Building Arts Foundation. Enhance pedestrian connections to Chouteau's Landing; allocate some funding to the Chouteau Lake and Greenway to jumpstart that project. And so on and so forth. All of these interventions would make the Arch more of a "place" situated in a context--and little would have to be altered within the existing landscape other than its worst features currently, the parking garage and floodwalls.

Despite my earlier comments, I am absolutely thrilled by the excitement over this competition. Its outcome and winning proposal could truly lift the spirits of our city and give us all a place we're proud of. The Arch, downtown, the Mississippi River, and the city deserve it!

Conceding Tucker Boulevard to Blandness 9:49 AM

St. Louis doesn't have a system of comprehensive planning. Thus it surprises few observers in the urbanist community when an individual developer floats his or her project without regard to its surroundings.

Today comes (overall, great) news that the AFL-CIO Trust will commit $108 million to two downtown development projects--the Laurel Building (also known as the Dillard's Building) and the Park Pacific building at 13th and Olive.

So what's the bad news? Tucker Boulevard--a street whose grandiose size might confuse visitors into thinking it's St. Louis's "Main Street"--is being dedicated as the parking garage elevation for the Park Pacific building's redevelopment. A tiny rendering is shown in the article:

Some might say, in autocentric St. Louis, it's necessary to have dedicated parking (it's probably also tied to financing, in some way). Truthfully, I don't dispute that some parking is needed to redevelop this building. However, the above rendering is unacceptable for Tucker Boulevard if this street is ever to become active, urban, and attractive.

The City of St. Louis recently constructed a monster of a parking garage at the northeast corner of Tucker and Clark. See a Google Streetview capture of the garage, without its retail bays added as of yet, below:

I commend the city for attempting to make a statement with a parking garage rather than constructing a series of bare concrete decks (sort of like the kind shown in the Park Pacific rendering, on the north side of the site). However, parking is in severe oversupply downtown when all off-street spaces are accounted for. And the Tucker garage shown here at Clark Street is not even attached to any one project--it's a municipal garage. If every downtown redevelopment project includes its own dedicated parking garage with more than one space per visitor or resident, not to mention separate municipal garages, opportunity for a true urban environment is squandered. Transit is disincentivized as driving becomes easier. Every new parking space drives the cost of parking down, and as parking becomes cheaper, it becomes the better option. Convenient parking reduces walking times and distances, cutting down the chances that a pedestrian will linger downtown and walk around to discover its retail, restaurant, and entertainment offerings.

But this post is not even really a statement against downtown St. Louis's parking oversupply, primarily. It's about poor urban design on one of St. Louis's major downtown streets. Across from the new municipal garage at Tucker and Clark is a surface parking lot serving City Hall. Just north of the Gateway Mall blocks are the Park Pacific site, a pair of deadening and severe mid-rises, a woefully underused parcel that a one-story US Bank branch sits on, and several other gaps as well. Filling in the Park Pacific site with an unsightly parking garage relegates Tucker to third class status as an urban boulevard.

I wrote on a previous post in agreement with a statement that said people desire to live in cohesive urban environments. That means that few people will be proud of a place that is beautiful in one area (Washington Avenue), while dreary just a block or two over (Tucker Boulevard). We must reposition our downtown so that its dead zones are not so apparent.

Park Pacific developers should include a four-story mixed-use building that wraps Tucker, Pine, and Olive on all sides. Parking could be hidden in the core of this building. Street-level retail is not enough to mitigate the damage of exposed parking decks on a street with as many issues as Tucker has already. Here is an example of what I mean, from Baltimore's Fells Point neighborhood.

This new mixed-use building may not be flashy, but it's a nicely scaled urban building. Do you see its attached parking garage? I don't.

Walk too fast and you might even miss the spot to pull in to its large dedicated parking garage. It's located behind the building, on the inside and invisible to the public portion of the block.

Park Pacific should not proceed with plans that would concede Tucker to blandness. It's a visually important street for St. Louis.

Tucker--once 12th Street--has an important legacy that should be respected. 12th Street was once symbolic enough of St. Louis for postcard representation.

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Especially as St. Louis bids for the Democratic National Convention and wishes to play host to tens of thousands of visitors from across the nation in 2012, we should be cleaning up the face of our region--downtown St. Louis--not further scarring it.

Artist Peat Wollaeger is "Eyeing" Powell Square 3:42 PM

Powell Square, a long abandoned, long vandalized landmark right off of Interstate 55 south of downtown St. Louis, is about to get a new use of sorts--civic billboard. Click here to see a series of Flickr photographs of Powell Square.

According to the Post-Dispatch, Wollaeger was approached by Chivvis Development, developer for the stalled Chouteau's Landing project in which the Powell building sits, to develop a large mural with a positive message to the city.

The message soon to be scrawled across the Powell in a 16 by 16 feet display? "Eye" Heart St. Louis. Yes, Wollaeger's trademark "eye" will stand in place of the letter "I". Above is the Post-Dispatch photograph attached to their article "Peat Wollaeger has his eye on St. Louis", which gives an indication what the piece might look like.

As someone who has called for more uplifting civic images and messages to be placed across St. Louis, I think this is great! I am especially happy Chivvis seems to have backed away from the idea of cleanly renovating the Powell Square building, renaming it the Chouteau's Landing Art Center, and then painting it the least "artsy" of all colors--beige.

Winners of Archgrounds International Design Competition to Frame a Modern Masterpiece... 12:01 AM

...with the Serra Sculpture, AKA Twain (pictured below).

A source who wishes to remain anonymous has leaked the winning proposal of one of nine teams behind the City.Arch.River2015, the international design competition for the Archgrounds in downtown St. Louis.

The ever-controversial Serra Sculpture will be relocated from its current spot on Market between 10th and 11th Streets to the large lawn fronting the Arch, only several yards from Memorial Drive. The much-maligned "depressed section" of I-70 will remain as is. So too will its elevated portion near Laclede's Landing.

I am told that the winning team--also not to be announced yet--was selected for their design's "thoughtful reflection on the 'less is more' school of modernism".

"The winning team was believed to have stayed most true to the modernist spirit of the Archgrounds. What's more modern than a depressed interstate?" my source rightfully asked.

Below is a preliminary rendering of the proposal.

 Above, the Serra Sculpture will soon frame the Arch and Old Cathedral. Not to scale.

Think it's a little bare bones? Well, the multi-million dollar budget of the Framing a Modern Masterpiece design competition was completely gutted when, out of the blue, the National Park Service threatened to relocate the Gateway Arch to Clayton's Shaw Park, forcing the City of St. Louis to offer $10 million in tax credits for the iconic monument to remain in its historic location.

Reportedly, the second place team proposed reinstalling the St. Louis Centre skybridges over the depressed section of I-70 to allow for better connections between downtown and the Archgrounds. Competition judges felt the 1980s mall appendages were too garish and clashed with the minimalist 1960s-design of Interstate 70.

More details as they emerge.

City to River Group Hits the Local Media 3:56 PM

KMOV (Channel 4) has covered the City to River group's proposal to tear down a portion of Interstate 70 soon to be redundant with the construction of a new Mississippi River Bridge. Watch their coverage above or read the transcript here.

The only problem is that they failed to explicitly mention this--that I-70 will be rerouted over the new bridge and that a new at-grade, urban Memorial Drive would not be replacing I-70 at all in any official capacity. KMOV opened by labeling the proposal a "radical idea".

Also, the reporter interviewed a MODOT official who claimed the agency had "severe reservations" about removing any portion of I-70. See the video above. MODOT is open to tunneling the depressed lanes of the soon-to-be-former I-70, but not demolishing the whole 1.4 mile stretch in favor of an urban boulevard.

Where do I begin?

Removing a redundant piece of an interstate is not a "radical idea" in my book. The transformation of the area would be radical in the physical sense, if that was what was meant. But the notion itself is rather, well, sensible. The Archgrounds International Design Competition is underway and has provided funding for making better connections to the Arch and surrounding neighborhoods--not just the four blocks where the depressed section runs. It makes sense to remove the barrier between Laclede's Landing and the rest of downtown and to create a nexus of activity in the Memorial's center. An urban Memorial Drive would pull visitors from Laclede's Landing southward and allow them to much more easily, and with much more urbane surroundings, reach the Gateway Arch and Old Courthouse.

Furthermore, as mentioned, the new Mississippi River Bridge will carry the new I-70 route, which will now enter the city of St. Louis at Cass Avenue rather than the Poplar Street Bridge. Funding is in place and the bridge is being constructed. Now is the time to capitalize on the fact that this 1.4 mile stretch is simply redundant and not needed. Current plans indicate that MODOT will simply rechristen the old I-70 lanes as I-44, extending it northward from its terminus at I-55. To me, it's a radical idea not to remove this ugly barrier at such an opportune time.

Now for MODOT. How exactly is any 1.4 mile stretch of road absolutely necessary to the region's transportation network? Okay, maybe turning I-270 into an urban boulevard would be a ridiculous proposal, but a small run of a road at the convergence of several interstates? That's a bit of a different proposal. There's simply no way of arguing that a new Memorial Drive with even a 30 mile per hour speed limit could not accommodate traffic attempting to travel the 1.4 miles to either I-55 or I-64 from the new I-70 landing at Cass Avenue.

At an average rate of even 20 miles per hour (factoring in a stop light or two and clear traffic), it would take just 4.2 minutes to make it from one end of the new Memorial Drive to the other. Trucks heading northbound from I-55 could choose to either cross the river twice to reach I-70 without using surface roads or simply proceed north on Memorial Drive.

Our region has an incredibly dense network of interstates for its size. Some urbanists, including me, believe more than just this 1.4 mile segment of I-70 should be studied and considered for removal as well. (How about looking into reconnecting Soulard and Benton Park by "boulevardizing" I-55 from Lemp to the Poplar Street Bridge? Now that would be in the realm of "radical".) But that is for another time. City to River's proposal is smart and sensible, looking to improve our city at a low cost to all us, who'll enjoy the project's many benefits.

The New Memorial Drive, at Spruce looking eastward toward Busch Stadium.
Image Courtesy of City to River

Disrupting a National Historic Landmark 9:38 AM

I don't usually dedicate an entire blog post to someone else's blog post, but the occasion calls for it.

Rob Powers of Built St. Louis has posted a provocative piece on the Archgrounds Redevelopment--AKA Framing a Modern Masterpiece international design competition.

Powers argues that the landscaping, while a nice photo-op, is not part of the city. He calls for the landscape surrounding the Arch to be built upon, restoring a street grid and "bringing the city back to the Arch".

It is important to note that both the Arch and its surrounding landscape architecture are listed as a single National Historic Landmark.

How would you feel seeing the reflecting ponds and other green space disappear in favor of an urban street grid?

In my own opinion, the grounds make for a masterful design of deferring to the Arch in every way. The sleek, modernist monument is almost elemental, rising out of passive green space just as sinuously as its curving pathways and reflective lakes.

That said, if an urban streetscape restoration were gradual and were highly invested, I don't know if I would much miss this reflective landscaping. I simply worry about the execution of any construction projects in our time. Craftsmanship and creativity are too often lacking, most markedly when juxtaposed next to our city's cache of historic buildings. Especially if such a project were to have too low a budget or be conceived and built by one developer/builder, I don't think the result would honor our modern masterpiece. I do believe in good, sound contemporary construction--but we would need something especially smart to defer to the silent grandeur of the Arch.

Besides that caveat, I simply doubt the National Park Service would ever go for it. What do you think?

St. Louis Infrastructure and Development Review 11:40 PM

I've been lax on updating lately, despite the fact that St. Louis has seen some big news as of late. So why not crunch it all into one convenient post?

First, Highway 40's open again. Interstate 64. Whatever.

I'm flabbergasted by the largely positive response to the re-opening of the highway. It provided nothing for St. Louis but more highway lanes, fewer homes in Richmond Heights, a look fresh out of 1960s Brasilia, and better-designed interchanges. For hundreds of millions? Pardon my dripping sarcasm, but grrrreeeaaaaat. Call me out for not actually having driven the highway yet (not been home since it opened), but the pictures seem to me to only highlight the project's total lack of imagination.

Where's the lush median?

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What about High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) Lanes? These are pretty standard on many roadways. If you don't have at least one other person in the car with you, you cannot use the lane with a symbol like the one below:

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HOV Lanes encourage (read: enforce) carpooling and therefore fewer smog-emitting cars on the road.

Better yet, as I've argued on this blog, why not simply end I-64/40 at McCausland/Clayton Road. At this point, there could either be an urban boulevard with a 35-40 MPH speed limit or...no roadway at all. The region survived a year or so without this segment of the interstate; it's hard to argue that it was vital to the survival of the region at this point. This would have been a great opportunity to open up Forest Park to the neighborhoods to the south and show that pedestrian traffic flow matters as much as automobiles. Oh well; another generation or two of an obtrusive interstate in a city that has far too many.

I know it's too late to complain (yet I persist), but I just am nauseated by the positive response to this large and wasteful infrastructure project when the region has so many greater needs for transportation infrastructure.

Next, the Archgrounds International Design Competition! Hearkening to the original international competition that netted Eero Saarinen's landmark Gateway Arch proposal, the National Park Service will hold another competition with an eye to reinvigorating the present grounds and forging connections with surrounding neighborhoods, including the East St. Louis riverfront. In keeping with my teeth-gnashing over Highway 40, I am absolutely thrilled that the project could see the removal of the depressed lanes of I-70 and even the elevated lanes at Laclede's Landing. This portion of the highway is set to become obsolete as I-70 is re-routed into Illinois over the new Mississippi River Bridge. Proposals must include removing this divisive eyesore from the equation if the Arch is ever to be psychologically connected to Laclede's Landing and downtown. I am beyond excited at these prospects!

Ballpark Village. I agree with blogger Rick Bonasch's (St. Louis Rising) sentiments on recent discussions of the Ballpark Village development. There's no "village" component being discussed at all! Not including residential in this high-profile parcel would be an enormous mistake, especially considering Blue Urban witnessed a nearly instant sell-out of the Ballpark Lofts development in a down economy.

The Bottle District. HRI, Inc. of New Orleans is set to redevelop the old McGuire Moving and Storage building into lofts geared toward artists. Excellent! It's great to see the Bottle District development start off on a positive, organic note. There are no contrived 700-foot skyscraper pipe dreams--just a sensible proposal to restore a historic building and inject new life into it.

Grand Center. Not to be outdone by downtown, Grand Center may soon be getting its own artist loft development in the old Metropolitan Building. Right now, this is coming to me in the form of an unsubstantiated claim on the Urban St. Louis forums, but hopefully we'll hear some sort of confirmation soon. This building was scheduled to become a hotel of the Hyatt brand, but those plans have fallen through.

As for hotels, Grand Center may soon have two. Again, Urban St. Louis forum rumormongers (a term of affection, mind you) stated that St. Louis University President Lawrence Biondi was opposed to a hotel proposal on Forest Park Avenue just south of campus, this one of the Holiday Inn chain. That one may still be going forward. But SLU is not sitting idly by. SLU is partnering with the Lawrence Group to transform the former Interiors Unlimited Building adjacent to Triumph Restaurant and the Moto Museum into a luxury hotel.

Could St. Louis be emerging from the recession?

You May Now Purchase the Downtown Gift Card Online 10:18 AM

In furtherance to a recent post, you can now click here, on the Downtown St. Louis Partnership's website, to purchase a gift card that applies only to one of more than 100 businesses located downtown.

What's the point? To keep holiday spending downtown! The holidays are a make-or-break point for retail stores, especially. This is why "Black Friday", the day after Thanksgiving, is so-named: it's the first day of the year that retailers jump out of the red and starting making a profit! With that in mind, please remember to patronize local businesses, who must compete against corporate stores often with longer hours and sometimes with lower prices. Our unique local businesses reflect St. Louis and no where else. A good local business will offer a better or different product from the national retailers and will hopefully provide you better service as well.

Now, the Downtown Gift Card applies to a couple chains/non-locals (Macy's is absent, notably), including most of the stores at Union Station. Still, purchasing this gift card allows you to introduce someone to downtown and, with any luck, one of its unique and independent businesses. You just might help a unique piece of St. Louis culture stay afloat! Bravo and good holiday cheer!

Finish Your Holiday Shopping in Mere Minutes: Downtown St. Louis Gift Cards 6:36 PM

Downtown St. Louis is debuting "Downtown St. Louis Gift Cards" this Monday, November 23, 2009.

You may purchase one between the amounts of $5 and $500 and finish your holiday shopping in as long as it takes to order the gift card. The card will be accepted at at least 100 establishments downtown right out of the gate with more to come soon after. The card can only be used downtown and will keep money circulating downtown. This list of 100 includes restaurants, shops, and services all alike. See the bottom of this post for current participants.

If you're interested in a Downtown Gift Card, contact Matt Schindler at mschindler@downtownstl.org or 314-436-6500 ext. 223. It is unclear right now whether the cards will be available for purchase at some or all of the participating retailers and restaurants (or whether you'll have to order one directly from Mr. Schindler). I guess we will find out when the card debuts on November 23, 2009.

I think this idea is excellent. While it might be even better to include only downtown-specific businesses or non-chains, the effect could still be great. Imagine giving the downtown gift card to a relative of yours that has given up on downtown. Suggest that they take a stroll around UMA or Salt of the Earth, or buy some lunch at Flannery's. They just might be surprised at the progress of downtown--and might come back and spend more, with or without a card.

I applaud this effort of the Downtown St. Louis Partnership. It would be great to see a local business-specific gift card arise for St. Louis City and perhaps the County as well. Maybe next year...

Here are the presently participating businesses:

6 North Coffee Company
12th Street Animal Hospital & Boutique
12th Street Diner
American Institute of Architects (AIA) Store
Anthony’s
Baladas
Brewhouse
Beverly’s Hill
Boxers
Bridge & Tunnel Pizza (B&T)
Bubba Tea
Café Cioccolato
Capri Restaurant
Carmine's Steak House
Charlie Gitto's
Charm Boutique
City Gourmet
City Museum
Clark Street Grill
Culinaria - A Schnucks Market
Downtown Urgent Care
Edible Arrangements
Einstein's Bagels - St. Louis Union Station Marriott
El Borracho
Executive Salon
Flamingo Bowl
Flannery’s Irish Pub
Geechi's Florist
Gelateria Tavolini
Great Cuts
J. Buck’s
Jade
Kenary Park Florist & Gifts
Kitchen K
La Buena Salud
Lee J
Left Bank Books
Lombardo's Trattoria
Lucas Park Grille
Mama Figlia
MacroSun International
Mango
Marriott - St. Louis Union Station
McMurphy’s Grill
Mike Shannon’s Steaks & Seafood
Mosaic
Niche
Red
Renaissance Grand Hotel & Suites
Roberts Mayfair Hotel
Roberts Orpheum Theater
St. Louis Fitness Factory
Salt of the Earth
Starbucks - Hyatt Regency
Starbucks - Renaissance Hotel
Station Grille - St. Louis Union Station Marriott
Tony’s
Teutenberg’s
Washington Avenue Bistro
Westin Hotel
UMA
UPS Store
St. Louis Union Station
- Bud Shop
- The Candy Shop
- Cardinal Clubhouse
- Cardinal Rookie Clubhouse
- Charley's Steakery
- Culture Vibes
- Dog On It
- Edy's Grand Ice Cream
- Fat Sassy's
- The Fudgery
- Gateway News
- Gold & Diamonds
- Hard Rock Cafe
- Houlihan's
- Imani's
- Inspirations
- Key West Cafe
- Landry’s Seafood House
- The Lark
- Lids
- Marquess Gallery
- Missouri Threads
- Nestle Toll House Cookies
- Panda Express
- Photo Shop
- Pita King
- Play and Learn
- Quiznos
- Sbarro
- Shoes Etc.
- Sports Avenue
- St. Louis Jewelry
- St. Louis Taco & Grill
- St. Louis Union Station Parking (west or south lot)
- Subway
- Treasures
- Xtreme Game Play

More merchants still being added!

The History of Parking 11:22 AM

The National Building Museum in Washington D.C. is playing host to a fascinating exhibit: the history of parking in the United States.

A Washington Post article on the exhibit pulls out a few interesting, if not altogether surprising points: parking lots used to be rare and parking structures were once given design consideration.

Yet the modern era that emphasized architectural honesty and a bold break from classicism admired the repetitive geometry of the concrete garage. It emboldened architects to highlight, rather than hide, increasingly large structures dedicated to that ultimate symbol of American progress and freedom--the automobile.

From the article:

There was an era, says Sarah Leavitt, curator of the National Building Museum show, when cities took pride in these structures. But that pride, based on the sense that a modern city couldn't progress without adequate parking, hid a darker indifference to the historical fabric of the city. The exhibition also includes before-and-after shots of a block of F Street NW, showing the loss of two historic buildings to a hideous parking garage built next to the Hotel Washington. It also includes an image of one of the most notorious parking garages in the world, the Michigan Theater in Detroit, made by slamming concrete decks into the shell of a classic and beautifully ornamented movie house. To this day, people still park there surrounded by the ghostly architectural shadow of a building once meant to please and delight.

In St. Louis, many of us are well aware of the history of parking. Parking garages--and other autocentric uses such as automobile showrooms--used to be housed in urban, street-fronting buildings. We saw this in the old Livery Stable on Locust in Automobile Row--demolished by SLU in 2007 for, ironically, a surface parking lot.

Livery Stable in the foreground. Photograph courtesy of VanishingSTL, which ran an excellent piece on the Livery Stable demolition here. Note how the Stable contributes to the urban streetscape; now it's a parking superblock.

The modern era in St. Louis was much as described above in the Washington Post article: architects boldly ripped out the historic built environment for oversized concrete garages. Of all the buildings that have been demolished in downtown St. Louis since the 1950s, parking garages are rarely among those targeted (if ever?). Some of downtown's dreariest and most life-sucking uses remain modern-era garages that must come down to create lively streetscapes.

Public Enemy Number One, in my opinion, is the outright hideous and, frankly, embarrassing presence of the Busch Stadium garages.

Source: City-Data.com

Who doesn't feel sorry for the pedestrian that has to walk a whole block beneath the hulking presence of one of the Busch Stadium garages? To think that they bookend the proposed Ballpark Village development, too! Clearly, in order to have an active "village-like" atmosphere, these horrific garages should go. Likewise, urbanists often lampoon Kiener Plaza for its supposed lifelessness; yet it's the hideous Kiener garages that flank the civic plaza that lend the space so much drear and droll.

In another urban planning and design disaster, the 1896 Century Building was destroyed to create a parking garage that mocked the original piece of architectural splendor. Detractors rightfully called it "Garage Mahal". This 2004 garage clearly retreated from the attention-grabbing antics of its modern predecessors (if for no other reason than the controversy over the Century demolition). Yet, somehow, its presence is only slightly more "welcoming" than Busch or Keiner.

No, by the way, street-level retail does not always mitigate parking garages ugliness. Something about the permeable nature of garages makes them uncomfortable for the pedestrian; they're open; the wind blows through, as if they were vacant, windowless buildings. Their concrete structures are usually heavy and foreboding; their nightime orange glow menacing.

The saga continues in St. Louis. Instead of getting Pyramid's "Mercantile Exchange" retail district with a restyled St. Louis Centre, we're now getting a parking garage with street level retail. While this deal may be preferable to a standalone, completely ugly and unadorned parking garage at the old Ambassador site as was originally proposed to placate downtown lawfirm Thompson Coburn--it's a far cry from good planning. Downtown has too much parking; each garage makes downtown a little less interesting and less walkable.

The history of parking in St. Louis, especially downtown, could have supplied the National Building Museum with plenty of material. Recall that the site of the Gateway Arch sat as a huge surface parking lot for decades (from the early 1940s all the way to the early 1960s), marring the riverfront and totally disrespecting the original site of the colonial city of St. Louis.

Despite lessons learned since then, St. Louis is still building parking garages for each new development, reducing their urban appeal. There's a recently completed garage at Tucker and Clark; look for new ones to rise with the Kiel Opera House redevelopment as well as the Municipal Courts Building. And those are all contiguous blocks.

As I've argued many times on this site, St. Louis needs a parking plan for its downtown and a zoning code that emphasizes the importance of pedestrian activity and safety over that of vehicular ease of access. With sound planning, the "future of parking" should be a much less lengthy story than its past.

Downtown St. Louis Needs a Parking Study 6:21 PM

A parking study and plan for downtown St. Louis, backed by an ordinance that would adopt the findings and enforce them as law, could have prevented the demolition of the Ambassador Theater, the Century Building, and more.

A friend of mine from Providence, Rhode Island who now lives in St. Louis recently commented to me that he could not believe what downtown St. Louis had demolished for parking lots and garages, even since the 1990s. "Providence would have never done this," he said of the woefully misguided razing of the Title-Guaranty Building on the Gateway Mall. As many others have observed, vibrant cities hold onto human scale buildings and architectural diversity because they contribute to urban life. Supplying more spaces for cars creates convenience for drivers alone--not the route to urban revitalization.

A recent planning-related article I read put it simply: if you plan for cars, you'll get traffic; if you plan for people, you'll get people.

Without offering up a potshot at Culinaria--recently under fire for reportedly leading to the closure of several businesses downtown--the Century Building fiasco should have been the city's final wake-up call. Losing human scale, mixed-use buildings--or foregoing the opportunity to erect these buildings--should no longer be an option for downtown St. Louis. I'm confident that a parking study would reveal downtown is oversupplied. A complementary downtown parking plan could target city-owned garages for removal, or city-owned surface lots downtown (are there any?) that could be used for development.

A consulting firm well versed in urban planning and transportation planning would call for a ban on the construction of any parking-only building until the study was next updated (10 years?). We all know, and yet I feel compelled to repeat, that each parking lot and garage is an incentive to drive. For those that feel downtown parking is a pain and feel that parking garage rates are inflated given the oversupply of spaces downtown, it's an incentive to avoid downtown altogether. A sound parking plan would be, conversely, an incentive for public transportation ridership, for biking, and for walking. This translates to a more active, walkable, and walked city.

(See my St. Louis Beacon piece from last year for more thoughts on how parking-abundance hurts livable cities.)

Cary, North Carolina (outside of Raleigh) has a parking study that I stumbled across while doing research for work. While I've not delved into it too deeply, it intrigues me that a suburban community would look into determining parking deficit/surplus. When city government pledges to help each downtown law firm, etc. build its own adjacent parking garage, does it even ask this basic question?

Cary Parking Study Analysis

To see more of the Cary Study's documents, click here.

When will downtown St. Louis have a strategic parking plan? The answer is, almost assuredly, when "we" write it.

Amid Culinaria Ado, Don't Forget Pointer's in Benton Park! 7:05 PM

Undoubtedly, St. Louis is excited about the opening of the first full-service grocery store in downtown St. Louis since Schnucks abandoned their store on Cass in the 1990s. The Culinaria will open in the Old Post Office garage, nee Century Building, and will be run by none other than Schnucks. The hours are impressive (6am - 10pm daily). Parking is validated on one level of the garage above. Prices, from preliminary reports, will be similar to those at other stores, if not the same.

If the Century Building had not been sacrificed to provide space and free parking for such a store, I'd be unabashedly ecstatic with all the rest. I'm still pleased, despite the resonant negativity, that downtown St. Louis is, with each passing day, becoming a more and more livable neighborhood.

Yet I'm extremely excited that one of my favorite St. Louis neighborhoods will be getting its own market. Pointer's, at 2901 Salena in Benton Park, is set to open in two weeks according to its owner (as reported by Sauce Magazine's blog here). At 12,000 square feet, Pointer's will be a bit less than half the size of Culinaria, but will offer meat, produce, and dairy departments.

Check out their building:


View Larger Map

This is urbanism at its best. Notice that there is no parking above; the building is a mixed use building with apartments on the second story and residential buildings all around. This market has the potential to do at least as much for Benton Park (and surrounding neighborhoods) as Culinaria will do for downtown.

South Siders have little choice but to jump in cars to autocentric grocery stories at unfortunately unsightly and large intersections, such as the Schnucks at Grand and Gravois or the Shop N Save in Gravois Plaza. The markets offer all the same fixings as their suburban counterparts--free and plentiful parking, a big box store, and yes, the same prices. Yet it's walkable neighborhood markets that seem a real value-added to urban neighborhoods. Instead of a depressing shopping experience at Grand and Gravois, I could pay a bit more on goods and spare myself the drive altogether. To me, this experience is truly more valuable than what's on the price tag of whatever I'm purchasing.

Congratulations, Benton Park, at continuing your path towards becoming St. Louis's most urban neighborhood!

The Mayor's Stance on Preservation of the Police Headquarters 1:21 AM

From today's Post-Dispatch article:

Jeff Rainford, chief of staff for Mayor Francis Slay, said the mayor "will be for the most cost-effective option that is the most beneficial option to the Police Department and we don't know what that is yet." He said the mayor was not interested in a temporary solution.

Those options are to A) rehabilitate the 1927 structure, B) demolish and rebuild, or C) relocate altogether. Somehow I doubt that the quote from Jeff Rainford indicates that the city will look at what the effects of losing a solid, historic structure would be when you have a surface lot across the street. Or the value of embodied energy. Or how to build a better building than what's already there.

Option B is ludicrous.

A Digest 3:48 PM

It's been a busy semester and a sparse blog as of late.

I have a lot to catch up on, and thought I would do so in rapidfire fashion:

First, the Mayor's inauguration speech. Impressive. No, really. He actually engendered a bit of civic confidence and pride. A couple standouts, though, were his calls to hire more young professionals to staff Planning and Urban Design (as well as IT and the Citizens Service Bureau), his confidence in the revitalization of North City (via Paul McKee, Jr.?), his threats against MODOT to start considering public transit, and, of course, the call to reenter St. Louis City into the County.

My suggestions? Give Planning real power in city government and then seek the professionals. Who wants to work in an "advisory" agency that has real little power? Well, okay, I would love the job, but would be extremely frustrated at the limitations of the office. Rollin Stanley surely was. The city will continue to lose these talented and energetic people if the process of government is designed to exclude them.

Re: North City, it's rumored that the Blairmont Master Plan will be introduced to the Board of Aldermen shortly...

Re: MODOT, bravo, Mayor Slay! Just think: if St. Louis City joins the County, Metro will have an easier time passing transit funding bills.

Which brings me to the next point: yes, St. Louis City entering the County is the conservative solution to undoing the Great Divorce of 1876. But it's a necessary first step, really, to the healing of a fractured regional psyche. If the City and County showed a dedication to work together to solve urban problems within both, the region could shift the dynamic away from the growing western fringes and back toward the center.

Next Up: the Walgreens coming to Lafayette just west of Tucker. Urban STL forumers who attended a recent public meeting have said that Walgreens will actually build up to the street and will add a faux-second story to better fit in with the surroundings. The new store will even attempt to match the detailing of the Georgian across the street. While I'm sure this will turn out laughable, think of the alternative: the beige or white box with way too much parking surrounding it on three sides. No thanks. I am happy to hear this news!

Next: Various local business news.

It appears that Five Bistro is moving to 5100 Daggett on the Hill (formerly Pizzeria del Piazza), leaving its Grove location empty. Yet I hear from a friend that the former El Mundo Latino restaurant at the northwest corner of Manchester and Tower Grove may be getting rehabbed as we speak. Putting that corner back in use would be a major shot in the arm to the still-struggling western end of the Grove District along Manchester.

As reported by Sauce Magazine, this nifty building in Benton Park will be host to a wine bar called Ernesto's. Check out the Streetview from 2007 and then look at the massive rehaul the building underwent.


Photo Source: St. Louis Investment Realty

Now, did I call the Patch neighborhood's coolness or what? The Post-Dispatch is reporting that a partnership between Steins Broadway, Inc. and Rothschild Development may transform the former Coca Cola Syrup Factory into 77 new lofts and the home of Lemp Beer! Awesome news.

Lastly, the Kiel Opera House is coming back to life, finally (well, I suppose we should wait and see, but it appears a done deal). This is nearly 100 percent positive news--except the parking situation. The talks are that the adjacent Abrams Building will be hollowed out and turned into a parking structure. It's time the city showed leadership on this issue. Not every development should receive its own garage. Surely the city's new Tucker/Clark garage could service most able-bodied patrons; the rest could benefit from set-asides from the Scottrade Center attached garage.

That's it for now.

April Preservation Board Also Contains Two National Register Nominations 2:15 PM

In furtherance to the previous post, this month's Preservation Board Agenda features two important possible additions to the National Register of Historic Places.

The first is one of the remnants of old St. Louis, with its narrow commercial lots--the William A. Stickney Cigar Company Building at 209 N. 4th Street. Click here to see a Google Street View of the building.

The second is very exciting: the hulking National Candy Company industrial building at 4230 Gravois, which is technically in Dutchtown but, since I grew up in Bevo, I always claimed it as my neighborhood's heritage.

Imagine Schools is the applicant. Through a website search, it appears they're planning on opening an "Imagine International Academy of Arts" in this spot. They're likely going to use the Missouri state historic tax credits to renovate this large building into a workable condition. What a great building and wonderful re-use of the site!



View Larger Map

More Yahoo! Travelers Give St. Louis a Flunking Grade 9:00 AM

A while ago I covered the inane reviews featured on Yahoo! Travel's website. While I think St. Louis could do 1000 times better at marketing itself as a navigable, tourist-friendly destination, some of the comments featured were simply ignorant. For one, why review your trip entirely based on your hotel experience? And does your botched night of dining at Applebee's in West County truly reflect on St. Louis's culinary offerings?

Well, enjoy Round 2--or check them out for yourself here.

Robbed
By A Yahoo! Contributor, 01/14/09
We were robbed at gunpoint during our visit in January 2009. The robbery occured near Euclid and Maryland avenue, in the Central West End, which is purportedly an ***upscale area populated by young urban professionals.*** The police seemed less than interested in our plight. Even our friends in St. Louis said "Hey, it's the city, you take your chances."
We are never coming back. Our friends can visit us in safe, well-defined Wichita, which is safe and family-friendly.

Ouch. Not much to say about that one. Please--give the city another chance? At what time did this occur? Was anyone hurt? How many people were you with? Yikes...

STL is Baltimore Without an Ocean or Culture
By A Yahoo! Contributor, 01/04/09
I am a well-traveled professional, having been to 44 of the 50 United States. A December 2008 one-week stay in St. Louis has convinced me that it is essentially Baltimore with no ocean/bay or culture to speak of.

1) Extremely segregated
2) Nasty, lazy and ignorant locals
3) Burnt-out abandoned brick buildings
4) Arrogance among the ignorant ("Country Pride, I beleve?)
5) An incredibly apparent aura of depression and unhealthy lifestyles


I found the Gateway Arch somewhat interesting, but the Anheuser-Busch tour was rushed and quite dull, which I liken to the recent buyout by InBev. Having met several individuals that worked at Anheuser-Busch, I can certainly see how their slow, slovenly ways allowed the buyout/mass terminations to happen.
Like the business traveler below, I was holed up in an overpriced (Millenium) hotel with no hot water and rude, snide employees. $15 to park two blocks away, and do NOT walk the streets of STL at night! I closed my deal but I will not be back here, if I can help it.

I'm pleased with the Baltimore comparison, minus the pejorative tagline. Maybe someone can enlighten me--but how exactly do you come to know the work ethic ("lazy") and education levels ("ignorant") of the locals when you're on a (presumably) short visit somewhere?

I find the level of perception improbable among some of these travelers.

St. Louis is NOT the Midwest!
By A Yahoo! Contributor, 01/02/09
It absolutely irks me that so many cretins use "St. Louis" and "Midwest
in the same sentence! This is not the Midwest, people! Chicago, Des Moines, Indianapolis, Milwaukee are good Midwestern cities. St. Louis is a SOUTHERN town, complete with segregated neighborhoods, an immensely lower standard for education/work ethic, poverty, and just downright lazy and indifferent folks. I thank heaven for I-270 so that I may bypass this feted and festering landfill.

When did the South become a byword for "feted and festering landfill"? Again, wonderful perceptive abilities from these visitors, huh? To have a whole 2.8 million/350,000 people pegged on one visit, perhaps?

What Improvement?
By A Yahoo! Contributor, 12/31/08
Many of the reviewers have indicated that St. Louis has gone under "major improvement" over the last several years.
We stopped on the way from Indianapolis to Kansas City. Our last visit prior to this was in 1997, when the area was a vertiable dump. Fast forward 11 years and, yes, there is SOME semblance of genrtification in the areas near Washington Avenue, St. Louis still has a long, long way to go. In Indianapolis, we enjoy our sporting events in areas far away from potentially dangerous areas, which seems to be the opposite of St. Louis, specifically the Edward Jones Dome, just two blocks away from a very seedy area. Lumiere Place looks nice, but when you can see urban blight, poverty and an overall element of desparity across the highway from your $200/night suite, something just doesn't seem right. Great Italian food on the Hill, Forest Park is beautiful, but my goodness the local folks don't really seem interested in anything, let alone serving the customer.

Quote. Of. The. Year. (in bold)

It Really Wasn't Worth the Stop
By A Yahoo! Contributor, 11/09/08
Greetings fellow travelers,

When you're on commuting I-70 and need a place to call it an evening, avoid St. Louis.We (myself, my wife and our five-year-old son) looked at several hotels in downtown STL, and there was indeed a significant safety concern. Soooo.....we headed west and tried Wentzville...more dirty and repugnant folks. We settled in Columbia, MO in a nice hotel. What we are saying, as a family, is that STL may not be worth the stop. Very limited lodging, restaurants and a very serious safety concern.

Could you be a little more specific, perhaps? It doesn't really sound like you saw too much of St. Louis.

We had a great time!
By A Yahoo! Contributor, 10/03/08
Man, I wish we could move here. Our 24 hours in St. Louis were wonderful. First, we sat on a bridge over the Mississippi River for over an hour during rush hour traffic. Then, we had to take a 12-mile detour because one of the main throughfares (Highway Farty to you locals) was closed. When we stopped at a hotel in Creve Coeur, it took the pig waiting on us over an hour to check us in. Then, dinner at Applebee's was five-star - exactly how does one screw up French Fries? And kudos to the pile of lard sitting at the bar drinking his Bud and smoking his cigs - your gruff demeanor, bad acne and Cardinals hat personified the essence that is St. Louis! We can't wait to return!

Argh! Applebee's again giving a bad name to its host city!

These were all the one and two star reviews on the page. If that wasn't depressing enough for you, follow the link at the beginning of this post.

Tourists need wayfinding signs, sidewalks in good repair, an affordable and convenient transit system, better and more creative outreach, good local dining establishments around hotels, street trees, entertainment that is easy to find, ad infinitum. The St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission should take note of these reviews, even if some are quite silly.

Seriously. Cool. Public. Art. 6:30 PM

Check it out--from Lvov, Ukraine.



Can we just copycat this for Chouteau's Landing?