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

Fox 2's Elliot Davis Assails Infrastructure Improvements; Misses the Mark 1:58 PM

Recently, Fox 2's ever vigilant Elliot Davis covered streetscape improvements on Delor in Bevo in his "You Paid For It" segment.

For a summary of what was done to the street, see Mark Groth's post from St. Louis City Talk. Essentially, the street was widened on both sides by removing the tree planting wells and grass buffer. Yet, the city decided to plant new trees in their old locations, basically creating curb bump-outs in the place of the former tree lawn. The resulting look is somewhat odd, though functional. What would have been an overly wide street is now at least mitigated by the fact that one cannot use the parking lanes to pass.

I agree with Elliot Davis that the need for this project was not extreme. I grew up two blocks from here and know that, sure, the street was narrow in its old incarnation and more than a few people saw their mirrors get clipped off by overeager motorists. Wouldn't a no parking sign from 7-9am and 4-6pm have solved the issue, even if just on one side of the street?

Instead of assailing the idea of widening a street in the city of St. Louis, Eillot Davis's "You Paid For It" inexplicably mocks the tree wells, confronting 14th Ward alderman Stephen Gregali about the "issue". "Won't the trees outgrow the planters and tear up the street you just fixed?" Davis repeats several times, to which Gregali responds, "Call a botanist". Watch the hilarious and puzzling video here.

Or here:



Another angle to approach the issue, besides the need for widening the street at all, could have been the tree selection itself. The city seems to think that these tiny trees survive; they often don't. Shouldn't we pay a little bit more to get some more mature and larger trees that could live through an ice storm, vandals, etc.?

Rumor is (it's not yet on their website), Davis is next set to attack Metro's Arts-in-Transit investments as wasted taxpayer money. I cannot begin to list all of the ignorance involved in that statement, but, luckily, Metro could. Read their eloquent response to such attacks here. Oops...it's essentially a federal funding requirement. And boosts transit-ridership. I applaud Metro for swiftly correcting misinformed critics.

And Elliot, please, make it a semi-annual report if you can't find anything worthwhile. Or at least read more deeply into the value (and faults) of particular infrastructure improvements in the city.

The Battle of St. Louis: Fighting Our City's Inferiority Complex 4:44 PM

St. Louis has an infamous inferiority complex. Most date it to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, an object of local fixation and a perfect demonstration of the great heights that the city fell from. We were once an international destination--all eyes on us--and now we're a plaintive Midwestern backwater.

Most of today's renewed crop of St. Louis boosters recognize that the nature of the inferiority complex is, by definition, internal. Its our own residents, city and suburbs alike, pounding St. Louis into the ground, not people from other cities. (Well, Chicago is jealous of our Cardinals, and Austin, Texas seems to have a superiority complex, but it's really just those two).

Many St. Louisans grow up with an internalized indifference, dislike, or even hatred of their own city. Some of them move far outside the city and don't look back (or their parents did so a generation ago).

Like...this guy, a student of St. Louis University (in 2003) who penned a petty piece on his hatred of St. Louis, aptly titled "St. Louis: how I hate thee".

Here are some lowlights from that editorial. It's worth noting that it is one of the University News' most commented articles, even today, and most of those comments are either lukewarm or brutally negative themselves.

I'm no anthropologist, but, as a high school history teacher of mine noted, every society has culture--even Affton. Culture like cruising Lindbergh Boulevard with neon license plate holders; culture like the monstrosity of a movie house called Ronnie's and its sea of waist high pre-pubescents wearing clothing and make-up that would make a hooker blush (my friend dubbed these youngsters "prosti-tots"); culture like having every major road and highway within a 50-mile radius of St. Louis clogged with bumper to bumper traffic that makes the opening scene of Office Space look like a documentary. Forgive me if I'm unimpressed.

Hyperbole, much?

I suppose I post this because I've grown tired of fighting people that can't see the positive and the potential of St. Louis. Yet it's difficult to exist in St. Louis without some pre-existing database of words, phrases, and neighborhoods in your head to counter the next "why do you stay here?" commentaries.

To that effect, I knew there would be someone in St. Louis's vast online journalism community that could sum up their love for the city better than I can. Or at least do so less wordily.

That's why I wanted to post these three uplifting St. Louis articles/commentaries that really fly in the face of the critics. Read them and weep--with tears of joy for our much-maligned, but, I feel, kickass city that I feel is truly becoming a great place to live.

The first is a well-put blog post from St. Louis Magazine. The second is a lengthy article in that same publication discussing the movement of "Creatives" to St. Louis and includes more boosterism than I think I have ever read in something written about St. Louis. And the last is a particularly snarky, yet no less inspiring (and early--written in 2002!) defense of St. Louis from haterism by our own Riverfront Times.

Kicking Against the Myth of "St. Louis, Misery
St. Louis Magazine - Look/Listen Blog
Stefene Russell

Quote:

We have a great contingent of place-sensitive, brilliant, creative people who are doing that work here locally, too. When seen through this filter, St. Louis is anything but miserable. Tiny ripples are starting to reach shore; PSFK, "a trends an innovation company" that runs a daily news site, has been doing a "Report from Middle America," series, and today's post focuses on Black Bear Bakery. This weekend, scores of those young bloggy creative types will be gathering in the West End to protest the possible demolition of the San Luis Apartments with a "Valentine's Day Love-In." They may just save that building, and more: the astrological alignment that the Broadway hippies saing about in "Age of Aquarius," will actually occur tomorrow! Now, that's having some major mojo on your side, at least if you're organizing a love-in. Change, I think, is continuing to blow through the air, but I think it will be a while before the list-makers figure that out.

The Rise of the Creative Class
St. Louis Magazine
Lynnda Greene

Quote:

Educated, imaginative, enterprising people of all ages and persuasions have migrated to St. Louis over the last decade to join an already vibrant, if largely subterranean, creative ecosystem. Here—amid the historic architecture, patchwork street life, distinct neighborhoods, diverse ethnic populations, city parks and grungy warehouses—they find a creative freedom that they’ve experienced nowhere else. Fueled by a jury-rigged spirit of optimism and ingenuity, they love this city shamelessly. They’re determined to restore its glory—and, if we’re careful, they just might succeed.

Best of 2002 - St. Louis
Riverfront Times
Randall Roberts

Quote:

Losers, crybabies and unsettled souls love to blame St. Louis for their frustrations, as though something as nebulous as a city could be held responsible for a human being’s unhappiness. “Everything would be better if I were in (enter name of hipper city here). There’s so much more action there. I’ve got my choice of two dozen vegetarian restaurants, hundreds of international markets. Amazing shows every night! A rock scene. An art scene. House and techno scenes. An amazing theater scene. Hotter boys. Sexier girls. Get this: (insert hip city here) has a store devoted only to Asian incense! Weird!”

And yet these same unsatisfied souls have never been to a production by the Black Rep, have never been to Lo when Astroboy’s spinning house, never grooved to the Hot House Sessions at the Delmar, never rocked with the Fantasy Four at Lemmons. They haven’t experienced the sublime joy of In Soo’s shrimp moo shu. They’ve never listened to the amazing DJ Needles on Q95.5, don’t even know what the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts is, let alone that Tadao Ando’s creation has been touted as one of the most important new American buildings of the decade. No, they’ve never cruised on a Saturday afternoon down Martin Luther King Boulevard, as revealing a St. Louis history lesson as there is, have never sneaked onto a downtown roof -- which isn’t that hard to do if you pay attention -- at 5 a.m. with your honey and watched the sun rise between the legs of the Arch.

Feeling uplifted? Don't let it stop here. Link me your own inspiring write-up in defense of St. Louis, and I'll post it here. You don't necessarily have to be the author, but make sure to give credit where it's due!

I'm published! 1:12 PM

The delightful St. Louis Beacon published my commentary on the new Thompson Coburn garage. Read it here.

That's it!

When Credit is Due... 2:29 PM

I have to hand it to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at times. Just when I'm ready to write it off as a tabloid unconcerned with St. Louis's myriad urban issues, it produces an article of journalistic excellence.

A previous such article is "A Tax-Credit Bill for One Man?" by Jake Wagman (written on my birthday in 2007 (June 17)--a present just for me?). Wagman's article was so balanced (perhaps even biased towards the beleaguered Blairmont-afflicted neighborhoods) that it drew fire from Mayor Slay. In a city where Mr. Slay was able to recruit the National Trust for Historic Preservation to supply a fluff piece about the "unfortunate need" to demolish the Century Building in that same newspaper, Wagman's criticism of the deathly silence at City Hall was astonishing.

The latest gold star for the P-D comes in the form of "Charles Lee 'Cookie' Thornton: Behind the smile". The shootings at the Kirkwood City Hall back in February of this year by "Cookie" shocked the nation. But the article seems to indicate that the city of Kirkwood had become inured to Cookie's explosive behavior, watching his deterioration without wondering why.

My point is not to exonerate Cookie. What happened at City Hall is inexcusable. But the article does display the bitter irony of Negro Removal that I hinted at in my previous post, which also mentioned Cookie's Meacham Park neighborhood.

Poor African American neighborhoods are often so neglected that, when they do get any sort of attention, even if the form of urban renewal, the residents are often complicit in the plans. City leaders can then point to residents' willingness to sell their homes as evidence that there's no will or way to salvage these neighborhoods.

Truly, the burden of proof should be on the municipalities who neglected the neighborhoods, who ushered in or failed to halt the decline in the first place.

Instead, they become humanitarians--givers of fresh new housing, destroyers of dilapidated old housing; bringers of Wal-Mart and Target, takers of hopelessness and blight.