A river runs alongside it, but if you’re in downtown St. Louis, you’ll have a hard time getting to it. In fact, you can barely see it—the Mississippi, that is—even from the grounds of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, better known as the Gateway Arch.

But that scenario could change dramatically by 2015—the 50^th anniversary of the completion of architect Eero Saarinen’s iconic, stainless steel monument on the St. Louis riverfront. How functional, costly, and aesthetically pleasing a revamped riverfront will be depends on decisions soon to be made by a panel of St. Louis big-shots, the US Parks Service, nationally known architects and urban planners, and citizens.

Bottom line, revitalizing the Arch grounds and the St. Louis riverfront is an exciting notion. A visit to the Arch grounds reveals the need: the crumbling staircase from the Arch to the waterfront; tree stumps along the “allees” leading to the Arch; the dark, dank and dirty parking garage at the north end. The Arch is still a mecca for travelers, and it continues to inspire: There’s always at least one supine photographer trying for that ground-to-sky money shot of the Arch. So, further improving the Arch and St. Louis experience is a worthy endeavor.

The big, looming decision is to choose the architectural/design/urban planning team for the project. Earlier this week, the five finalists revealed their concepts. In a competition called “Framing a Modern Masterpiece,” local, national and international design groups were challenged “better frame the iconic Arch and weave the national park back into the fabric of the city and the region, by rejuvenating connections and re-energizing the area.”

The concepts [more details here]are on display in an exposition that will travel around the St. Louis metro area until Sept. 24.  Shortly after the exhibit went up at its first stop—the pavilion beneath the Arch—I took a look. The experience can be one of information overload, and you have to slog through some fairly b.s.-type verbiage—in small type—and sort through some highly conceptual and unrealistic drawings. I noticed a lot of people congregating around the maps on some of the exhibits, where they could realistically compare how they got to the Arch that day [it’s not easy], to how they might get there under the new designs. It’s heartening to see the interest and engagement in something that will define the “front door” of St. Louis for, possibly, the next 50 years.

Conveniently located near the large, colorful presentation boards are comment sheets for public input. Hoping that citizens’ comments will be taken into account, I filled in the blanks. Here are some gut reactions, in no particular order, from a citizen with no particular expertise or credentials—just an interest in the obvious and logical goal of reconnecting a city with the river that created it in the first place:

Creative ideas that jump out

• Rebuild the stairway leading down from the Arch grounds to the river, incorporating Saarinen’s original idea of a “catenary curve” shape that would parallel the shape of the Arch itself.
• Create a promenade out of two lanes of the historic Eads Bridge, to offer another view of the river and a pleasant connection to the east bank.
• Add a pedestrian bridge, attached to the Poplar Street Bridge that would link east and west.
• Re-think the East St. Louis side of the riverfront: Develop an agricultural park on the east side, and at long last, invest in the neglected and just-plain-ugly east bank of the Mississippi, which offers a dramatic view of the Arch and the city.
• Re-imagine the [currently underground] visitors’ center and exhibit space, adding skylights and windows, so that the Arch and riverfront are visible. [What could be more logical than that?]
• Enhance landscaping around the Arch-grounds pools, creating mowed grass pathways meandering among native grasslands and gardens.
• Lower the “berm” that blocks viewing the river from ground level.

What’s silly, and what’s missing

Okay, I’ll say it: One of the presentations strikes me as just silly and unworkable, replete with floating globes and Disney-like architecture. One of the competition criteria [I’m paraphrasing] was to respect the flavor of Saarinen’s original design. The beauty, simplicity and soaring grace of the Arch speaks for itself. Turning the grounds into a quasi amusement park adds nothing and would, in effect, undermine the vision.

The biggest drawback of all five finalists’ designs is their inclusion of a “lid” over the interstate highway [I-70] that roars between downtown St. Louis and the Arch grounds—an ugly scar, and a noisy, dangerous barrier. I’ve written about this before, and the tireless people at the non-profit, citizens’ group, City to River, can explain it better, but here’s the crux. The “lid” presented by the design teams may offer a safer and more scenic way to get to the Arch grounds, but it doesn’t solve one key problem: It fails to offer a convenient connection between downtown St. Louis’ two most-attended attractions—Busch Stadium, where a virtually guaranteed 3 million fans watch the St. Louis Cardinals play baseball every summer, and the Arch itself, with an annual visitor rate of more than 2 million. In the “lid” scenario, baseball fans have no straight-line route to the Arch. To get to or from the Arch, pedestrians would have to detour several blocks to the north to find the “lid” over the highway.

A better solution would be to remove the currently depressed lanes of I-70 [Memorial Drive] and to replace them with a grade-level city boulevard, which would offer a logical, visible, convenient and pleasant connection. This option was not included in the competition’s parameters, presumably because highway removal [which requires environmental impact studies and such] could not be accomplished by the 50^th-anniversary-ceremony-driven deadline of 2015. But the US Park Service has said that it favors highway removal, where possible, and four of the five design competitors have stated that the boulevard concept is a desirable approach [although this assertion appears as more of a footnote than a recommendation in their proposals.]

We can only hope that the decision-makers appreciate the long-term value of the highway-removal alternative, and that they don’t simply default to the “lid,” because of ceremonial time constraints. And one further caveat is in order: It would be sad [but predictable] if St. Louis adopted the “lid” as a “temporary” solution, with a vague promise of creating the boulevard in the undefined future. We’ve seen these temporary solutions before: Amshack, anyone?

The post City+River+Arch: a citizen’s view of the options appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Opportunity is knocking on St. Louis’ front door. The fiftieth anniversary of the completion of the Gateway Arch (2015), and plans for a new Mississippi bridge are creating a confluence of events with the potential to reconnect downtown St. Louis with its riverfront. And a new grassroots group, called City to River, wants to help ensure that these two developments work together in a way that will transform the downtown area, the Arch, the riverfront and the connections between all of them.

Here’s the challenge. At the same time that the Gateway Arch was completed (1965), Interstate 70 opened between the Arch grounds and downtown St. Louis. “Although it was intended to bring people into the regions’ center, the interstate disrupted the city’s street grid and isolated the new national monument and the river from the activity of downtown,” says the City to River website. “A two-hundred-year-old connection was lost. Now, St. Louis has a momentous opportunity to revisit the unintended consequences of the interstate. The time has come to reopen the region’s front door.”

A walking tour of the proposed redevelopment area offers a powerful (and noisy) demonstration of the physical barriers and psychological distance between downtown and the riverfront. On a warm, sunny Saturday morning, with thousands of fans gathering in anticipation of a midday Cardinals’ ball game, you’d think that the sidewalks would be clogged with people strolling to or from the Arch grounds. They’re not.

It’s not because people don’t want to go the Arch. More likely, it’s because they simply can’t figure out how to get there. The Arch is an island–a reality not reflected by the glamor shots typically displayed on tourism websites. Getting from the Arch to downtown is equally daunting. Ask anyone who has worked at the Arch, and they’re likely to tell you that among the most frequently asked questions are, “Where can we go for a bite to eat, and how do I get to Busch Stadium from here?”

“If you see someone walking along Memorial Drive, they’re probably lost,” says Paul Hohmann, an architect and a founding member of City to River, as he shouts above the noise created by Memorial Drive traffic and the depressed lanes of Interstate 70.  “The area between downtown and the riverfront is a no-man’s land. And that’s true for drivers, as well. If you’re driving in downtown St. Louis, and you try to get to the riverfront, chances are, you’ll end up on a freeway ramp to Illinois or to somewhere else you hadn’t intended to go.”

Pointing to a bank of glass doors on the east side of the swank Hyatt Hotel, Hohmann notes that, although they face the Arch, its surrounding national park and the riverfront, the doors are locked and unused. “This should be the front door, not the back,” he says. “The most valuable real estate in St. Louis is next to a highway—a noisy pit of doom.”

What’s the answer? That’s the $300-million question that a design competition, sponsored by the National Park Service, St. Louis City government and others, is working to solve. Five design teams have been selected as finalists. City to River is not competing for the project. Rather, it’s a grassroots group seeking to add community input into the parameters of the competition and the final designs.

City to River is not, however, without opinions. One of its top priorities is to remove Interstate 70 where it passes through downtown, and to replace it with an at-grade boulevard from the Poplar Street bridge north to Cass Ave. If that sounds radical, think again, says Rick Bonasch, of City to River.

“Other cities have removed highways,” he says, citing successful projects in Portland, Oregon and Milwaukee. “St. Louis would have to be on its own planet to not consider it. The new boulevard that we’re envisioning would allow pedestrians to easily cross over to the riverfront area, and highway statistics say that it could readily handle the projected 50,000 cars per day. Think of Paris’ Champs Elysee: It’s a boulevard, and it handles 80,000 cars per day.  Locally, we’ve got Kingshighway, across from Forest Park. It handles significant traffic–in the range of 30,000 to 35,000 cars. This is doable.”

Bonasch may have some powerful mojo on the side of that argument. The National Park Service has indicated a preference for highway removal in other projects. In addition, he says, both the US Department of Transportation and MODOT are talking about rerouting Interstate 70 and even removing some of its entrance and exit ramps to push traffic away from the Poplar Street bridge and toward the planned new bridge north of the city.

“Another little-known fact is that the Park Service actually owns most of the right of way and Memorial Drive, and it leases it to MODOT,” says Bonasch.

As to the long-proposed and well-publicized notion of building a “lid” over Memorial Drive and the I-70 depressed lanes, Bonasch sees that solution as too narrowly focused and too low on the cost-to-benefit meter.

City to River’s leaders also want to expand the scope of the City+Arch+River design project. “It’s not just about the Arch,” says Tristan Walker. Standing on the corner of Spruce St. and Memorial Drive, he points south toward the Soulard neighborhood. “Some of the original history of St. Louis—like the Soulard neighborhood and Chouteau’s landing, are within walking distance of Busch Stadium. But you can’t see them or get to them, because they’re cut off by a tangle of highway ramps.”

Walk north to Washington Ave., cross Memorial Drive, and you’ll find a similar situation. Deafening noise, a confusing street configuration under an elevated section of Interstate 70, and vehicle fumes create what Bonasch describes as “a horrible environment, where visitors should be enjoying some of St. Louis’ most important historical destinations—Laclede’s Landing and the Eads Bridge.”

“We are at a historic junction of need, civic desire, and opportunity,” says Bonasch, who welcomes input from community groups and individual residents. “The time to address all of these issues with a unified solution is now.”

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