St. Louisans will finally be able to visit the Arch Grounds when the iconic downtown spot reopens April 8. Kiener Plaza will open in May. The completion of these two projects mark the culmination of CityArchRiver’s $380 million renovation of the grounds surrounding the Gateway Arch after four long years (nearly twice as long as originally announced). Great Rivers Greenway executive director Susan Trautman addresses some of the challenges along the way and discusses how the revitalized landmark can help connect St. Louis through its green spaces.
What were the biggest challenges in reshaping the Arch grounds? You can’t build a park or a greenway without community engagement, without a variety of political and bureaucratic issues. In this case, there were about 13 regulatory agencies, about 20 stakeholders just on the riverfront—the Coast Guard, the Corps of Engineers, the Port Authority…and we were working adjacent to two historical landmarks—the Arch and the Eads Bridge. Then you had all kinds of new utilities that had to be installed, and we basically rebuilt the entire road. And we had three floods in the process.
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That’s not to mention two bond levies. How is the budget shaping up? From the Proposition P side—Kiener Plaza and the Arch grounds—we still have a balance of contingency funds. We’ll work with CityArchRiver and the National Park Service to make sure that bond money is spent how taxpayers directed it. A lot of it will go toward the museum, site work, and landscaping.
Can you give us a preview of Kiener Plaza? It’s totally different. We took out the amphitheater. Gone are the worn lawns and tired landscaping. It’s going to be a more peaceful oasis during the day, but it’s also designed to host big civic events. Kiener is our living room. It has a big courthouse lawn that can be used for an amphitheater. It has beautiful marble and granite stepping stones, a new playground, shade gardens, fountains… It has an urban oasis feel to it. It’s designed to draw in people, so instead of walking around the edges of Kiener in a square, it’s more of an X pattern, bringing you right to the heart of the park.
What’s next? The goal is to have a seamless visitor experience, so it’s important to create activities and ways to engage with the Arch grounds and riverfront. The CityArchRiver project is a great example of how to help people understand that anything is possible. Now, we’re going to carry that torch throughout the region. We were out in St. Charles, getting ready to build bridges over I-364 and Highway 94, and had 175 people turn out for an open house. We can’t build fast enough—people want more than we’re able to deliver. That’s one of the bigger challenges: Even though we have two levies and that generates a fair amount of money, it’s not enough to build what people want.
What’s next for St. Louis County? We have a project connecting Maryland Heights to Creve Coeur Park and a project in [Fort] Belle Fontaine Park. But the biggest one is the connection of Grant’s Trail to the River des Peres; it’s the shortest project, but it’s probably the most complicated—we’ll have connected 25 miles of greenway so you can ride from Kirkwood to Jefferson Barracks Park. There are also some visionary things, like the Chouteau Greenway, which will connect Forest Park to the Arch.
How does St. Louis compare to other cities in terms of greenspace? We are way beyond most cities. People are stunned when they hear we have two taxes to build greenway systems to connect our parks and open spaces. I think in 10 or 15 years, we’ll say, “Wow, that was the coolest thing we ever did.” It’s hard for people to see it now because they look at the greenway system and see things in increments and don’t understand the larger connectivity. The Arch is the gateway to it all—that’s what it was designed to be; that’s what inspires all of us.
