“My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.”
St. Louis could use a trip to the famous-quotations book about now, and who better to provide some comfort than the man for whom our most famous place is named, Thomas Jefferson?
That place would be the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, known around the globe for its centerpiece, the Gateway Arch. Defining the local skyline with its wondrous 630 feet of spectacular architecture, the Arch has for nearly half of a century been the signature of a city that loves it, but from which it is strangely disconnected.
Maybe it has to do with all of these years looking eastward through the Gateway to the West, but there’s something about the Arch that seems a little inside-out. A monument to expansion in a contracted city, the Arch is a beacon of happiness rising above the depressed lanes of a dysfunctional interstate highway that separates it like an impassable sea from most of downtown.
But for a moment, in the Jeffersonian spirit, let’s set aside the gloom of despair and try to be pleasanter.
It’s time for the flatteries of hope.
Mind you, it’s not time for the flatteries of extreme optimism, not in this economy. But two unrelated developments with regard to the Arch at least show enough promise to qualify as hopeful.
The first is an international competition to redesign the Arch grounds that was announced last December and which reaches the public-exhibit stage this month.
The other is a grass-roots movement—with an upstart plan known as City to River—that would replace the aforementioned interstate highway with a grand boulevard that could actually unite the Arch grounds with the rest of downtown.
At this point, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I’ve consumed some strange form of civic hemp that has caused me to become deliriously boosterish in a scary, chamber-of-commerce-ish sort of way.
Not quite. Being a bit long in the tooth when it comes to matters downtown, rest assured I’m neither giddy nor even confident about what is to follow. Unlike the participants in both endeavors, I have some real skepticism as to whether actual dollars will be found to make dreams come true.
But for the moment, we should remember that it is truly as cheap to hope as it is to despair. And after many long winters of discontent, St. Louis may actually be onto a thing or two that could really change the landscape.
No, really.
I’ll concede that the notion of a competition to redesign the Arch and surrounding areas poses some obvious questions:
You mean none of our last 473 downtown plans redesigned the Arch grounds? Didn’t it get overhauled when they briefly made it a casino after the sixth time we bought the Admiral? Wasn’t it redesigned as part of Ballpark Village?
And I’ll also concede that blowing up part of an interstate highway system and replacing it with a tree-lined boulevard sounds just crazy-green and unrealistic, especially in a city that worships the almighty automobile in all matters relating to urban planning, or lack thereof.
But hear me out, or at least hear them out, before returning to the familiar gloom of despair.
First, let’s look at the design competition, because it’s not like anything seen before in St. Louis, at least not since 1947, when famous architect Eero Saarinen won the last such competition and designed the Arch. That didn’t work out so badly. In this case, it’s helpful that the local treasure isn’t local. The Gateway Arch and surrounding park don’t belong to the Gateway City, and while that urban fact of life often ruffles local leaders, it’s sometimes nice to have the big, bad federal bureaucracy on your side.
When the National Park Service gets behind an international design competition on an internationally famous landmark, the interest becomes international. That’s why some of the highest-wattage architectural firms in the world are in a pitched battle to do business here, of all places. (Take that, tea-bag people.)
Give city government some credit for partnering with the park service, as the resulting competition—“Framing a Modern Masterpiece”—seems well on the way to producing an eye-popping final design. The goal is to “reinvigorate” the national park with a plan that can be completed by October 28, 2015, the date marking the 50th birthday of the Arch.
It’s a big-league deal. A national jury of eight experts (only one, renowned Washington University professor Gerald Early, being from St. Louis) will choose a winner, to be announced September 24.
Significantly, the design area ranges from the Old Courthouse to the west all the way across to the East St. Louis riverfront. Encompassing both sides of the river—a jolting concept, no doubt, to many in St. Louis—was part of Saarinen’s vision, and it may be one of the most important aspects to the competition, both in substance and in making possible the politics of selling the price tag to Congress in years ahead.
The competition began eight months ago with a field of 49 design teams that was whittled to nine in February and five in April. The final finalists—two from New York and the others from Chicago; Berkeley, Calif.; and Germany—have résumés not normally associated with the sleepy Midwest. Each comprises a lead design firm supported by teams of 15 to 30 other firms and individuals, many of them prestigious.
An interesting side note is that the only St. Louis entry in the competition—headed by none other than St. Louis–based giant HOK (with some key local players)—got eliminated in the cut from nine to five teams. This striking development got nary a mention in the local media, which presumably was covering a fire.
The big question isn’t whether the competition can—as the mayor’s chief of staff Jeff Rainford puts it—produce a result that “knocks our socks off,” or whether it will produce a practical enough design concept to be achieved by 2015. All of that can be counted upon.
Getting funding might be something else again. The competition foundation intentionally included no price range so as not to stifle creativity—the theory being that the 2015 completion deadline will force competitors to keep their ideas practical and achievable.
But the issue may not be extravagance. It may be finding the money at all.
The Post-Dispatch is placing much hope in the words of U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, who told the paper’s editorial board in July 2009 that he is looking forward to a “great celebration here” in 2015 and would “move heaven and earth” to have it finished sooner.
Well, that was before BP slimed the Gulf of Mexico, and with it—possibly—future budgets of the Department of the Interior. Salazar also might have to move heaven and at least one Republican house of Congress, one that might not be disposed to domestic spending of this nature, if the midterm election doesn’t go President Barack Obama’s way.
That said, Donald Stastny, manager of the competition, told me he has a high degree of certainty that the money will be found. Stastny is a prominent Portland, Ore., architect who says he has run more than 50 such competitions. He says at least 75 percent of them were funded, and he’s pretty much 100 percent certain St. Louis will fall in the 75 percent.
Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, another interesting subplot is how the City to River plan fits into all of this, or doesn’t. The idea is basically for a grand boulevard to replace the downtown section of interstate once a new bridge over the Mississippi River—now funded and in the works—causes the interstate to bypass downtown to the north.
The new boulevard—called “a new front door for St. Louis”—would replace Memorial Drive from Poplar Street on the south to Laclede’s Landing on the north with something like what Kingshighway is today. In fairness, the cost isn’t really clear at this point, nor is the source of funding for such a project, but the idea does represent dynamic thinking.
Even if it’s an uncertain proposition as yet, it deserves a serious and open-minded look, especially since an I-70 bypass will alter the basic function of Memorial Drive. It’s not as though the status quo, with its strange dark passages and basic disconnection of the Arch grounds from the rest of downtown, is remotely acceptable.
What’s most amazing about the idea is how it’s come forward as the evolving dreams of a bunch of heretofore-unknown, regular-guy, not-all-that-connected citizen bloggers. I met with three of them—Rick Bonasch, Paul G. Hohmann, and Alex Ihnen—and still can’t tell you who’s in charge.
They are as ego-free as any group of activists I’ve met in three decades on the job. They say they’ve met with three of the design-team finalists—and spoken with the two others —and have been told their idea is a solid one. But their fear—which I think is well-founded—is that the 2015 deadline (which they don’t care for) and the perceived riskiness of including their idea in the competition might make it difficult for a design team to advance the boulevard concept.
That said, they say they’re optimistic that the design plans will at the very least not be inconsistent with their vision.
There is, of course, the small detail that the idea has sprouted up from grass roots, and that St. Louis’ good-old-boy decision-making network—however diminished from Civic Progress’ heyday of yesteryear—isn’t really constituted to embrace ideas that some rich white guy didn’t introduce to the civic discussion.
Add to that the reality that rerouting an interstate highway involves lots of moving parts, and I’d be surprised if this splendid idea finds its way into any of the final design-team proposals.
But here’s hoping that nothing in the final Arch plan precludes making the City to River plan a possibility somewhere down the road. Truly uniting the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial with the rest of downtown need not be your basic “gloom of despair” stuff.
Hope is so much pleasanter.
SLM co-owner Ray Hartmann is a panelist on KETC Channel 9’s Donnybrook, which airs Thursdays at 7 p.m.
