The project to rebuild the Manchester Avenue streetscape has been in the works for nearly two years. In March 2009 it was announced that East-West Gateway had awarded $1.45M for lighting enhancements along the corridor and other funds had been allocated to create a better streetscape. The neighborhood and commercial strip have made remarkable strides over the past decade, but Manchester Avenue remained marked by broken sidewalks, poor lighting and signage, and accessibility issues.

While South Grand has received a lot of attention with its sewer pot experiment and the winning-over of the City streets department and local aldermen, Manchester has quietly begun to be transformed. Construction started several weeks ago and is quickly moving from east to west. Similar to South Grand, the project will reduce traffic lanes from four to two between Taylor and Sarah Avenues. For those of you into construction drawings, particulars of pedestrian lighting, street furniture, bike racks and more, check out the documents below (recently posted by the excellent Park Central Development/17th Ward blog).

{Saarinen, left and Kiley, right as depicted in a mural at the Arch grounds}

My assumption looking at the high-powered design teams vying to introduce the next century to the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, was that each of the five finalists had followed the same formula, successfully recruiting the necessary components, accumulating the required artistry and expertise to make the final cut. There are historians-cultural and built, landscape architects, freshwater hydrologists, engineers-transportation and civil, and more.

Glancing at the previous projects of each reveals the shear capability of the remaining teams: Chrissy Field, Millennium Park, Ground Zero Memorial, Olympic Park and many other challenging and amazing projects. All in their own style, each team is something of a dream team looking to forever join their name with Saarinen and Kiley. However, one team, and one person specifically, is on a mission unlike the others.

It's been fun to read what each of the five finalist Arch competition design teams envision for the future of the St. Louis riverfront. Better yet, though less informative, has been oohing and aahing at the incredible images of a future city offered by the teams. We will likely not see everything proposed by the winning team built, but are the renderings even plausible at all?

As KMOX's Michael Calhoun astutely reiterated via Twitter from the design team jury interviews this past week, "The Mississippi River is NOT blue!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" But it does look great in blue! The muddy brown likely doesn't make the proposed riverside seating, concerts and pedestrian bridges look quite as nice. This article is a not-so-serious effort, but the issue of accurate architectural renderings is a serious one. We've all become used to some extra flourish, lots of lights, maybe fireworks, lots of happy skinny people...but there's surely a line somewhere. Is a team that promotes an amphitheater obligated to show how it would appear 350 days of the year - sparsely populated, maybe not newly mown? Or should a space be shown used to its potential?

To some, capping I-70 with a "lid" at the point the Gateway Mall intersects the Arch grounds, and the replacement of I-70 with a boulevard appear to be mutually exclusive. Capping the highway and possibly closing Memorial Drive at the Gateway Mall has been the conventional wisdom in improving Arch grounds connections for more than a decade. Re-envisioning the Arch grounds and Gateway Mall has never really stopped. Since the idea was first put to paper more than three quarters of a century ago, countless individuals and dozens of civic leaders have envisioned how to complete or improve both.

I continue to believe that an at-grade boulevard in place of I-70 from the Poplar Street Bridge to Cass Avenue is the best, most transformative, least expensive, most straightforward design for the Memorial Drive/I-70 corridor. The idea of walking unimpeded from Luther Ely Smith Square to the Arch grounds is inherently attractive. But I think it raises at least as many questions as it answers.