City Arch River:

Redo the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.

A 91 acre urban park.

Total projected cost: $380,000,000 (or $4,175,000 per acre)

Forest Park Forever:

The rehabilitation of Forest Park

A 1,370 acre urban park.

Total project cost: $100,000,000 (or $73,000 per acre)

Am I missing something here? How is it possible that the redo of the Arch is costing 57 times more per acre than the redo of Forest Park?

Maybe Halliburton's running the project?

the lid

The lid is $90,000,000.

Take that out and you still have a cost of $290,000,000 on 91 acres at the Arch, or $3,187,000 per acre. Without the lid, the Arch redo still costs 44 X the cost per acre compared to Forest Park's renovation.

Something here just doesn't make sense.

You make a great point.

My theory is construction costs for new buildings/infrastructure.

How many bridges are they replacing? How many parking garages?


Forest park was mostly upgrading the golf courses and beautifying the grounds right?

^ I think Moorlander has some good points NN. A better apples to apples comparison would be to include Art Museum and Zoo upgrades/investments to the Forest Park Forever number as I can't recall a major building/structure or road work involved with Forest Park Forever campaign. Throw in a new Hampton Ave bridge and round about with the I64 rebuild and you got some serious dollars invested in Forest Park. The next investment as per Nextstl post is a Clayton/Skinker/Oakland Ave intersection rebuilt. For better or worse their is some serious infrastructure investment going on with the Arch Grounds

They repaired/replaced A LOT at Forest Park. A huge amount: The Visitor Center (total renovation), the World's Fair Pavilion (total renovation), the Boat House (new), the new golf course club house and catering center (new), all water courses restored, and countless other improvements around the park (see list via Wikipedia below).

That said, one big difference between the two is that Forest Park has a lot of open acreage compared to the Arch, so it had less going on construction wise on a per square foot basis than does the Arch program.

Nonetheless, the $290,000,000 at the Arch for 91 acres works out to $73 per square foot in cost. Think about that for a minute.

Granted, the improvements to Hampton and the Art Museum are probably not a part of the Forest Park Forever budget, but that doesn't really change the question. The money at Forest Park went into improving the park.

It's hard to figure out exactly what was paid for out of the $100,000,000, but most of the park has had extensive renovations or expansions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_Park_(St._Louis)

I'm not so much wondering about the cost per acre at Forest Park, as I am wondering about what we are getting for $290,000,000 (on top of the Lid) at the Arch?

That's a helluva lot of money to spend on 91 acres - almost 3X more than what went into Forest Park Forever. $3X more in total dollars invested for a site that is only 7% the size. Crazy.

Does anyone think the new Arch will be 3X nicer than Forest Park??

Inflation

Did FP work involve an underground digging for a museum
Rebuilding on the blvd in front of the arch
Lid
= $150m?

I think where your math is a bit off is the total area of where money was spent at FP, I would guess that a large portion of the 1300 acres of FP was not even touched.

Is there a design for the remaking of Kiener Plaza?

Why is it being changed? The Plaza is one of the few public spaces in downtown that is regularly visited and used. It easily has as many visitors as City Garden, maybe more.

During the Peabody Coal protests, it was packed on a regular basis. It's like a mini-Greek forum.

Having a space for a Shake Shack style restaurant had been discussed early on but I have no idea if that is still a possibility.

Hmm. That's discouraging. A lineup of failed restaurants has happened at City Garden, but things will be different at the new Kiener Plaza?

Why not open the Shake Shack in City Garden? That space is sitting empty.

And don't forget the new entrance. Appending a new section to an existing underground structure is expensive.

-RBB

They've been working on forest park for over a decade as with the arch this is a 2-3 year project and i would think cause its a national park more work and money is being put into it however it's a federal park and we're footing most of the money for it which we shouldn't be doing at all... Also they are replacing every Black Ash...

A few thoughts:
Overall, this will vastly improve the arch grounds. I'm still weighing the cost/benefit though for this. Will redone arch grounds really attract that many more visitors from other cities and St. Louis? I can see more festivals, concerts etc helping but otherwise, I don't see it. Why doesn't or didn't the federal government do all of these improvements or at least some on their own? Are there other examples of national parks being funded by private citizens? Is this the new norm? I also think that removing Washington Avenue from along Eads bridge down to the river is a huge mistake that will further cut off the landing. That is one of, if not the only, streets that connects downtown directly to the river. $380 million dollars?! This will not be a game changer for downtown and the region overall. Imagine all that money being funneled into the startup scene here. St. Louis- the start-up capital. That would be a game changer.

I'm trying to choose to be excited over the Arch Grounds. It will certainly be an improvement, and potentially be really awesome.

But I agree, it will be hard to not think about "what could have been" with the boulevard, and it's also hard to justify the investment we're making in this compared to the many investments we aren't making.

roger wyoming II wrote:^ I have mixed-feelings about this as well. I agree it will be an improvement over existing conditions but also lament the failure to go big with the boulevard concept. However, the new entrance and museum expansion/update will be pretty awesome and I think with park over lid will be very well received. I'll try to post it here but the new aerial perspective rendering C+A+R has out is pretty sweet in my opinion. Who knows, maybe we'll also start to see follow-on investment in Laclede's Landing, etc. with property owners citing the Arch grounds and riverfront trail investments.

I'm still curious to see what this Keiner re-do will be as well.

I wouldn't even mind NOT getting the Boulevard if the CAR/MODoT plan wasn't basically devised to make its eventuality pretty much impossible. In the name of this Lid, they are: 1) removing N-S access along Memorial Drive, 2) folding more space into the already underused Archgrounds, and 3) creating a new off-ramp at Washington Avenue which will 3a) require the permanent closure of Washington Avenue to the river.

So many options could eventually exist for the depressed lanes/Memorial Drive -- #buildtheblvd obviously, a local below grade "express" connecting Bdwy south to north riverfront, converting I-70 to buried parking accessible from a new Memorial Blvd (akin to Michigan Drive), etc. CAR and MODoT, however, seem hell-bent on initiating the one plan that makes any of that all but impossible.