urbanSTL

^ I don't know about never. I'd it to break ground about the time St. Louis becomes a rapidly growing city of 0.5M people. But it is hard to be "excited" though.

I think we'll see progress being made on some form of Chouteau Greenway along the Central Corridor and into downtown but the downtown Chouteau Lake District most likely will be far off.

DannyJ wrote: I wish this fanciful lake idea had never entered the picture, because without it, we might have been able to make progress on a project that has actual viability and potential to improve the central corridor.

I don't think the ambitious lake district vision has distracted from the greenway/trails portion of the project.... GRG is starting on that portion in Midtown with the Cortex Metrolink TIGER funding and had some pretty good applications for the downtown trail work in previous tries. It also would have received funding under the statewide transportation funding for trail connections to Chouteau's Landing area. So GRG is definitely working on the trails side and its just a matter of funding and priority.

^ right... that last point is critical. The water is not there just for its own sake or for recreation, but as a key amenity in driving mixed-use development around it.

Taking a stroll in the future, we're in the year 2025 and while there's been ups and downs, the general climate for Central Corridor employment and living has continued to be good. Downtown, almost all of our historic stock has been re-purposed with mixed-uses and a large amount of older Class B & C space has been taken off the rolls. A modest amount of new construction has occurred providing both new residences and Class A office, and while we haven't hit levels of growth like Seattle or Denver has seen, residential and office occupancy are solid and developers are beginning to pursue mixed-use infill outside the CBD.

In short, good growth but not explosive growth. In such an environment, which I think is rather realistic, I think the Lake feature -- the size of which would be t.b.d. -- would be a tremendous boon to creating demand for a rather dense, mixed-use "Downtown South" district. If we were super-hot and developers were falling all over themselves to build solid density wherever they could that would be one thing, but I think that is overly optimistic.

Switching threads.



Why should this connect from the Grand Station along Mill Creek if there's no opportunity for it to continue east through existing rail infrastructure?

If there's a trestle to SLU from the CORTEX station, then I propose running the bike trail down Laclede onto Market onto the Gateway Mall to the Arch. It'd be way way cheaper to add some protected bike infrastructure through two university campuses and an existing linear park then to radically transform a rail corridor.

Doing so would effectively table the Chouteau Greenway in favor of a more general central greenway with greater connections and more users.

^ I'm mulling over in my head having something like Indy's Cultural Trail running down Olive/Lindell with protected bike lane as part of that along with dedicated bus/streetcar. That could rock.

That rendering of the new SLU dorm is still laughable. They make Grand look like a empty 2 lane side street with green pedestrian areas not fenced in all around it. Not even remotely close to what the area is like for pedestrians.

^The crazy part about Compton is that the fences are on both sides. Both universities have fenced off grass facing the street. It is dreadful. SLU alone is not to blame, but I think Harris-Stowe for lack of their own design vocabulary are following SLU's lead. They should put up some brown lighting on Olive...