There's been no public news. The CityArchRiver2015 Foundation is certainly working hard and various engineering studies are being completed. Fundraising is also taking place, but without any announcement, we do not know if there have been any successes. If there were any huge breakthroughs we'd probably hear about it.

There's no way that I know of for the public to be part of the process, except for City to River of course! www.citytoriver.org

DM me or email alex@nextstl.com if you want more info about City to River.

dredger wrote:Nice article posted on Stl Beacon on the plaza and Arch Grounds in General or least the most informative article I have read in a while.

http://www.stlbeacon.org/issues-politic ... iner-plaza

A question in my mind, will Peaboby make a significant donation to kick start work on the plaza as they now have firmly planted themselves in Downtown and their Arch View location.

Probably the best news so far:

There, the property itself will be radically reconfigured, losing, for example, an amphitheater that becomes an oven in the summertime and a slippery hazard when ice forms on it in winter.

dredger wrote:Nice article posted on Stl Beacon on the plaza and Arch Grounds in General or least the most informative article I have read in a while.

http://www.stlbeacon.org/issues-politic ... iner-plaza

A question in my mind, will Peaboby make a significant donation to kick start work on the plaza as they now have firmly planted themselves in Downtown and their Arch View location.

While I don't know whether or not Peabody will start donating to Kiener Plaza, I would hope that their commitment to the Gateway One building would lead them to improve the stretch of the Gateway Mall their building interrupts. East of them will be the new Kiener Plaza, as per the MVVA designs; West is Citygarden. If Peabody could lead investment in their own building's property to personally & aesthetically connect these two specialized parts of the Gateway Mall, that'd be a great sign of commitment.

We're starting to see how this is going to be funded. There's $30M+ in the state's transportation budget for work on I-70 along the park and the possible gondola would be bonded - there you go, you're at maybe $60M right there.

http://bit.ly/jt4P4Y


Since unveiling an ambitious plan to transform the grounds of the Gateway Arch, the group leading the effort has kept a quiet profile.

The CityArchRiver 2015 Foundation hasn't held any events, issued any press releases, updated its Facebook and Twitter accounts, or made any public appeal for donations in the past five months.

But the group has been busy behind the scenes as it prepares to become a more visible advocate for the $578 million project later this year, said Walter Metcalfe, a lawyer at Bryan Cave who is steering the effort.

The goal is still to finish most of the work by Oct. 28, 2015, the 50th anniversary of the topping of the Arch. But no one expects that to be easy.

The project needs to get the green light from a number of state and federal agencies. Regulators are trying to determine the project's effect on the environment, downtown traffic and river navigation, among other things.

And there's still the half-billion-dollar question of who pays for the project. Backers have long said the answer is a mix of public funding and private donations. One source of public money could be federal transportation funds, with work on streets and parking on the Arch grounds and its surroundings possibly qualifying for money.

Still, it's too early to say much about the funding split, Metcalfe said.

"Unfortunately, this project is a process, not an event," Metcalfe said. "You can't just flip a switch one moment and have construction start the next."

Metcalfe said the foundation is wrapping up a transition from being a group that "was about ideas" to one that "is about making those ideas happen."

The foundation organized the design competition that in September picked a plan by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, a New York landscape-architecture firm, to overhaul the Arch grounds.

The plan calls for closing Memorial Drive, building a landscaped "lid" over Interstate 70 to better connect the Arch grounds to downtown, creating a riverside cobblestone walk, and adding an amphitheater and playground. The plans also calls for eventually developing park and wetlands on the East St. Louis riverfront.

^ shortened the quoted part a bit - we shouldn't post entire articles here per fair use rules.

Alex Ihnen wrote:^ shortened the quoted part a bit - we should post entire articles here per fair use rules.

Sorry, I meant to post the whole thing. I'm still figuring out using the forum.

^ Yikes. Meant "shouldn't post entire articles" - sorry for the typo. Not sure what my number of posts has to do with anything

I think forum users should post an excerpt as that helps a reader decide whether to click the link or not. I very rarely click a link without having an idea as to the content.

Alex Ihnen wrote:^ Yikes. Meant "shouldn't post entire articles" - sorry for the typo. Not sure what my number of posts has to do with anything

I think forum users should post an excerpt as that helps a reader decide whether to click the link or not. I very rarely click a link without having an idea as to the content.

Understood, chief.

So let's talk about the article! This is exactly what I was waiting for, why I made this thread in the first place.

IMO - there's nothing in the article, zero, zip. The story? The effort has been completely quiet for five months, but not to worry, all is well! This is exactly how we thought it would go!