urbanSTL

Doug wrote:

Roy314 wrote:

Doug wrote:Who thinks this will be popular in 5 years without residential around the Mall?

Where's the residential around the Grand Basin in Forest Park?

Forest Park is the home to Internationally renowned cultural institutions that get millions of visitors a year.

TG wrote:I am probaby more of an urban pioneer/city promotor than any of you "urbanists"

migueltejada wrote:I played a game with myself called spot the brown person, like where's waldo, only more sad. Play it with me - see how many brown people you can find in a city that's more than 70% black...

innov8ion wrote: It can be enabled on the backend via a simple script: http://www.phpbb3bbcodes.com/viewtopic.php?t=213

innov8ion wrote:We sympathize (note, not empathize) with you, miguel. Dealing with the effects of male inadequacy must be very stressful. Perhaps the sight of a robust plumper on the barbie this holiday will improve your mood. Happy 4th of July!

leeharveyawesome wrote:Hey I see Citygarden got a brief mention in NY Times Sunday Travel section.

Sculpture to Invigorate a Shrinking City





By MALCOLM GAY

Published: July 1, 2009



ST. LOUIS





ONE telling measure of this city’s past glories and present challenges is this: The United States Census of 1950 reported roughly 850,000 people living in St. Louis; today the number is around 350,000. Or there’s this: In 1988, when Jonathan Franzen published “The Twenty-Seventh City,” a novel about real and fictional tribulations afflicting St. Louis, his title referred to the city’s plunge in rank to 27th largest in America from 4th in less than a century. If he wrote the book now, just two decades later, he would have to call it “The Fifty-Second City.”



Signs of the depleted population are everywhere, from the boarded-up houses that dot the city’s north side to the stubbornly vacant office buildings downtown.



Over the last 10 years, however, civic groups, private developers and city leaders have been trying to nurse downtown St. Louis back to life. Taking cues from revitalization drives in other midsize cities, they have created thousands of residential loft units. There is now a bookstore in the area, and next month a local grocery chain plans to open its first downtown branch.



But perhaps the most original — and conspicuous — step in the campaign is Citygarden, a 2.9-acre sculpture park that opened Wednesday on two blocks of the city’s central corridor, known as the Gateway Mall.



Financed by the Gateway Foundation, a nonprofit organization that installs public art in the St. Louis area, the park cost between $25 million and $30 million — which does not include the collection of 24 works by artists including Fernand Léger, Tony Smith, Jim Dine and Bernar Venet. (The foundation, which has a longstanding policy of not commenting to the news media, declined to disclose the collection’s value.)

JCity wrote:I also cruised by the Kiener Plaza. I like this section of the mall; i don't get why everyone trash talks it?

Doubtful this will be a long term success

Doug wrote:After some 20+ years of proposals like an Aqua Center and allegedly three total "Gateway One" buildings, we now have City Garden: that which could exist anywhere else and says nothing unique about St. Louis. Pinocchio? Rabbits? Water Jets? Bust of some guys head? Who is he? Why do we care about these? Aesthetically pleasing yes, but what do they give our City?



Like the guiding philosophy of the City Beautiful moment which instilled the concept of the Gateway Mall more than 100 years ago, we have this urban "oasis" as if the surrounding dirty crime ridden City needs such a haven. What we really needed was mixed use residential to counter the anti-urban dysfunctional single use office buildings that line the Mall, who's owners pushed for the demolition of Real Estate Row. What we needed were the architectural works of those masters which gave us a sense of place and defined us as the former 4th City.



Our City elite gave us this park, finally, many years after destroying the integrity of these three blocks permanently. Why do we glorify green space at the expense of our irreplaceable built environment? The Ambassador, Real Estate Row, the Century Building, Marquette Annex, and Demenil building all fell suburbanizing our Downtown, permanently eroding its sense of place. It's uniformly a place to visit or work, park ones car, then leave for safer defensible space suburbia.



Threatened buildings like the Clemens Mansion, Police HQ, DeVille Motor Hotel, and the Mullanphy reveal the inept capacity of not only our political leadership, but again our elites. Why did we spend 20-30 million on a stupid park when the fate of these buildings are in jeopardy? In St. Louis do we sill hate that which makes us a City, our buildings, the concept of a walkable environment? We must thus we need generic Wall-Mart playgrounds to distract us from the fact that criminals hide inside our ugly terra cotta buildings. Or rather within the parking garages where these buildings once stood.



Until we value that which tells the story of St. Louis, we will never compel people to take up residency. When we stop thinking of Downtown as a neighborhood primarily, a concept advocated since at least the mid 1970s, then we will see progress. Why would someone move Downtown for City Garden when it's so easy to visit and make it a weekend affair? Why would someone care to visit after a few times? Isn't it easy to understand after only a few? Is its message so intricate?



Why would someone move from another City for this?



Doubtful this will be a long term success unless surrounding blocks see drastic change. We had building diversity -- and it was utterly destroyed by the actions of Pride of St. Louis Redevelopment Corporation. Now we have the Gateway Foundation which installs some public art, hires a landscape architect, thus automatically fixes the problem of the Mall? Hardly. Their philanthropy is appreciated, but the Mall concept should have been abandoned.