urbanSTL

migueltejada wrote:But if the city can emphasize biking and jogging and plant mature trees to shade them, then the mall would see its activity jump 6 fold IMHO.

The Mall is way too short to appeal to cyclists, but if this was accompanied by a place to rent bikes or take tours (with food à la London's Gabriel’s Wharf), I could see it working for tourists. Don't forget that Baron's Mill Creek Valley rehab is supposed to bring us a very nice Chouteau's Bike Path.



I'd like to suggest the temporary solution of using the Serra sculpture as a dog park.

JCity wrote:Imagine if the end of 40 fed directly onto market via 22nd street, everyone(a lot) would enter downtown via an avenue similar to those in Paris or Madrid. not the off ramp onto 11th

This is the best idea I've read here recently. I don't think the Concrete Terrorists from Suburbia™ will ever stand by and let us close exit ramps, though.

migueltejada wrote:Jmed, you're right people wouldn't walk the mall in a bazillion years for 2 reasons - one, its FAR. 2 miles is a LONG way to walk, and two - it's an uncomfortable walk. There's no shade, no places to quench your thirst or appetite. But if the city can emphasize biking and jogging and plant mature trees to shade them, then the mall would see its activity jump 6 fold IMHO. Furthermore, if you tie this into the Archgrounds, then the city can promote the mall as the coolest running track in the country - Jog from Union station, past city hall, through the courts, next to the ballpark (and BPV), and onto the arch. How cool is that!? What jogger/biking tourist wouldn't want to instantly jump out of bed and do that?

Well of course I am right that it is far too long to walk .



Really though, you miss the point when you suguest that simply adding better walking, biking, and jogging paths will improve the gateway mall. For that to be the case, the Mall would need to be surrounded by a large number of people. Yes, maybe the 10,000 downtown residents (if you belive DTSTLP's numbers, which I don't) would bring part of the people required and so too would the 90,000 workers downtown.



But lets face it, those density are not nearly enough to make the mall an active place. You can make all the improvements you want to the mall (benches, more trees, streetscaping, sculpture), but those will never fix the fundamental problem of getting a critical mass of people to activate the space.



Think about any great park and a big chunck of what makes the space great is not the number of bike paths, or the streetscaping, or the benches, or the tables. It is the people. It is that simple. People bring activity. People make a great urban park. You walk into Bryant park and sure you may remember that the NYC Public Library is right near by and the nice benches and the buildings hugging the green oasis of the park. But what you really remember all those things combined with the number of people outside having a great time in an urban park. And you choose to go to that park because of the people, not because you think their benches look nice.



You can have all the well designed green space you want in a city, but if you don't have the people there to activate the space, it does not matter. The park will be lifeless, empty, underused, and viewed as unsafe. Fixing the gateway mall is not simply a matter of drawing in more people to the space (some improvments will draw those currently downtown into the mall), it is ensuring that there are enough people downtown to make sure that the space is activated (because the downtown population is not high enought to support that much greenspace), filled with people on a nice day.

migueltejada wrote:
HULK SMASH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Proof that meth permeates all areas of society.





For reasons the grass sucks check out "Cardinal Parade". This is why the Feds only let us onto the Arch grounds en mass once a year.



That and they have no money.



Really, how much does like 500 bags of Water Saver cost? I put that suff down without even following the directions and my parents yard looks better than Busch.



Imagine if they read!!!

I was going to suggest that the Mall be done in a similar fashion to Millenium Park, but everyone beat me to it. My support for the Art Musuem running a modern art satellite museum in the General American building is also unoriginal, but maybe combining the two would be the best way of bringing about their existance. The museum could move most of its current modern holdings into the building and hold a contest for artists to design new sculpture/outdoor art in the blocks between Kiener and the Civil Courts. Since the mall was built with the view of the Arch in mind, the sculptures would have to compliment or contrast with the world's largest sculpture in a tasteful way.



Giving the museum control of these blocks would also give them the ability to build underground parking beneath them so that they could be sure that the museum would draw a crowd.



Regarding Bryant Park, its success lies in its management. Faced with skyrocketing crime and decay, New York put the park under private management.

In 1988, the corporation signed a contract with the city to manage and make improvements to the park. By 1991, after extensive improvements to the park and a budget that was some six times the previous city budget for the park, Bryant Park was re-opened under private management, which has been the reason for its rapid turnaround.

About a decade after private management, the BPRC plan has been acclaimed a huge success, even in a city as famous for its municipal socialism as its high taxes (Money Magazine once called New York "tax hell."). Crime is almost non-existent in the park and in the surrounding 50-block area which is close to Grand Central Terminal. Crime is down some 73% since the Grand Central Partnership, a business improvement district founded by Biederman and real estate attorney/developer Peter L. Malkin, began operating. Bryant Park, which is now patrolled with private police and kept clean with its own crews, has won numerous awards, including the Urban Land Institute Excellence award.

--Private Oasis in Manhatten by Gregory Bresiger



Perhaps we should consider doing the same with some of our parks (esp Lucas)?

Mayor Slay has an update:

From the home office:







Mayor Francis Slay announced today that a team led by Thomas Balsley Associates of New York and Urban Strategies Inc., of Toronto, was selected to create a master plan for the City’s Gateway Mall.



Earlier this year, Mayor Slay approached the Gateway Foundation to request the Foundation’s assistance in developing a plan to energize the Gateway Mall and enhance its attractiveness. The Gateway Foundation responded by pledging funds for the development of the master plan and, working with the Mayor, formed a steering committee to select a consulting team to develop the plan.



The selection of Balsley Associates and Urban Strategies resulted from a process that elicited qualifications from 21 teams based in the U.S., Canada and Europe. The Gateway Foundation will fund the project and will contract with the selected team. The steering committee and the City will guide the planning process and outcomes. The process will include a variety of opportunities for public participation. The planning process is expected to commence in February 2007 and to be completed in June of 2007.



Once the plan is complete, implementation strategies will be explored by the City.



The Gateway Mall is an 18-block “green space” extending from the Old Courthouse to 22nd Street and was a part of the grand “Civic Plaza” plan originally conceived by the City’s Civic Plaza Commission, chaired by noted landscape architect Harland Bartholomew in the early 1920s. The citizens of St. Louis voted an unprecedented amount of money, $86,000,000 to develop much of the land on Market Street from 11th to 15th Street as a park and civic center. The park was planned to be extended eventually to the Old Courthouse on the east and to 22nd Street on the west, and the area was to become a larger public space to be known as the Gateway Mall.

http://www.urbanstrategies.com/



http://www.tbany.com/



Looks like two decent companies that have done some interesting work, particularly Skyline Park in Denver (which is my guess as to why both were chosen). I look forward to see what they come up with.



But as with any planning process, it is only as good as the help/ leadership it receives from the City and from the public input. Based on the RFQ for this plan, it appears those in leadership are busy covering their behinds and trying to convince themselves that the Mall as currently envisioned is not a colossal failure. I think we all know otherwise. Therefore, public input will be huge for this project. The more public input received, the better able the two firms will be able to make the changes demanded by the people.

migueltejada wrote:Personally, I say don't develop every open square of the mall because it's a wonderful tool thats currently just being horribly utilized, and we'll be thankful we kept it when (if?) the city reaches higher density levels. Just tear down gateway one....PLEASE!

Miguel, I never have advocated for the complete development of downtown parkland. And to my knowledge, I don’t think anyone on here has argued for that either.



The difference between you and me is that, for me, regardless of the quality of the parkland downtown, the quality will always be so high as to make the spaces dead an unattractive. Parkland as a place in the urban environment. But parkland in a city derives its value from the number of people that use the parkland. If no one uses an urban park, I would suggest to you that is has little value to the City. This is precisely the problem with downtown parkland.



By my rough calculations, downtown has over 70 acres of parkland. This count does not include things like the new Ballpark Village Park, the new Fed Plaza on Locust, the caps on I-70, or things like the parkland next to the Boatman’s Tower or the US Bank Tower. 46 acres of downtown parkland are those wonderful open lawns on the arch grounds (another underutilized downtown green space). Either way I think you would agree that 70 acres of parkland for 10,000 downtown residents (or around 300 square feet of parkland per person) is pretty darn high. The New York City standard is for 2.5 acres of parkland per 1,000 people (or around 108 square feet of parkland per person). (For the record, I believe the Downtown St. Louis Partnership population estimate of 10,000 people living downtown is high. I would argue for a population of around 7,000 downtown, pushing the parkland per person to almost 435 square feet per person. YUCK!).



Now to be fair, if downtown doubles its population to 20,000, we would be getting down to a more acceptable parkland level per person (around 154 square feet per resident). (The sarcastic person in me wants to shout out here the open-ended question of when downtown will ever reach 20,000 residents.) But even with a higher population, this parkland would still be either in one gigantic strip between 4th street and 21st street or on the arch grounds. Neither method does a good job of integrating parkland into the new downtown neighborhoods. If downtown would move away from the “strip-o-greenspace” model of downtown parks maybe we could get more lively community parks. I do think that both the Ballpark Village Park and the new Old Post Office Park are good steps in this direction. Small parks surrounded by occupied buildings scattered throughout downtown.



Finally as you rightly point out, downtown greenspace is poorly programmed and a big part of the problem is funding. But tell me Miguel, how, even after the Master Planning is done, how all these grand visions for improvements to the park will be made? How will we pay for our parks? Well, the City’s current options are beg (already outlined in the RFQ), raise taxes, or sell parkland. I suggest to you that selling some of the parkland in exchange for the funds to make really high quality parks throughout downtown would be a much better idea than begging for funds to build and maintain the current city beautiful parks.



So finally it comes down to this. The map below is my best guess at the current distribution of downtown parkland. (The map does try to include the Ballpark Village Park and the Old Post Office Park).









Looking at the map you can clearly see that most of our parkland is clumped together, with little integrated into our newer neighborhoods to the north. The following map is what I would do if I had the power/money to call the shots on this project.







The two arrows along Market represent the greening of Market Street, which should ideally include double rows of street trees on both sides. People forget that to make a City green, you don’t need to set aside acres upon acres of parkland. Nice tree-filled streets broken up with some parks interspersed will do the job. The arrow along 13th street calls for 13th to be completely transformed into a pedestrian street with street trees, bike lanes, and the like, connecting Washington Avenue to the string of parks between Lucas and City Hall. The arrow along 10th would be a second greenway to connect cupples with market, though the current amoung of parkland would mean 10th street can remain open. Idealy both of these greenways would eventualy connect into the Chouteau's Lake project. The blocks in yellow are to be converted to residential, the blocks in red to commercial space (although mixed use is possible with condos on the upper story), and finally two new museums one in the old GenAM building and yet unbuilt. You will also note that while reducing greensapce on the gateway mall, I have added more parks along Washington, including one next to the King Bee and one next to Fashion Square. If David Chequetts ever comes up with a good plan for the area just south of Kiel, I would also add one more neigborhood park in that area as well. One final note, I am sure many on this site will be up in arms over height. For those buildings between the Civil Courts and the Gateway One, none of the buildings can be taller than the Gateway One. For those new buildings between Market and Chestnut west of 14th, none can be taller than 15 stores. For those buildings north of Chestnut, they can be as tall as possible.

JMed: "If David Chequetts ever comes up with a good plan for the area just south of Kiel..."



Has he stated he would like to? I had not heard this.

I just posted it in the Kiel Opera House thread:



http://www.urbanstl.com/viewtopic.php?p=60757#60757