Idea for Chouteau's Landing

STLEnginerd · PostOct 02, 2012#12012-10-02T13:04+00:00

So not sure where to get the money to implement this nor exactly how to go about it but i have been really thinking about how to reuse chouteau's landing and improve the aethetics of st. louis from the PSB.

Essentially rather than a piecemeal approach i was thinking it'd be interesting to propose the establishment of a 4 year collegic institution on the Chouteau site. As I said I don't have 150M endowment probably needed to make it happen but I'm imagining the positive influence it could have on the area.

Colleges bring both new residents (students), employment (faculty), construction, diversity, stability, housing price increases, innovation and reputation.

Currently downtown is mostly seen as a place to visit thus the overfocus on parking.

The imaginary university in my head is a smallish technical school focusing on engineering and architecture. I tell myself this is based on claims urgent need for more engineers though i may be biased.

Initially the school would simply use rennovated Chouteau's Landing buildings for classrooms and residence halls. There would be plenty of space for expansion south and with a charter to repurposed as much historically significant architechture as possible could fill out as far south as Chouteau. The additional foot traffic daily in the area would likely act as a economic counter to the easy money of more parking lots. Possibly driving more mixed use and retail in the are along broadway.

The only negative i have is it costs alot of money to aquire the land and run the university which is in short supply. I do think this would do more to reinvigorate downtown than other high profile initiatives for the area of near the same scale.

leeharveyawesome · PostOct 02, 2012#22012-10-02T14:17+00:00

I genuinely love your capability to dream up some really crazy impossible sh*t.

Please stay in St. Louis.

onecity · PostOct 02, 2012#32012-10-02T15:21+00:00

I like the idea a lot. That area is a wreck. But the STEM part would be a tough sell with Rolla in the mix. One thing MO lacks, however, is a good public architecture and design school. St. Louis College of Design, Architecture, and Planning. Everything else would be the same.

kmurph42 · PostOct 02, 2012#42012-10-02T15:37+00:00

I've always thought St. Louis might have the market for a private art college. Imagine something like the Pratt Institute in St. Louis....(as long as we are dreaming up crazy sh*t). Seriously though, any kind of liberal arts school that focused on architecture, urban design, industrial design, fashion, creative writing, etc....would be awesome.

gary kreie · PostOct 02, 2012#52012-10-02T17:07+00:00

I think we should just keep it as a memorial to the bombing we endured in the war years.

urbanpioneer · PostOct 02, 2012#62012-10-02T18:06+00:00

STLEnginerd wrote:So not sure where to get the money to implement this nor exactly how to go about it but i have been really thinking about how to reuse chouteau's landing and improve the aethetics of st. louis from the PSB.

Essentially rather than a piecemeal approach i was thinking it'd be interesting to propose the establishment of a 4 year collegic institution on the Chouteau site. As I said I don't have 150M endowment probably needed to make it happen but I'm imagining the positive influence it could have on the area.

Colleges bring both new residents (students), employment (faculty), construction, diversity, stability, housing price increases, innovation and reputation.

Currently downtown is mostly seen as a place to visit thus the overfocus on parking.

The imaginary university in my head is a smallish technical school focusing on engineering and architecture. I tell myself this is based on claims urgent need for more engineers though i may be biased.

Initially the school would simply use rennovated Chouteau's Landing buildings for classrooms and residence halls. There would be plenty of space for expansion south and with a charter to repurposed as much historically significant architechture as possible could fill out as far south as Chouteau. The additional foot traffic daily in the area would likely act as a economic counter to the easy money of more parking lots. Possibly driving more mixed use and retail in the are along broadway.

The only negative i have is it costs alot of money to aquire the land and run the university which is in short supply. I do think this would do more to reinvigorate downtown than other high profile initiatives for the area of near the same scale.

Love the idea. With the Arch grounds competition essentially ignoring Chouteau's Landing, it will be up to STL to find a way to bring the neighborhood back, and this seems like an interesting possibility. Would you have any interest in creating a What Should Be post to further explore the idea?

debaliviere · PostOct 02, 2012#72012-10-02T18:59+00:00

kmurph42 wrote:I've always thought St. Louis might have the market for a private art college. Imagine something like the Pratt Institute in St. Louis....(as long as we are dreaming up crazy sh*t). Seriously though, any kind of liberal arts school that focused on architecture, urban design, industrial design, fashion, creative writing, etc....would be awesome.

THIS.

(Although I would probably prefer to have it in Grand Center.)

mill204 · PostOct 02, 2012#82012-10-02T19:56+00:00

I've also thought about the idea of a new college or university to reinvigorate the downtown area. Though in my imagination, this college would be located along the southern banks of a reimagined Chouteau Lake which would be built to FISA standards and would be capable of hosting international regattas.

To make this idea even more ludicrous, I've always thought Tulane would be the perfect university (no idea why, though). Of course, Tulane would only consider moving to St. Louis if a) New Orleans is wiped out by floods from a major hurricane, or b) New Orleans dries up after floods wipe out the Old River Control Structure.

realclear · PostOct 03, 2012#92012-10-03T02:52+00:00

onecity wrote:I like the idea a lot. That area is a wreck. But the STEM part would be a tough sell with Rolla in the mix. One thing MO lacks, however, is a good public architecture and design school. St. Louis College of Design, Architecture, and Planning. Everything else would be the same.

Does Rolla have a satellite campus in St. Louis? Maybe that would be the opportunity. Also, I don't know the details of the reciprocity arrangement with the Kansas schools, but it seems Missouri has decided it will outsource its architecture programs.

I think some of our outstate schools could look to establish facilities in downtown STL. Imagine if you had a mega campus starting at Choteau's Landing (and hopefully spurring the demand to create Choteau's Pond) with classes and labs for William Woods, Central Missouri State, Rolla, Mizzou, SEMO, Truman, Northwest MO, Drury, MO State, UMKC (being greedy here), Stephens, Rockhurst, Columbia College, Park (in KC), William Jewel, etc.

They wouldn't necessarily compete with one another because the campuses would simply offer an opportunity for their students to have easy access to jobs and classes in the state's biggest metro. This could easily add 5k -10k students in downtown STL.

wabash · PostOct 03, 2012#102012-10-03T05:11+00:00

I think what you're describing is UMSL. Which unfortunately is not downtown, but fortunately is so well connected to it.

As for a public Missouri architecture and design school, what about UMKC? I thought they were supposed to have a pretty good program. http://cas.umkc.edu/aupd/aupdhome.asp

STLEnginerd · PostOct 03, 2012#112012-10-03T13:09+00:00

Well the reason i went with engineering is i trying to solve several problems at once. Certainly any college downtown could act as an anchor for downtown development.

I was also thinking about how to fix the national problem of a shortage of engineers.

Plus the odds of them staying in St. Louis is higher were as achitects seem to be driven to larger markets on the East or West Coast to actually work in their field. If the graduates find jobs locally they add to the local economy significantly and engineers start at about 60k-80k.

As far as Rolla, it is an excellent school but I always said the easiest way for them to triple their enrollment is for them to NOT be in Rolla. I went to Rolla so I have some idea. They do have a night classes already at UMSL and its probably a better spot for them since they can serve the oldsters in St. Chuck as well as being well connected to downtown.

Another thing I wanted was to focus on drawing in A LOT of foriegn nationals particularly from Brazil Russia India and China (BRICs). Then if they stay after graduation we are expanding our diversity and even if not we are hopefully connecting with the leaders of the nations which are the expanding markets of this century.

I like to solve every problem at once. What could go wrong.

Of course since you are going to establish you design school right next to my engineering school i think we can work together here. After all the male female ratio is a little better in a design school so throw those poor engineers a bone.

debaliviere · PostOct 03, 2012#122012-10-03T13:34+00:00

STLEnginerd wrote:As far as Rolla, it is an excellent school but I always said the easiest way for them to triple their enrollment is for them to NOT be in Rolla.

Ha, great point.

RuskiSTL · PostOct 03, 2012#132012-10-03T17:42+00:00

1.UMKC has a terrific architecture program. My buddy went through there. Theyre have a joint program with KState which is one of the top programs in the country. He said that after the first year or two, whenever they switch over to Kstate, the UMKC kids were ahead and more proficient than the KState kids. He ended up transferring to SCAD...

2. Tulane isnt Tulane without New Orleans, sorry New Orleans is just like no where else. When I toured as a high schooler I asked prof. Brumfield (Guggenheim fellow in Russian architecture) why I should come to Tulane. He said its simple, you come to Tulane because its in New Orleans.

3. Forget architecture/engineering, look to the future. As many analysts are writing these days, the current higher education model is doomed. Its gonna bubble like the housing market. A degree simply isnt worth all the money. Instead we should be looking to turn Choteau's Landing into a hub for web developers.

For a fraction of the cost of a traditional university we could launch a web developer super center. Go to San Fran steal Shareef Bishay and bring his Dev Bootcamp model to Saint Louis. Get hundreds of folks from around the world to come learn programming in downtown. Lure them into STL for a few months, show them the city, and then entice them to stay by offering rebates for having their start ups here. At the same time turn STL into an IT Mecca. Be ahead of the curve!

link:
http://devbootcamp.com/

pat · PostOct 03, 2012#142012-10-03T20:52+00:00

RuskiSTL wrote:
3. Forget architecture/engineering, look to the future. As many analysts are writing these days, the current higher education model is doomed. Its gonna bubble like the housing market. A degree simply isnt worth all the money. Instead we should be looking to turn Choteau's Landing into a hub for web developers.

As an engineer, I find this insulting. Everything in our lives has been engineered. Higher education will bubble because people are getting degrees that won't give them the salary to pay off their loans. Engineering is not one of those degrees. In fact, there will only be more demand for engineers as the baby boomers begin to retire. For example, I've been with the same company since college for the past 4 years, and I'm still the youngest engineer. There's a handful of people my age and then most all engineers are 40 years old plus. Plenty of work is coming. And I can sttest to you that an engineering degree is definitely worth the money.

Back to the thread, Rolla actually has education center for St. Louis which is located at UMSL. http://eec.mst.edu/

But I still like the idea of an Arts/Engineering school at Chouteau. It might be easiest to have a UMSL satellite campus for young professionals and technicians. I've looked into going to grad school. Wash U isn't cheap, and it sure would be better to drive to Downtown rather than North County.

It be cool if you could get all of our local colleges/universities to team up on a downtown campus for continued higher education. Call it the St. Louis Graduate Institute or something. With the existing young professional population downtown already, there's a good chance it could work fairly well.

Alex Ihnen · PostOct 03, 2012#152012-10-03T20:53+00:00

Engineers are the best web developers.

jmstokes · PostOct 03, 2012#162012-10-03T21:03+00:00

I work with thousands of engineers. I wish I'd taken up engineering as an undergrad. There's no bubble in engineering, in my experience.

gary kreie · PostOct 04, 2012#172012-10-04T02:57+00:00

A long time ago I used to take Rolla engineering courses in The Blue Metal Building on the UMSL campus. I could see a Rolla engineering extension downtown that would be a little classier (no pun intended) and why not in a prominent setting such as Chouteau's Landing.

jakektu · PostOct 04, 2012#182012-10-04T03:26+00:00

Best idea for Chouteau's Landing was the marina and tall buildings in the old drawing from GRG connecting it to Chouteau Lake.

STLEnginerd · PostNov 09, 2012#192012-11-09T02:46+00:00

New idea for the landing. Ran across this paper on the internets not sure if its been posted before but its worth reading. I'm not sure how to implement it but the idea would be to create temporary housing facilities for new immigrants at chouteaus's landing sortg of our version of ellis island. The main reason is because of the advantages associated with a large immigrant population. Include ESIL and citizenship training facilities and all that LRA land issue land grants to new immigrants who show residency in st. louis for oh 3-5 years.

http://www.slcec.com/cmss_files/attachm ... ation1.pdf

onecity · PostNov 09, 2012#202012-11-09T14:55+00:00

^I like it. STL is so lacking in diversity right now, this would be a step in the right direction.

PostApr 02, 2013#212013-04-02T16:54+00:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harris%E2% ... University

Did anyone else know Harris-Stowe is a public state university? I did not. That means there is a publicly funded state college in the city limits. What if...

The city partnered with the state, leveraged and invested in this asset, rightly seeing that universities in the city are key to the social capital, innovation, and growth of the city, and re-established it as Harris Stowe Polytechnic. The idea would be to transform this school into a technology and entrepreneurship focused university along the lines of Stanford. It would be a public alternative and competitor to Wash U, which would provide students with more choices in St. Louis, and a more competitive dynamic that would make both schools better. It would also send a message that STL wants to be a technology driven city. Current enrollment is 1200.

Harris Stowe could continue to maintain its mission to serve low income black students by offering tuition assistance/free tuition/board and K-12 institutional outreach to students that demonstrate academic excellence in SLPS or other districts.

Missouri, and St. Louis, are lacking institutions of higher ed. Iowa, with half the population of Missouri, has 60 such institutions, only seven fewer than Missouri. That's kind of scary. Seriously. While this wouldn't increase that number, it would leverage a public asset for the greater good of the city and consequently the state's future.

Win?

Edit: Similarly, SLCC Forest Park could be transformed into a St. Louis City College - a more selective four year component of SLCC. Kind of like CUNY in NYC. It's probably easier to do this with existing infrastructure and institutional awareness than to start from scratch. Both of these would have a measureable impact on the region.

Alex Ihnen · PostApr 02, 2013#222013-04-02T19:31+00:00

I like the SLCCFP idea. Although I really like that building, it's an area that could see redevelopment. Perhaps a new campus location downtown could work. Selling their current site could largely fund a new location easily accessible via transit.

STLEnginerd · PostApr 02, 2013#232013-04-02T21:02+00:00

I'm for both.

I don't think Harris Stowe should necessarily rename itself but it should definitely expand its offerings. They are a factor in Midtown but SLU is the dominant force there and they always seem overshadowed and forgotten. And any university not offering a technical education option is going to be less and less relevant for the next generations IMHO.

A STL City College at Chouteau's Landing would be perfect and since the STLCC system is primarily supported local dollars it could happen.

Another option would be if the Steven's Institute downtown were to require a larger space for an expanded campus. The current facilities could then be converted into the coolest dorms ever.

onecity · PostApr 13, 2013#242013-04-13T20:33+00:00

Both Harris-Stowe Polytechnic and Saint Louis City College are up on Rally. Please vote for them (and STL/CAD College of Art + Design)! STL proper needs a big influx of college students, living, working, playing, creating, staying, and procreating in the city.

http://www.rallystl.org/Ideas/Detail/1520
http://www.rallystl.org/Ideas/Detail/1519
http://www.rallystl.org/Ideas/Detail/1325

leeharveyawesome · PostMay 17, 2013#252013-05-17T14:47+00:00

How about a trade school dedicated specifically to coding and programming and computer science? There's a shortage according to more than a few people. It's possible that trade schools are the future of education. Maybe develop an entire trade school campus focused on different areas of study?

This blew my mind. Check this out. Less than 25% of Germans go to University. Everyone else goes to trade school or takes an apprenticeship.

This whole American myth about "the dream of getting a college education" isn't exactly working and it's not realistic. A college degree isn't what it used to be. There's a whole mess of fluff in our modern colleges that often just leaves people with debt and not a great chance of finding meaningful employment. Anyone interested in aquiring an employable skill might consider a specialized trade school. Maybe STL can become a hub for specialized trade schools.