urbanSTL

My experience with Illinois has been the same as with St. Louis County suburbanites; happy to go to games or other specific activities, considers the city in general a death trap if you cross paths with the wrong "urban youth". Maybe a bit less "those feral urbans are abusing OUR TAX DOLLARS" financial angst, more "don't dare cross the JB Bridge (!) after dark!" poor-geography angst.

MarkHaversham wrote:My experience with Illinois has been the same as with St. Louis County suburbanites; happy to go to games or other specific activities, considers the city in general a death trap if you cross paths with the wrong "urban youth". Maybe a bit less "those feral urbans are abusing OUR TAX DOLLARS" financial angst, more "don't dare cross the JB Bridge (!) after dark!" poor-geography angst.

You are so delightfully smug.

If the whole city were white and the crime rates were as they are and have been for years there would STILL be some suburban type people who wouldn't take the kids to Gravois Park for a Sunday afternoon picnic.

This is how race confuses the issue and causes some people to become grossly over self-righteous.

Mark Groth wrote:Umm, being a St. Clair County, Illinois boy born and raised and a person who's lived in the city for 21 years and worked in two cities in St. Louis County for the same 21 years...the STL suburbs on the Missouri side are STL's worst enemy. Poisoning the well of the ole STL is almost a tradition in the burbs. It's sad but true. I actually appreciate honest hatred and open discussion on STL from suburbanites; it's the latent, silent stuff that makes me the most disenfranchised with the whole regionalism thing. I wish this weren't true, I really do...but it is my honest experience. I see this as our biggest negative AS A REGION. I have a city chip on my shoulder that I want to get rid of...but, the denial, ignorance and straight up disdain for STL comes up too often to let me shed it.

I wish we as a region could think like Kansas City or Indy or Louisville or Columbus and act in the greater good...you know, like share our limited (zero growth) resources but sadly, there's a convenient exit strategy in STL...move to the burbs and forget that crazy sh*t in STL, that is enough for most. It's caustic and the only thing I cannot defend about living here.

Sorry hit submit before I was done...

That negative crap aside, I've never felt more confident that Maplewood, St. Louis, University City and Ferguson are all headed in the right direction...I just wish we all could help each other where it matters: votes and tax dollars. You know all for one and one for all...

Love your spirit. Have another drink....

leeharveyawesome wrote:

MarkHaversham wrote:My experience with Illinois has been the same as with St. Louis County suburbanites; happy to go to games or other specific activities, considers the city in general a death trap if you cross paths with the wrong "urban youth". Maybe a bit less "those feral urbans are abusing OUR TAX DOLLARS" financial angst, more "don't dare cross the JB Bridge (!) after dark!" poor-geography angst.

You are so delightfully smug.

If the whole city were white and the crime rates were as they are and have been for years there would STILL be some suburban type people who wouldn't take the kids to Gravois Park for a Sunday afternoon picnic.

This is how race confuses the issue and causes some people to become grossly over self-righteous.

Has there ever been a period in any city where high urban crime rates weren't connected to otherizing of the poor population? Your hypothetical that crime rates would be as they are with an all-white city is somewhat preposterous. Either the poor would be recognizably "one of us" and resources would flow in to help them and reduce crime (see: Norway) or the poor would be banned from the Whiteness Club (see: 19th century Irish). The vocabulary might change, but the process is the same.

I don't doubt that crime rates are a proximate cause of suburban fears, but the situation you're describing appears by historical evidence to be unsustainable.

MarkHaversham wrote:

leeharveyawesome wrote:

MarkHaversham wrote:My experience with Illinois has been the same as with St. Louis County suburbanites; happy to go to games or other specific activities, considers the city in general a death trap if you cross paths with the wrong "urban youth". Maybe a bit less "those feral urbans are abusing OUR TAX DOLLARS" financial angst, more "don't dare cross the JB Bridge (!) after dark!" poor-geography angst.

You are so delightfully smug.

If the whole city were white and the crime rates were as they are and have been for years there would STILL be some suburban type people who wouldn't take the kids to Gravois Park for a Sunday afternoon picnic.

This is how race confuses the issue and causes some people to become grossly over self-righteous.

Has there ever been a period in any city where high urban crime rates weren't connected to otherizing of the poor population? Your hypothetical that crime rates would be as they are with an all-white city is somewhat preposterous. Either the poor would be recognizably "one of us" and resources would flow in to help them and reduce crime (see: Norway) or the poor would be banned from the Whiteness Club (see: 19th century Irish). The vocabulary might change, but the process is the same.

I don't doubt that crime rates are a proximate cause of suburban fears, but the situation you're describing appears by historical evidence to be unsustainable.

Who knows. Sweden has always been whatever Sweden is and Portugal has been whatever Portugal is. Everyone has a history. Peru is Peru. Africa is Africa. China is China. It is what it is.

And we all melt in America.

http://www.miamiherald.com/living/food- ... 97933.html
Miami is seeing a huge wave of restaurant closers including PI that was just open 2 months. While downtown STL. seems to be on a restaurant renaissance

Wasn't sure where else to put this. The Atlantic's CityLab recently posted a link to a map of all the jobs in the United States based on 2010 Census data. Here's the link - Employment in America, 2010.

The execution clearly isn't perfectly exact (i.e. SLU's job are nowhere to be found, although SLU Med/SLU Hospital's are, and why are all of Wash. U.'s jobs in the County?), but it provides an interesting analysis and illustration of regional employment. Here's what the Central Corridor and beyond looks like:

roger wyoming II wrote:Turning on my deep voice, "Something BIG Is Happening in Downtown Milwaukee"



Besides the multi-tenant, 17 story office tower being built in the video, downtown Milwaukee also has the massive $450 million Northwestern Mutual HQ & Plaza under construction and first phase Streetcar should begin construction by the end of the year.



^ 833 East under construction... I think the other crane is for the NW Mutual project, which will look like this:



Coming to downtown streets in 2018:


A 44 story mixed-use Couture Tower also may be getting started soon now that a judge cleared some legal hurdles:


The site is currently a transit center and the Couture project proposes a station for the streetcar


Pretty impressive stuff.

In the video, I saw that one of the new structures they are touting is the new Buck's Arena being built with a significant amount of public money, and strongly supported by Wisconsin Governor and conservative Republican Presidential candidate Scott Walker. Milwaukee is joining the more aggressive cities, such as Indy, KC, OKC, which are not satisfied with stagnation and slow deterioration.

^ oh, please. since when is the support of Scott Walker—a scumbag who regularly panders to billionaires—a selling point? that Milwaukee is joining the long list of cities "aggressively" blowing wads of public money on a new stadium, despite overwhelming evidence that stadiums do not promote economic growth, STILL is not a convincing argument for doing so.

John Oliver sums things up nicely:

http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/ ... -taxpayers



and here's a link to the journal article that he cites at 11:05, which reviews 20 years of economic literature as well economists' consensus on the matter (95% surveyed are opposed to stadium subsidies):

http://econjwatch.org/articles/do-econo ... ega-events

sorry, Gary, but repeating over and over that yet another new billion dollar stadium will somehow curtail "stagnation and slow deterioration" just doesn't jibe with reality.

delete

What's with the double-posting and "delete" posts?

gary kreie wrote:These are general studies. They aren't looking at the proposal on the table in St. Louis right now.

Gary, that's how science works. You deduce trends from seemingly dissimilar events. That there IS a trend demonstrates that there are, in fact, similarities that aren't immediately obvious. Like ours, each of the proposals and developments analyzed in these "general" studies were a little different from one another, yet the result is clear: little to no return on investment for the public.

And again, this is not an investment in downtown (which is exactly what the studies are showing); it is a gift to a billionaire. An investment in downtown would add value to downtown outside of the stadium and the stadium parking lots and enhance the downtown economy. So far, none of our stadiums have accomplished this, and neither would this one.

As for the fact that a "fiscally conservative" governor who is trying to destroy higher education and unions and make life oversight-free for his billionaire Kochian overlords endorses handing hundreds of millions in public money to a billionaire basketball team owner, well... forgive me if I'm not convinced. The vast majority of people who study economics for a living disagree with him.

urban_dilettante wrote:

gary kreie wrote:These are general studies. They aren't looking at the proposal on the table in St. Louis right now.

Gary, that's how science works. You deduce trends from seemingly dissimilar events. That there IS a trend demonstrates that there are, in fact, similarities that aren't immediately obvious. Like ours, each of the proposals and developments analyzed in these "general" studies were a little different from one another, yet the result is clear: little to no return on investment for the public.

And again, this is not an investment in downtown (which is exactly what the studies are showing); it is a gift to a billionaire. An investment in downtown would add value to downtown outside of the stadium and the stadium parking lots and enhance the downtown economy. So far, none of our stadiums have accomplished this, and neither would this one.

As for the fact that a "fiscally conservative" governor who is trying to destroy higher education and unions and make life oversight-free for his billionaire Kochian overlords endorses handing hundreds of millions in public money to a billionaire basketball team owner, well... forgive me if I'm not convinced. The vast majority of people who study economics for a living disagree with him.

The "experts" try to see if increased economic development will generate enough money to pay for the public portion. That doesn't apply in the debate here. We're saying the CURRENT hotel tax on the Rams plus CC already covers the public cost, whether there is any increased economic activity or not. Big Difference. The "round up the usual experts" to bash this might be useful if they would look at the specific proposal on the table, not just reference old studies from the 1990s that tried to answer a different question altogether than the one on the table now.

The only attempt at details from "academia" experts that I've seen regarding the specific funding proposal Peacock and Blitz have put forward is from the Rex Sinquefield's ShowMe Institute -- normally in lockstep with Scott Walker. (They both say they are taking the correct conservative common sense path on this.) But the Show-Me study was a joke, especially when it tried to invoke the "expertise" of these economic professors that claim that the city will have zero loss of revenue on game days because people who buy food in the stadium and around the stadium on game days will still come into the city and buy food at the same level whether there is a game or not. It was obvious these guys do not understand St. Louis's unique city - county divide, and are using some idealized city or something to come to such a ridiculous conclusion. So forgive me if I don't think much of people pointing to generalized studies from the 1990s, but won't do a believable report on the specific proposal on the table here.

The Missouri Economic Dev. Div did do a study and they said the Rams more than pay their way in Missouri, even with the new Stadium. The Post Dispatch agreed in at least two editorials -- certainly at the state level.

The only question still open is, should we let the Rams leave because the Post estimates the Rams only bring in $4.5M of the $6M bond payment the city would owe the first year. (They did confirm that hotel taxes on visitors to conventions + Rams games more than covers the $6M, so St. Louisans wouldn't be paying for their new stadium -- visitors would just pay all of it, just as we pay for theirs.) But the Post neglected to project how that $4.5M might grow over the next 30 years assuming inflation. That part will grow, but the $6M will be fixed as it has been for 20 years already. Eventually, the $4.5M should grow to overwhelm the $6M bill. Where is the full study specific to this proposal without invoking "well, experts in academia have said in general that blah blah blah." We're not even asking if this will spur economic development to cover the public cost -- which is what the experts were addressing. We're saying the CURRENT taxes on visitors will likely cover this directly -- even if the stadium spurred serious negative surrounding economic activity.

Another difference in Milwaukee is the owners/former owners are paying for half the stadium. As well as putting a plan for something like a BPV across the street.
If Stan agree to pay half of the stadium I would then have a serious discussion about STL adding in money

^wouldnt Stan already be paying more than half the money already? 250 up front, and then paying back the interest free G4 loan from the NFL?