urbanSTL

delmar2debaliviere2downtown wrote: ↑

6:09 PM - Mar 27

goat314 wrote:

delmar2debaliviere2downtown wrote: ↑

2:26 PM - Mar 27

Kosciusko definitely one of our urban renewal atrocities. Makes anything beyond industrial almost impossible. Soulard and old Kosciusko combined would be one heck of a riverfront commercial district, which is what we are missing horribly in this city. Soulard is great but Kosciuskos mess makes Soulard not anywhere close to being connected to the river

I’d really like to get in the minds of people that really thought these decisions would be better for the future

It makes NGA reuse really tough

I’d probably prefer AB save Lemp or old Falstaff in Benton Park but without the Busch family, I’m skeptical of them taking many StL centric projects. Love to see it though


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Mill Creek Valley would have been our version of Over The Rhine in Cincinnati. Kosciuskos would have been our version of the French Quarter. Very idiotic decisions indeed.

When I see pictures of Mill Creek my stomach just drops. Literally would have been another Soulard right connecting the CWE and downtown. The pictures look like Back Bay in Boston, what were we thinking. And the development that replaced it is at best uninspiring. At least some economic activity came from it at times but an overall failure (and of course the racial component of losing an entire culture and community)

Kosciusko was replaced by just junkyards and shipping yards. My goodness, how idiotic

Then you go into the interstates dividing these neighborhoods from downtown (Soulard would be thought of like OTR if it wasn’t for 64) and dividing historic neighborhoods. Soulard/Lafayette Sq/Lasalle Park/Benton Park/Compton Heights/all the way to Tower Grove would end the take the cake as the most continuous historic district in the US if it wasn’t for that 44/55 interchange

Soulard is so siphoned off from everything and idk how we fix that.

The NGA space has such a huge parking lot in front of it. I would probably hope any reuse or redevelopment would include some new builds connecting it back to Broadway and the rest of neighborhood


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The destruction of Mill Creek displaced a good chunk of Black St. Louis (including my grandfather and his family). Then it was followed by the construction of public housing projects all around the center city. Pruitt Igoe was a complete and utter disaster from day one. The rapid shifting of people into different neigborhoods also exacerbated class and racial tensions, which likely accelerated the white flight and disinvestment from the city. I think St. Louis thought it was really doing something by getting the urban renewal dollars. The only good project we got was the Arch. I think St. Louis would have done much better waiting it out, building the Great Society Subway that Washington, Atlanta, and San Francisco got. Put money into neigborhood stabilization instead of silver bullet projects. Embraced a more graceful decline and I think we would have bottomed out at around 500k residents and probably be a very hot city right now. 

It's easy to look back with 20/20 vision, but those were the choices being made by every big city in the country. Those ideas were considered forward-thinking and progressive at the time.

goat314 wrote:

delmar2debaliviere2downtown wrote: ↑

6:09 PM - Mar 27

goat314 wrote:
Mill Creek Valley would have been our version of Over The Rhine in Cincinnati. Kosciuskos would have been our version of the French Quarter. Very idiotic decisions indeed.

When I see pictures of Mill Creek my stomach just drops. Literally would have been another Soulard right connecting the CWE and downtown. The pictures look like Back Bay in Boston, what were we thinking. And the development that replaced it is at best uninspiring. At least some economic activity came from it at times but an overall failure (and of course the racial component of losing an entire culture and community)

Kosciusko was replaced by just junkyards and shipping yards. My goodness, how idiotic

Then you go into the interstates dividing these neighborhoods from downtown (Soulard would be thought of like OTR if it wasn’t for 64) and dividing historic neighborhoods. Soulard/Lafayette Sq/Lasalle Park/Benton Park/Compton Heights/all the way to Tower Grove would end the take the cake as the most continuous historic district in the US if it wasn’t for that 44/55 interchange

Soulard is so siphoned off from everything and idk how we fix that.

The NGA space has such a huge parking lot in front of it. I would probably hope any reuse or redevelopment would include some new builds connecting it back to Broadway and the rest of neighborhood


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The destruction of Mill Creek displaced a good chunk of Black St. Louis (including my grandfather and his family). Then it was followed by the construction of public housing projects all around the center city. Pruitt Igoe was a complete and utter disaster from day one. The rapid shifting of people into different neigborhoods also exacerbated class and racial tensions, which likely accelerated the white flight and disinvestment from the city. I think St. Louis thought it was really doing something by getting the urban renewal dollars. The only good project we got was the Arch. I think St. Louis would have done much better waiting it out, building the Great Society Subway that Washington, Atlanta, and San Francisco got. Put money into neigborhood stabilization instead of silver bullet projects. Embraced a more graceful decline and I think we would have bottomed out at around 500k residents and probably be a very hot city right now. 

This is a great assessment. Squandering a build out of a subway system at that time was a very big mistake. Pretty much every major city during that time made urban renewal mistakes, but we just made more than the others.


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framer wrote: ↑

9:35 PM - Mar 27

It's easy to look back with 20/20 vision, but those were the choices being made by every big city in the country. Those ideas were considered forward-thinking and progressive at the time.

My later grandfather was from Mill Creek and said most average St. Louisans knew they were stupid ideas. It was the civic progress types that were pushing it. Just like St. Louisans have voted from Metrolink expansion several times and "leadership" has failed to build it. I think St. Louis has historically had idiotic leadership.

Can't overlook the fact federal policy inventivized stuff like this too. The 1949 Housing Act subsidized suburbia and paid for the destruction of "slums" while building segregated public housing. Then the highway program further paid for the destruction of inner cities and subsidization of suburban lifestyle. And to this day that's the status quo.

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Are there enough pictures of Mill Creek left over that they could be used as part of redevelopment?


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