urbanSTL

dredger wrote:Scott AFB scenario is scary for the city, why? because you know every IL politician as well as Scott AFB commanders themselves are angling for this no matter what. Then they will turn around and state that the region doesn't lose out where at the city and core itself takes a big hit. Much more easier for Feds to justify at the Washington Level

A move to Scott AFB is my fear. You know they have the space.

I also wonder if they'd consolidate St. Louis area buildings and close the Arnold/Imperial annex?

onecity wrote:1) These are all metros of 2.5-3.5 M people. What better comparison could you ask for? Denver has 2x as many residents in 2.4x the land area as STL. That isn't a huge difference. MPLS-SP has 700k people in twice the land area. Comparable, and even denser. San Diego has 1.3M in 372 sq. mi, and from aerial views has a large, dense core comparable to STL. Pittsburgh has three rivers going around downtown, since STL doesn't have three rivers going around downtown, I guess it also isn't comparable? These excuses "we can't compare STL to _______ because of this or that" are too funny.



Why is it funny?

Okay: toss out my stupid comments about state capitals and weather. But if someone is going to complain about the number of college grads a certain city has, I certainly think the proximity of the main state university campus in a city is a major consideration.

Sarcasm. Every city is different: region, weather, demographics, amenities, environment, etc. So many people are ready to make excuses for STL's lack of X or Y, and it's just excuse-making as far as I'm concerned.

onecity wrote: We don't need...move Mizzou. STL needs to establish its own big public research U. Doable. If the colleges aren't in the urban core, the students don't likely live in the urban core, and they see STL as either another faceless burbdom, or they see the evening news picture of STL, which we all know presents the city in a positive light.



A whole new big public research university, from scratch? In the city St. Louis? That's a "putting a man on the moon" scale project. I got yelled at in other threads just for proposing moving UMSL or Webster to the city.

Since none of those institutions are going to move, I think it is completely reasonable to advocate for the from scratch approach. Mizzou's annual operating budget is about $500M a year. You obviously wouldn't start at that scale, and because of tuition, it wouldn't actually COST as much as the sticker price. Do you or do you not think diverting $50M a year from other programs, for the purpose of establishing a big uni, even if it only accomodated 5000 students in its early years, would pay off more than the money spent? Especially if there were a plan in place to grow up to 25k students. It isn't like the city has a lack of grand architecture and repurposable abandoned school buildings dotting its landscape that could be used as campus centers.

onecity wrote: How much impact does a Wash U, which only admits 16% of applicants, and which only has a student body of about 10k really have?



Not much as most Wash U grads leave here as fast as possible and never come back. Not even to visit.

Exactly.

onecity wrote: Without a big knowledge pipeline (local unis in the city core), good luck being anything but a fading blue collar has-been of a city in an age of blue collar outsourcing. Have fun with that!



I agree 100%. St. Louis needs to stop bleeding college grads AND attracting grads from elsewhere.

Exactly. We need to make and retain our own college grads.

1) These are all metros of 2.5-3.5 M people. What better comparison could you ask for? Denver has 2x as many residents in 2.4x the land area as STL. That isn't a huge difference. MPLS-SP has 700k people in twice the land area. Comparable, and even denser. San Diego has 1.3M in 372 sq. mi, and from aerial views has a large, dense core comparable to STL. Pittsburgh has three rivers going around downtown, since STL doesn't have three rivers going around downtown, I guess it also isn't comparable? These excuses "we can't compare STL to _______ because of this or that" are too funny.

YES their MSA are very comparable but comparing St. Louis CITY to Denver, Minniapolis, San diego city is no at least on a statistical ground. Their City limits extend futher into their respective Chesterfields and St. Charles capturing their grad counts in their stats.

Business looking to relocate should and probably do look at St. Louis's MSA stats on seconardy education numbers, and we may not stack up in an MSA to MSA comparison, but sounding the alarms at the fact that the city, well understood to be one of the centers of poverty in the region doesn't have enough college grads to compete with other cities is just a little disingenuous. If it takes county stats to bring the city to parity it is probably in large part because the comparable development (suburban) in these cities is within the city limits.

Sprawl is bad. Fragmentation is bad. Stagnation is bad. But your stats were not a fair representation of the reality of the st. louis region which is what bussinesses (if they are well informed) are looking at and factoring in.

Just in case you missed it, on the other side of the state Congressman Cleaver addressed the GSA workers at the Bannister location about how great it will be for them to move to downtown:

http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/n ... l?page=all

"...The General Services Administration’s move to Two Pershing Square early next year will be “one of the greatest things that has happened to downtown Kansas City in the last 75 years.”"

They get 900 workers downtown while we lose 800 VA workers. Livable communities my ass.

A few points:

-The city needs to be all over this - quick, fast and in a hurry like they were with Boeing.

-A noble effort as it seems, a resolution to make the city the first priority is not a good angle. Be a partner - not an antagonist.

-Why is Francis so damn quiet on this? I swear he annoys me. Yes, he met with the agency and Rainford has spoken somewhat on his behalf, but it is LAME for the mayor to not comment publicly on this issue. He needs to be assuring city residents that he's doing his best to retain the jobs. That is what leadership is about. Rainford is okay, but Francis is the mayor. Does anyone believe Sly James in KC or Rahm Emanuel in Chicago would be this quiet?

-The city needs to be assembling available land - CORTEX, Northside (particularly near Union Station)

-What's with the "no comment" from Kern?

-Mark Kern over in St. Clair County should not be trying to secretly poach jobs from St. Louis.

-Is St. Clair County trying to land them at ailing Mid-America?

-The agency needs to stay centralized. With 3,000 employees, I'm sure they live scattered throughout the metro.

-Going to suburban Arnold would decentralize the agency. And what about those employees who use MetroLink/Metro?

-The ATT Tower seems out of the question although 3,000 employees could fill that building. BUT If the agency won't rehabilitate or outfit their existing smaller facility, they sure in the heck is not going to renovate the ATT Tower UNLESS the City offers some major incentive package to the feds. ATT Tower would need to be purchase first, then outfitted. The question about parking then comes up.

arch city wrote:A few points:

-Why is Francis so damn quiet on this? I swear he annoys me. Yes, he met with the agency and Rainford has spoken somewhat on his behalf, but it is LAME for the mayor to not comment publicly on this issue. He needs to be assuring city residents that he's doing his best to retain the jobs. That is what leadership is about. Rainford is okay, but Francis is the mayor. Does anyone believe Sly James in KC or Rahm Emanuel in Chicago would be this quiet?

If this was most other cities you could hear the scrambling, the phone calls, the emails flying and the meetings from 20 blocks away.

Instead Slay probably went "Whelp....uh...okay" and was probably more worried about getting to the lunch at St. Raymonds on time.

Term limits............for all elected city officials.

There should be two or three 4-year terms at max.

Francis is safe for St. Louis, which is why he keeps getting elected, but he doesn't have the luster he had in earlier terms.

It's time for someone new in the mayor's seat.

Fresh perspectives, fresh ideas.

I wonder if the massive sea of parking serves a duel purpose of parking and securing a certain minimum perimeter. Its possible the equipment they are using needs a secure minimum distance. If so a truely uban solution may not be an option.

An option that would be nice to consider would be moving the GSA from Overland to Downtown, renovating the building in Overland for NGIA. A bit of musical chairs but GSA definitely could operate from an urban office setting and I'm not as certain about NGIA.

If they don't stay in the city, SAB is my second preference.
Though no one likes cannibalization, I would like to see significant growth in the Metro East.

Hopefully the site can be redeveloped quickly.... one thing that is kind of annoying is that like the Rams stadium issue, it looks like this won't be decided for a while. I wonder how much these two issues will tie up other prospects at the potential sites