Not going to be able to make it due to a softball game, please tell me someone on this board is going to attend and fill the rest of us in.migueltejada wrote:4 corporate campuses!?
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Hello suburbia.
migueltejada wrote:4 corporate campuses!?
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Hello suburbia.
Grand vision collides with neighborhood mistrust at meeting on north St. Louis redevelopment Print E-mail
By Dale Singer, Beacon staff
Posted 10:50 p.m. Thur., May 21 - After developer Paul McKee presented his grand vision for regeneration of a large chunk of north St. Louis (see mapy at the end of this sotry), residents of the area and others attending a public meeting Thursday night broke up into small groups to discuss the project.
There, one man quickly focused on what may be the biggest obstacle that McKee faces:
"What kind of guarantees can you give us that this isn't just a fantasy?"
Such skepticism was common among the 150 or so people in the crowd, about evenly divided between black and white. McKee himself acknowledged that he owed people who live in the area an apology for keeping his acquisition of property under the radar for so long. As he explained his approach, a heckler shouted denunciations laced with f-bombs, but the developer stood his ground.
"I didn't believe I could have purchased the land we did unless we did it the way we did," McKee told the crowd.
"I was not going to stand up in front of you unless we had purchased enough land. I didn't want to bring it to you unless we had enough land to do something with it."
"If St. Louis is to be great again," he said, "to really grow, what does it take? It takes jobs.
"We believe the north side is the gateway to the future of greatness in this city. We believe the north side is going to lead, not follow."
He noted that some of the projects he has developed in the area, including the 55-acre MasterCard complex in St. Charles County and the Express Scripts headquarters, on 25 acres east of Lambert Field, could not have been located in the city because there was not enough land available. But he also said that his new project would not try to replicate those developments.
"We are not going to try to bring something from St. Charles County or St. Clair County into the city of St. Louis," McKee said. "That doesn't work."
McKee, who lives in west St. Louis County, noted that his grandfather was a conductor on the Cass Avenue streetcar. But he and his colleagues acknowledged that he still has to overcome a reservoir of mistrust. "We are a bunch of white people from West County," he said. "I am white. I get it."
ecoabsence wrote:Mastercard is on a 50 acre campus. Express Scripts is on a 30-acre campus.
These campuses could be problematic in an urban setting.
Now, a 40-story building is another story.
jasontoon wrote:migueltejada wrote:4 corporate campuses!?
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Hello suburbia.
Thanks for screwing up the forum layout and forcing everybody to horizontal-scroll to read anything on this page. It's really worth it for such an insightful comment.
