Grover wrote:It's added a substantial amount of tax base to O'Fallon and many of the people living there are happy with it.
At the expense of another municipality. Zero positive growth for our region, not to mention the continued sprawl of employment and resources further west ever undermining the core of our region.
An urbanist should find them equitable to cancer or a virulent plague.Grover wrote: Not everyone thinks that Winghaven and NorthPark are crap.
Grover wrote:You seem to think so because they're not "urban" enough for your tastes.
They're entirely anti-urban. I moved to St. Louis City partially because I lived near Winghaven and saw that never ending cancer destroying what rural identity St. Charles County once had. In the same manner that Urban Renewal destroyed the identity and functionality of cities, McKee's destruction has the same affect upon these North St. Louis Neighborhoods.
Grover wrote:
I think McKee has successfully built a suburban development in suburbia, has put together a successful warehouse and office development in an area where it makes sense to have warehouses and some offices.
The views of philistines on art are incalculably stupid.
Those with common sense would recognize that we don't need to demolish entire neighborhoods for warehouses or offices! I work for a warehousing firm on North Broadway! North Broadway contains many buildings already for lease or up for sale. The amount of land available is quite astounding and $100,000,000 plus another $400,000,000 TIF could certainly cover remediation if any would be necessary. Why are we demolishing homes, turning North St. Louis into a greenfield, when we had the opportunity to convert underutilized brownfields into functional uses once again, or at the very least see historic vacant warehouses (that have easy access to Highway 70 and the new Mississippi River Bridge) with tenants? If a site must exist within the project area, then Pruitt-Igoe would be an ideal location, but there's no reason to have campuses located within a residential neighborhood when we already have industrial areas nearby.
Vancouver did excellent things with False Creek. Simply amazing. They started in the 1970's and it took a long time, but why can't we do something similar with our North Riverfront Area? Why are we demolishing residential for office and industrial!
The reason becomes apparent not only due to institutional, political, and cultural constraints which stymie dense urban development, but through alleged urbanists, those who are supposed to advocate, who would settle for McKee's phantasmagoria.
Grover wrote:
The plan for NorthSide IS urban. Again, you can simply say that you don't believe the plan if you like.
It's not a plan. It's a bunch of buzzwords to fund his few campuses by placating armchair pushovers, especially those who didn't even attend the May 21st meeting.
