Chalupas54 wrote:Downtown St Louis once again is in decline. This needs to be stopped at once. Recently was in St Louis with friends, Downtown Omaha is way more vibrant than St Louis. It is so embarrassing that our beautiful downtown is so unbelievably dead. To be brutally honest, when people I know visit St Louis, I recommend that they stay somewhere near Clayton, where it is much more vibrant.
I understand that you are probably young, so you really don't know - Anyone who says downtown is dead and on the decline has no clue as to how far it has come - in the mid 90's the entire area west of Tucker and north of Locust was just about completely void of activity.
I had friends visit in 95 right out of college and wanted to see Washington Ave during the day after a night of hanging out at 1227 (or what ever name it was then) - at 2:00 pm on a Saturday on a Cardinal game day we were the only ones on a street of mostly boarded up buildings - these people were from all over the Midwest, who were amazed at how dead it was, I was embarrassed for St. Louis that day.
At that time there were more jobs downtown on weekdays so at lunch there was more street activity on Olive, but Olive was a ghost town after 6 because there was no residential at all except for Mansion House - which was all the way east and the residents had no reason to walk around downtown, except for Walgreens in the Century building and some light activity outside of St Louis center downtown was devoid of pedestrians after 6.
As late as 2000, when I was working downtown, if you worked late and wanted a cheap meal you had to go to the Wendy's in the Kiener garage and had to get there before 6 pm when they closed or else you were getting Charlie Gitto's - and that was it if you did not want to spend more than $10.00 for dinner
We have come a long way - things have gotten better - things will get better - we are dealing with a decades time table not a years
