DogtownBnR wrote:^Agree, Pittsburgh's downtown, does not seem very lively, especially at night when nothing is going on, but their skyline is awesome, especially from Mt. Washington. Their Downtown has more tall and modern buildings. I don't know the elevation, but our skyline looks really small from some angles and great from others. It always looks great from the air, especially when looking into midtown and over to Clayton. It almost seems as if Downtown is in a hole or valley, when entering eastbound on 40. I know this is off subject.. does anyone know the elevation of Downtown, compared to other parts of the area?
Despite the obvious passion folks on this forum have for the city, I think some still lose perspective when comparing it to other places and take for granted many of the great things about St. Louis. To a certain extent, it's human nature to think the grass is sometimes greener elsewhere. However, I also think it's a reflection of our poor civic self-esteem that we're so often lamenting our supposed lack of progress as compared to other cities.
As someone who has moved away and would love to get back, here are some common complaints that I just don't agree with:
Skyline - We have one of the most iconic skylines in the country. It's featured regularly in national commercials and TV shows. It's probably in the top three most recognizable skylines in the country along with NYC and DC. For some reason, people like to discount it by saying "if you take away the arch it's not all that impressive." That's bullsh*t. Let's remove the five most impressive buildings in the Pittsburgh skyline and see how it looks. I say five because the arch has same impact as at least five skyscrapers. I take my kids (2 and 5) to Chicago all the time and they've never said anything about the skyline. Same thing with Indy, Louisville, and Nashville. But as soon as we hit the Poplar Street Bridge they start losing their sh*t over the big arch.
Transit - Has anybody actually looked at a map of the legendary Denver light rail system? It's not really six lines. It's basically Y-shaped like metrolink with a few additional short branches. Probably 90% of the time the six lines are running on tracks that are shared by several other lines. It has less miles of track than metrolink. A big chunk of it is streetrunning, basically a big streetcar. It doesn't have all of the awesome underground sections that metrolink has downtown and at WashU. It doesn't even go to the airport. Minneapolis has one line. The transit meccas of KC and Cincinnati have nothing close to metrolink, even if you count their under-construction streetcar starter lines. And speaking of streetcars, we are actually very close to beginning construction on a streetcar line in St. Louis and U-city using Federal transit dollars that supposedly never come our way. Furthermore, planning is taking place have another streetcar running in downtown, midtown, the CWE, and the near north side by 2020. No we aren't New York or Boston when it comes to transit, but it's also a hell of a lot easier and cheaper to get around by car here than in those places (and that's OK.) Compared to peer cities, we look pretty damn good.
Development Progress - I really enjoyed the recent thread on what the city was like in the 70's, 80's, and 90's because it reminded me of my experience as a West County teenager discovering downtown at the tail end of that period in the late 90's. My dipshit friends and I had great times discovering places like The Side Door Club, The Creepy Crawl, Club Utopia, and Goodman's (if you were in need of a silk hanky.) Even 15-16 years ago, downtown was a much grittier, rougher place than it is today. I went on to undergrad at SLU and when I started midtown was a sea of abandonment and decay. The Continental Building, Coronado, Moolah Temple, Medinah Temple, Woolworth's building, Metropolitan building, the entire "Midtown Alley" Locust Corridor, the Sun Theatre were all empty. Since then, all of these buildings have been rehabbed and now house fairly high-end establishments. My freshman year (2001-2002), at least half of my friends were mugged. West of campus was sketchy, North of campus was sketchy, South and Southwest of campus was really sketchy. These areas are now booming with new housing and retail developments. The Grove (aka Forest Park Southeast) was a really bad neighborhood in 2001. It was still a pretty bad neighborhood in 2008 when I finished grad school at Wash U. The change in that area just in the last five years is really amazing. Shaw, Tower Grove South, Tower Grove East, Benton Park, even more established neighborhoods like the CWE, Soulard, and Lafayette Square have all become noticeably better in the last 5 to 10 years.
And downtown has made great strides, too. Dozens and dozens of empty buildings have been restored. Thousands of new residents have poured in. New business have opened up including a major grocery store. Speaking of which, does Walgreen's carry anything that you can't get at Culinaria? I don't fully understand the complaint that downtown doesn't have a chain pharmacy when there is a pharmacy within the downtown grocery. New construction, while much slower has also happened with Robert's Tower, Lumiere Place, a beautiful new bridge, Ballpark Village, and the Ballpark itself, which, nostalgia aside, was a huge upgrade over Busch II. There's also a growing student presence with SLU Law and Webster.
And steady residential growth continues to happen unabated. However, it still has a long way to go as a neighborhood and we shouldn't expect it to transform overnight. For comparison, Minneapolis (often cited as having the best downtown in the Midwest outside of Chicago) has three times the population density of downtown St. Louis. We shouldn't expect the same amenities, when we're not at the same stage of development. Let's continue to grow our core city and we'll eventually see those same types of developments that makes us jealous of other cities.
