Growing Higher Ed Presence in Saint Louis

roger wyoming II · PostSep 26, 2013#12013-09-26T15:00+00:00

In the urban theory thread there has been a discussion about the importance of growing higher ed presence in the core city; i.e. how do we become more of a Boston.
It's good to see Webster growing their presence downtown and of course the SLU law move was two thumbs up.... hopefully there will be others following suit.

KC civic leadership is working on moving the UMKC arts campus to downtown as a priority and will be asking the state legislature to contribute $25 million towards the $90 million project. http://www.pitch.com/FastPitch/archives ... own-campus

Any ideas on what would be a similar idea for UMSL? What program(s) would make sense for either UMSL to move to a downtown campus or to establish new programs to satisfy an unmet need for the region? Or perhaps for Missouri S&T to establish a presence here?

It would also be nice to see Harris - Stowe see ambitious growth midtown or downtown.... e.g. I see they have a small business school campus tucked away in obscurity off I-44 by Hampton; it would be great for a successful fundraising campaign to expand the program and locate to a more prominent setting.

arch city · PostSep 26, 2013#22013-09-26T15:23+00:00

I'm in a rush so I hope this comes off sounding appropriate.

I've suggested - on this board - that Missouri S&T should have a presence in St. Louis.

I know the region has UMSL with its competitive Information Technology program, but having a modest S&T branch downtown or in CORTEX would help to keep nurturing that STEM workforce St. Louis needs and is seeking.

The St. Louis location would offer specialty programs that would be unique to serving the needs of St. Louis and Missouri (ie the STL satellite campus would be more regional-focused) while the Rolla campus would maintain it's more global curricula.

Or UMSL could create a new college focused on IT to be located either in CORTEX or downtown.

pat · PostSep 26, 2013#32013-09-26T15:51+00:00

I think a school with either a business or IT oriented graduate education programs would be great. MBA program and the like. With the amount of accounting and financial firms downtown, I think a school oriented to graduate programs for the those degrees would do well.

Being an engineer, it would be nice if the city had something geared towards continuing education in engineering. There aren't a lot of options. Its either Wash U or MS&T's online education center. Both have good graduate certificate programs, but neither are cheap. Or there's UMSL, which isn't close.

roger wyoming II · PostSep 26, 2013#42013-09-26T15:55+00:00

arch city wrote:I'm in a rush so I hope this comes off sounding appropriate.

I've suggested - on this board - that Missouri S&T should have a presence in St. Louis.

I know the region has UMSL with its competitive Information Technology program, but having a modest S&T branch downtown or in CORTEX would help to keep nurturing that STEM workforce St. Louis needs and is seeking.

The St. Louis location would offer specialty programs that would be unique to serving the needs of St. Louis and Missouri (ie the STL satellite campus would be more regional-focused) while the Rolla campus would maintain it's more global curricula.

Or UMSL could create a new college focused on IT to be located either in CORTEX or downtown.

I definitely think there is a role S&T could play..... How about something like the Missouri S&T Saint Louis Center for Emerging Technology? I posted a comment on the Arch Grants thread about a couple of S&T grads who won a grant and now have 12 employees; they are now establishing a Rolla presence by hiring some college kids and getting them experience. Anyway, I think S&T might be best suited for any of the public colleges to undertake a strong supporting role on the tech side of things on the growing regional start-up initiatives. But UMSL could fulfill the role as well.

arch city · PostSep 26, 2013#52013-09-26T16:04+00:00

I've also said that the St. Louis region needs a public medical school, public school of pharmacy on the Missouri side of the river and a public law school.

SLU's and WU's medical and law schools are great, however, because they are private institutions, the cost to attend them is likely to be more expensive than what a public medical or law school would cost. SLCOP and the new SIUE School of Pharmacy are good too, but SLCOP is expensive and with SIUE, Missouri students have an up-charge.

It doesn't make sense, to me, for the largest metro in the State of Missouri to not have access to a public medical school and public law school. Why should local residents/students have to go to Kansas City and Columbia when St. Louis is the largest metro in the state?

It doesn't make sense to me. Local leaders are not realizing the increased benefits for St. Louis or the disadvantages of not having a public law and medical school.

Almost every major city in the country has at least one public medical and law school for locals to consider. Some metros have two or three.

RuskiSTL · PostSep 27, 2013#62013-09-27T08:31+00:00

Couple thoughts...

1. Move entire UMSL campus into the Northside regeneration plan. Start over fresh. The Natural Bridge campus is always going to be limited by its geography as an old golf course. That and that its isolated on one side by the highway. The southern and western boundaries are pretty nice collegiate surroundings but the NIMBYISM up there will die slowly. Also UMSL seems to be transitioning from a purely commuter school to more of a traditional state school feel. Hell put UMSL up in College Hill, fronting fairgrounds park so it has that classic collegiate rec activities. Would still be easily accessible by 70, soon the Grand BRT, and would really encourage a North-South Metrolink line going Florrisant, Tucker, Gravois.

2. Get Webster into the City! Give them some light industrial wasteland, create their own ward and let them do what they want inside of it! Two areas that I think fit their school would be the area bounded by manchester, kingshighway, 44, and hampton. Great location, only crappy thing is the train line running down the middle but i think they could figure out how to make it safe, create connections, etc.

More interesting location would be the south riverfront, the area around choteau's landing and south of there. Very visible, lots of redev potential, huge cool loft dorms, etc.

Lastly a campus right next to slu, probably to the north. A more liberal arts, artsy compliment to slu. Totally separate schools but ones that basically share a fence. In many other cities there are pairs of schools that compliment each other. It seems to be beneficial; save resources on joint projects like security and what not. Also concentration of college kids means there are less town and gown problems since those areas are more isolated. However if Webster is having problem with city councils now I would be terrified to see them go against SLU.

STLEnginerd · PostSep 27, 2013#72013-09-27T12:36+00:00

How about Missouri Tech a small technical college focused on IT software and electrical engineering based in St. Charles, uprooting, relocating to downtown

. Possibly merging with the Steven's Institute which would move off Wash Ave but retain the property for student housing.

I've advocated for Chouteaus Landing as a great location for a university before. University tend to be geographic monoliths anyway with poor street grids so being hemmed in by interstates and the river is not as big a deal as it is for other uses like residential or entertainment.

onecity · PostSep 27, 2013#82013-09-27T12:57+00:00

This is all good talk. And I agree with every bit of it.

What tangible steps must be taken to make it happen? This, more than anything else, is the key to the city's future. We need these institutions 50 years ago.

Presbyterian · PostSep 27, 2013#92013-09-27T17:01+00:00

onecity wrote:What tangible steps must be taken to make it happen?

1. Marry a billionaire.
2. Don't sign a pre-nup.
3. Give billions to higher education.
4. Attach strings. Specify condition of relocation.

debaliviere · PostSep 27, 2013#102013-09-27T18:54+00:00

I'd like to see STL add an art school, akin to the Kansas City Art Institute, Rhode Island School of Design, Savannah College of Art and Design, etc.

And how about this scneario:

Fontbonne sells its campus to Wash U., moves/expands in Grand Center, Pruitt-Igoe, or some other location near Midtown or downtown.

dmmonty1 · PostSep 27, 2013#112013-09-27T22:54+00:00

L'Ecole Culinaire should also definitely move downtown!

roger wyoming II · PostSep 28, 2013#122013-09-28T03:28+00:00

debaliviere wrote:I'd like to see STL add an art school, akin to the Kansas City Art Institute, Rhode Island School of Design, Savannah College of Art and Design, etc.

And how about this scneario:

Fontbonne sells its campus to Wash U., moves/expands in Grand Center, Pruitt-Igoe, or some other location near Midtown or downtown.

Saint Louis Art Institute just opened up in the Streets of Saint Chuck's. Forgot about Fontbonne.... I like it!

dredger · PostSep 28, 2013#132013-09-28T17:09+00:00

I think their is plenty of great ideas and what my spin on it would be.

1) Fontbonne moving and Wash U expanding onto that campus seems very plausible and probably has been discussed a few times upon their respective hierarchy. Plus, no one has to marry a billionaire. Personally, I think Fontbonne starting from scratch with a new campus next to Harris Stowe in Mid Town would be the best location. The diversity, strength and shear number of students with SLU, Harris Stowe and Fontbonne in Mid Town would be a huge. Furthermore, talk about a great selling point for CORTEX.

2) I would like to see St Louis Community College develop a new IT, tech, advance manufacturer/vocational campus on the riverfront. South Riverfront/Chouteau Landing would work. But why not Laclede's Landing? It would have great transit access in Metrolink and easy access to housing/employers on Wash Ave. Their is space and can grow vertically. Heck, Cupples infill? same strengths as Lacledes Landing. The region has plenty of suburban campuses. Time for start from scratch urban community college campus located on metrolink.

3) Webster Groves to me would be the best choice/institution to expand and move its business administration/international studies downtown in a big way. Maybe the Arcade like we are all hoping for will be it. For all its troubles in Webster Groves I think in part its self inflicted. Its time for them to come with a new master plan that includes significant downtown presence. SLU has law, why not Webster U Business/International Studies.

4) UMSL simply needs to develop a true master plan around metrolink. Drop the loop like neighborhood idea and embrace student TOD at the North Hanley station.

throatybeard · PostSep 28, 2013#142013-09-28T19:08+00:00

RuskiSTL wrote:Couple thoughts...

1. Move entire UMSL campus into the Northside regeneration plan. Start over fresh. The Natural Bridge campus is always going to be limited by its geography as an old golf course. That and that its isolated on one side by the highway. The southern and western boundaries are pretty nice collegiate surroundings but the NIMBYISM up there will die slowly. Also UMSL seems to be transitioning from a purely commuter school to more of a traditional state school feel. Hell put UMSL up in College Hill, fronting fairgrounds park so it has that classic collegiate rec activities. Would still be easily accessible by 70, soon the Grand BRT, and would really encourage a North-South Metrolink line going Florrisant, Tucker, Gravois.

I like this idea and I would be happy to work there, but this would never happen in a million years, because the lifeblood of the institution is white people from I-270, and 90% of them would NEVER go anywhere near Fairground Park. Hell, I'm surprised so many of these suburbanites will come into Normandy.

Not to mention, where would the money for this come from? We're treading water as it is.

Presbyterian · PostSep 28, 2013#152013-09-28T20:42+00:00

The most likely possibilities are an expansion of Webster and Lindenwood downtown. Both are growing schools. Lindenwood is seeking greater regional visibility, and Webster is landlocked.

I hope the mayor actively is working these angles.

framer · PostSep 29, 2013#162013-09-29T02:12+00:00

roger wyoming II wrote:
Saint Louis Art Institute just opened up in the Streets of Saint Chuck's.

I don't think anyone in the arts community takes SLAI seriously. They're basically a chain of for-profit trade schools.

roger wyoming II · PostSep 29, 2013#172013-09-29T02:39+00:00

Presbyterian wrote:The most likely possibilities are an expansion of Webster and Lindenwood downtown. Both are growing schools. Lindenwood is seeking greater regional visibility, and Webster is landlocked.

I hope the mayor actively is working these angles.

dredger wrote: I would like to see St Louis Community College develop a new IT, tech, advance manufacturer/vocational campus on the riverfront. South Riverfront/Chouteau Landing would work. But why not Laclede's Landing? It would have great transit access in Metrolink and easy access to housing/employers on Wash Ave. Their is space and can grow vertically. Heck, Cupples infill? same strengths as Lacledes Landing. The region has plenty of suburban campuses. Time for start from scratch urban community college campus located on metrolink.

Regardless of who relocated downtown, I think a great location for a significant yet rather compact, TOD-oriented campus would be west of Columbus Park across from N. Tucker. This downtown north campus would be roughly bounded by Cole on the south, 13th on the east, O'Fallon on the north and 15th on the west. This would be walkable to the heart of downtown and have the 14th Street streetcar or BRT running right through it. It also would be a block from the new Tucker, which would have more commercial redevelopment fronting the new downtown gateway. The campus would be crafted out of a mix of reclaimed freighting operations east of 14th (that simply have to relocate as they are blight upon the new downtown entrance) and vacant properties on the west. A highlight of the new campus would be restoring the Carr School, perhaps serving as the home of a well-endowed Center for Urban Education.

Entirely within Northside Regeneration (I believe), it is an ideal location as it is on the edge of downtown yet probably not in an area that could be expected to see mass redevelopment for some time even if NR starts to take off elsewhere. So by putting an attractive use here full of energy and young consumers, it would help build momentum for more commercial and residential uses bleeding north of Washington and on N. Tucker.

PostSep 29, 2013#182013-09-29T03:56+00:00

^ btw, one candidate for my vision of a downtown north campus is a completely relocated SLCC - Forest Park.

The current location for the CC isn't transit-friendly and the aging facilities there certainly could be replaced. But that site does have the potential to become an extremely valuable, superior mixed-use development. I envision a row of high-end towers facing Oakland with retail on street-level and mostly residential but with some office above. Something resembling four or so Park Easts fronting Oakland, with one wrapping the corner with Macklind. These towers would command awesome views of Forest Park, CWE and beyond and the retail/office signage would be viewed by the mass of 40/64 traffic. The south side of the street across from the towers would be lined with a series of condos or apartments resembling the Metro Lofts on FPP and again featuring some street-level commercial space. The ample area further south would be connected by a proper street grid and feature mostly residential with a mix of smaller apartment buildings, townhomes and maybe some detached single family. The footprint could be enlarged even further by purchasing some or all of the aging small office and light industrial off Macklind, allowing for a significant upgrade to that street as well. I think you could easily get 2,00+ new Saint Louis City residents here in what could be a premiere new urban neighborhood.

So basically the gain for this move is a new and extremely desirable location for dense mixed-use and downtown gets an ambitious and exciting remake of the CC. As part of a regional effort to upgrade the quality of the community college asset, the downtown campus could have an expanded and well-financed Center for Emerging and Advanced Information Technology and other cutting edge programs. Of course this is all highly unlikely, but it certainly makes economic sense to anchor an area in desperate need of a boost with a strong educational institution and allow a perfectly situated property to fulfill its highest and best use as a tax-generating powerhouse with attractive commercial and hundreds of new residents. And as the property is either in public hands or within Northside Regeneration, there exists the opportunity for a creative deal that could be phased in over time.

arch city · PostDec 16, 2013#192013-12-16T00:06+00:00

In 2014, New York City is about to break ground and build FROM SCRATCH CornellNYC Tech in collaboration with Israel's Technion Institute of Technology. They are already calling the new campus, to built on Roosevelt Island, C-Tech. Check out the link and renderings here.

This speaks to the need, I think, for St. Louis to build a similar tech specific institution of higher learning in the region. St. Louis has great universities. Washington University and UMSL both have good info tech programs, SLU has a good cyber security program, but more needs to done locally to build tech ed infrastructure. Rolla is 1.45 hrs away.

All jokes and prejudices aside, could something like this be done at the Pruitt-Igoe site in conjunction with the New Northside project? A big TIF is already in place. Could UMSL build a "tech" campus at the P-I or CORTEX site? Currently UMSL's IT program is under the School of Business.

blzhrpmd2 · PostDec 17, 2013#202013-12-17T16:31+00:00

In regards to a public professional school, I wonder what the feasibility of the UMSL School of Optometry relocating or expanding an urban presence would be? I think STL is a major player in the Optom game administratively and having been through a decade of medical training now in multiple cities, it's kind of surprising to me they wouldn't want a more urban setting for patient care. These settings increase potential for service, community building and students' exposure to pathology. If the school is hosting the amount of conferences and meetings that I think they are, it also seems a downtown/midtown/CORTEX locale would be more amenable to providing the commensurate entertainment/dining options that go along with such weekend/multi day events. Most optometric programs send their studuents to offices all around the city for rotations in the 3rd-4th years so a central hub would be convenient for students. Optometry in general also has a rapidly evolving relationship with ophthalmology- the MD residency training programs at SLU (Grand and Shaw) and WASH U (Euclid, CWE) would afford increased opportunity to foster the ever increasing symbiosis of these two star-crossed fields.

inTheGrove · PostDec 17, 2013#212013-12-17T17:05+00:00

I feel having to much higher ed in single setting can have a negative impact as well as far as people that want to stay in that city and find jobs as well as employers have a tendency to pay less in the areas where there are many schools due to the fact that most applicants are just out of school so they can afford to pay them less.

onecity · PostDec 17, 2013#222013-12-17T18:09+00:00

While that may or may not be true for recent grads, I think the peripheral benefits of higher ed more than outweigh any negatives. STL feels like it punches below its weight in terms of college/student penetration. We have a city that can comfortably accommodate 400,000-500,000 people, with a population well below that, and a student population of what, 20k? If that? That isn't even 7%. Bare minimum we should have a big university with 50,000 students attending plus a couple smaller colleges - in the city. We complain about the lack of high tech jobs, and of affluent people in the city - well, we need to bring them to the city through colleges and universities. Start their young adulthood here. Enough will stick around to start companies, expand the creative/knowledge divisions of companies already here, and in the process help to gentrify the city. Plus the kind of people that complete college don't typically commit a lot of crimes, so the increased population would improve all of our crime numbers. And each year, as the student districts grow and the neighborhoods around them fill in, the city will become a more and more appealing place to live. More international, more cosmopolitan, more dynamic.

STLEnginerd · PostDec 17, 2013#232013-12-17T18:18+00:00

I feel having to much higher ed in single setting can have a negative impact as well as far as people that want to stay in that city and find jobs as well as employers have a tendency to pay less in the areas where there are many schools due to the fact that most applicants are just out of school so they can afford to pay them less.

Is that even a thing? The only negative i have ever heard of regarding higher ed presence is reduction in taxable properties being that institutions are usually exempt. This negative is almost always more than offset by the addition of residents who must live work and spend in relatively close proximity to campus. I question the notion that local pay is suppressed by high availability of inexperienced student or newly graduated workers and would be hard pressed to imagine any situation where this is shown to be true. Is there any evidence that supports it as a theory? I am truly open to being proved wrong.

inTheGrove · PostDec 17, 2013#242013-12-17T18:27+00:00

^Not saying it is a proven thing just have been told that when working with some software partners and vendors in regards to hiring salaries. The consensus among them all said that it tends to lower the expected income on some of those positions due to the amount of possible recent nearby graduates. I repeat I am not saying this as fact just chatter among professionals in my field (Information systems, grad from UMSL)

moorlander · PostDec 17, 2013#252013-12-17T20:02+00:00

inTheGrove wrote:I feel having to much higher ed in single setting can have a negative impact as well as far as people that want to stay in that city and find jobs as well as employers have a tendency to pay less in the areas where there are many schools due to the fact that most applicants are just out of school so they can afford to pay them less.

Longest sentence EVER!