Category: Green Space

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Downtown Green Space Preservation Board

Sculpture Garden Plan Underscores Futility of the Gateway Mall

by Michael R. Allen

Last week, the St. Louis Preservation Board unanimously granted preliminary approval to the Gateway Foundation’s plan to convert two blocks of the Gateway Mall into a sculpture garden. These are the two very formal blocks between Eighth and Tenth streets that were completed in 1993. The garden, which would include landscaping coordinated by the Missouri Botanical Gardens, is actually a good plan in itself. In fact, there is a level of thoughtfulness to the plan that I confess comes as surprise to me. The principal architects, Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, looked outside of the mall for inspiration.

The architects cast aside the impossible dreams of formal symmetry, civic grandiosity and identity-making that have plagued the mall’s cast of prior architects. Rather than waste half of each block on passive lawn space, as the current design for those blocks does, the architects instead realize the number of intricate details that a city park can have. There are rows of trees along Market Street (for some reason widely viewed as a grand formal drive), and paved “plaza” areas. There is a fountain. But there also are limestone walls (faced in actual limestone on the plans the Board approved), flower beds, smaller lawns and a cafe building at the corner of Chestnut and 8th. Most important to the design are contrasting axes. A central linear axis on the western block abruptly bends on the eastern block, defying the forced sight lines of the mall. A wide arc forms an axis that spans both blocks on the northern side. A meandering curve runs across the southern end of both blocks, suggesting the lines used to demarcate creeks and rivers on state maps.

In fact, the whole concoction has pronounced map-like influences. While the translation of the logical god’s-eye view to actual pedestrian experience may muddle the intent, at least the plans celebrate the often conflicting lines that compose our physical and political geography. One of the architects told the Preservation Board that the linear axis follows the footprint of the actual alley that once existed on the blocks, joined with perpendicular lines drawn from old lot lines. This architect actually stated that his inspiration was an old Sanborn fire insurance map of the blocks.

The parks design succeeds inasmuch as it does not attempt to impose a particular experience on an urban space, but rather presents possibilities for user-directed action. However, there are drawbacks. On the plan, Ninth Street looks too narrow to accommodate its current four lanes. Likewise, Market Street appears to lose its northern lane. These losses eliminate metered parking — a necessity for a healthy downtown block.

The largest problem is not the fault of the designers but of our continued political cowardice: the city won’t will itself to erase the Gateway Mall idea from its mind. We are committing political will and civic endowment to major changes for these two blocks, but once completed they sit amid one of the most unintelligible urban landscapes in the nation. These blocks can counteract all of the problems of the mall, but without visual reinforcement their statement will be lost. They will be surrounded by the mediocrity of anti-urban 1980s buildings, which draw their users inside and away from even the best parks. The blocks will still be segments of a string of parks that are mostly useless and unattractive. With so much open space and inhospitable built surroundings, the sculpture garden will still function more as a self-contained destination than a component of a healthy downtown.

Instead of next turning to renovation plans for the rest of the Gateway Mall, city leaders should work to enclose the sculpture garden with good design. The Gateway Foundation is doing a huge service to the city by financing the construction and upkeep. That service should be matched with a program to enhance the context: renovate the block containing “Twain” (or even move “Twain” and build on that block); build on the block of Market between Ninth and Tenth where the second IBM Plaza tower was intended; rework the base of the first IBM Plaza tower; build a new building or even just shops on Chestnut south of the original Southwestern Bell building; redesign the base of the hideous Data Building. In short, we need to fulfill the premise that $20 million invested in the Gateway Mall will make a functional difference for this part of downtown.

Categories
Abandonment Detroit Green Space land use landbanking

Detroit Park Sale Plan is Hasty

by Michael R. Allen

The administration of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is proposing selling off 92 of the city’s 367 parks. Most of the parks on the sale list are pocket parks and small playgrounds, many of which are surrounded by vacant lots and some of which are in severe disrepair. Kilpatrick seems to think that some of the park sites would be ripe for new development. The plan raises the issue of public space planning in deindustrialized cities. The amount of park space in Detroit reflects peak density that has not existed in decades. Does the city need so much park space when so much of the city itself is green ghetto land?

Maybe not. Detroit is seeing redevelopment right now. Kilpatrick’s interest in selling the parks shows confidence in their having some market value as lots. The city has shrunk, but as it grows it may need the parks. While there are many of the 92 parks that probably will never be useful, there are some that are useful now and would be useful in neighborhoods where infill construction will lead to higher density. Staking out public space now will ensure that neighborhoods don’t lack amenities that belong to all residents.

Detroit might consider holding off on a massive sale, and releasing the parks one by one after further community input and investigation of development activity. Perhaps some parks should just be mothballed — infrastructure demolished and grass planted. One thing we learn from cities like Detroit is the inherent power of a vacant urban lot. From the vacant lots will spring the development of the future — and public space needs to be part of that.

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Downtown Green Space

Yet Another Downtown Park to Break Ground Next Week

by Michael R. Allen

On next Tuesday, August 8 will be a groundbreaking ceremony for the Old Post Office Plaza. Situated just north of the Old Post Office on Locust Street between 8th and 9th streets, the plaza site is currently a series of parking lots sharing the block with the Orpheum Theater, Mayfair Hotel and the site of the Roberts Tower. That the site is one of the most valuable pieces of downtown real estate is unquestionable. Located in the core adjacent to some of the city’s largest and most splendid historic rehabilitation projects and one block south of bustling Washington Avenue, the plaza site seems ripe for development. In fact, the Roberts Brothers’ proposed tower — what may be the first downtown high-rise since the Eagleton Courthouse — underscores the fact that developers see viability in this location.

Yet the site is being squandered for yet another downtown park. I admit that this site could be far worse for a downtown park. Sure, it offers a broad view of the Century Building Memorial Parking Garage (which fails to fully screen its descending floors). Sure, having an Old Post Office Plaza that faces the rear of the Old Post Office is more than a little strange. Yet the site does have some sense of enclosure, being surrounded by buildings that come up to the sidewalk line on all of its street-facing sides and butting up against the Orpheum Theater and the Roberts Tower. One can see some interesting views of wonderful buildings from the middle of the site. A failing of many downtown parks, including blocks of the Gateway Mall, is the lack of visual enclosure that creates interesting views as well as an urban sense of place. This site is better than most in that regard.

The design, published on the website of designers Baird Sampson Nuert (link here), provides the basic ingredients of the typical contemporary urban plaza: a large paved assembly space, a wooded lawn for passive recreation, a screen for moving images, dramatic lighting and the presence of moving water. Perhaps all of these plazas, at least in the United States, are now the descendants of Chicago’s Millennium Park with predictable dominant genes. The Old Post Office Plaza deftly packages the components of this type of plaza without overwhelming the site severely. The plaza design doesn’t dazzle, but it just might work. (One potentially troubling visual issue is the relationship between the new tower and the plaza.)

Of course, the plaza probably won’t get to work. There is a simple reason: It’s in downtown St. Louis. This is no slight on the center of our fair city, but a recognition of the fact that there is glut of park space downtown and already spaces like Kiener Plaza that receive the attention of tourists, noonday office workers and other users attracted to well-defined recreational spaces. The cool kids, it seems, prefer their outdoor concerts and movies on parking lots and streets, saving lots for buildings.

Downtown lacks a coherent vision for recreational space, an in the absence of that vision has accumulated enough of that space to serve a downtown three times more dense. The worst part of the Old Post Office Plaza is not its location, or its design, but its timing — it is simply too late to make a difference. The loose-knit nature of downtown has led to disconnection, visual uncertainty and diminished context for those truly good park spaces like Lucas Park. City leaders seem to see no problem with the situation, since the in-progress Gateway Mall Master Plan calls for neither treatment of the mall’s ills nor of the context that makes the mall so dreary. Instead, the mall is proposed for mere remodeling and the amount of green space downtown goes unquestioned. Thus, the Old Post Office Plaza stands little chance to redeem itself.

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Downtown Green Space

Plaza Rendering Available 33 Years Ago

by Michael R. Allen


This rendering shows an envisioned “civic plaza” on the 800 block of Locust. The plan calls for passive space with views of the north elevation of the Old Post Office and a tall, modern high-rise built between the plaza and the Mayfair Hotel.

The date? This plan appeared in the 1974 Downtown Plan, prepared by Downtown St. Louis, Inc.

Categories
Downtown Green Space Northside Regeneration

City Officials Making Best of Dirty Situation

by Harland Bartholomew, Jr.

ST. LOUIS — In an unexpected move, dirt for both the construction of the Mississippi River island and the mound at the western terminus of the Gateway Mall arrived early. Out of town crews trucked in more of the brown matter than St. Louis had seen in years, although construction of the new civic destinations is years away.

To deal with a possible dilemma, St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay ordered the dirt spread across 75 non-contiguous acres of north St. Louis for storage. Slay thinks that the dirt companies may be eligible for a proposed land assemblage tax credit designed to smother areas like north St. Louis.

“We’re a unique city, with unique problem — too much dirt,” quipped Slay. The mayor says that other cities have actually noted dirt shortages in recent years.

St. Louis Planning Director Rollin Stanley said that St. Louisans have nothing to fear from the new dirt.

“Other cities have recognized that dirt provides the sort of 24-hour excitement that creates destinations,” Stanley said. “Dirt is literally always around, even in the middle of the night.”

Stanley added that the dirt would only be temporarily stored in north St. Louis.

“The temperatures in Hades are lowering, indicating that construction of the island and the mound could start at any moment.”

One person unhappy with the move is developer Paul J. McKee, Jr., who expressed interest in being the only recipient of the state tax credit.

“We do not have enough dirt in north St. Louis to construct an island in the Mississippi River,” read a written statement from McKee. “However, we are interested in seeking other parties who own dirt so that we can partner on making things with our dirt. We regret that the nameless and faceless dirt movers have changed the nature of my project so I cannot continue as an assembler of dirt.”

Slay suggests that competition for the tax credit is a good thing.

“Every city in America would love to have two large-scale plans for spreading dirt over economically distressed areas. Think of this as a blessing.”

On a related front, Philadelphia is donating a Starbucks kiosk from a downtown park to the St. Louis Gateway Mall effort.

“The last newspaper article calling the kiosk innovative was published in 1999,” said Philadelphia Parks Director Sara Collins.

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Categories
Downtown Green Space

Studying Downtown Park Space: Less is More

by Michael R. Allen

According to a post on MayorSlay.com, the Gateway Foundation has chosen a team led by Thomas Balsley and Associates of New York and Urban Strategies of Toronto to develop yet another master plan for the ribbon of disconnected parks known as the Gateway Mall.

Meanwhile, the Downtown St. Louis Partnership seems close to closing a deal to develop part of the north side of the 800 block of Locust as a plaza.

With the Gateway Mall, nearly perpetually under construction and study since the 1920s, the city has a chance to make relevant a mostly unused belt of green space of dubious utility. With the plaza on Locust Street, the city could see a project that will end up as much an albatross as the mall did. A wiser plan would be to take the existing green space and bring it back to life instead of creating more open space downtown.

Enclosure and density in balance with open space are the hallmarks of a thriving city. Seeming random and unplanned open space are tell-tale signs of a city struggling with its own identity. That’s a struggle St. Louis need fight no longer; downtown has the amazing modern grounds of the Gateway Arch, the Gateway Mall and the American original Lucas Park. As the Gateway Mall study shows, what is needed is reconsideration and enhancement of existing space — not creation of more poorly-christened park space.

What better testament to the city’s success could there be than a dynamic, visually punctuated Gateway Mall and a sleek new tower on the 800 block of Locust Street?

Categories
Central West End Forest Park Southeast Green Space

The BJC Park Lease and the Public Sphere

by Michael R. Allen

To all those people who bemoan the fact that some citizens are hesitant to grant BJC Healthcare a 99-year lease of a supposed forgotten corner of Forest Park: please examine the public sphere in the age of neoliberalism. Under policies at all levels of government, the ideal of the public good has become politically gauche. To talk openly about holding the stewardship of park land by our city government over the economic benefit of BJC’s expansion seems a political third rail, when even twenty-five years ago widespread opposition would have been a given, and few city officials would dare have favored a 99-year lease of public land to a private hospital group headed by a real estate developer.

In the past few years, we have watched the public school system sell off or discard assets of the public trust; not so long ago, the public hospital system was dismantled; city government has gone from a collective trust among citizens to provide for their needs to a near-sighted machine for favors, cobbled-together compromises and defensive gestures. Things that should belong to the citizens have been sold off or promised to private interest, and there seems to be widespread acceptance among leaders that government is now a tool for endorsement and acceleration of market forces. Once, government was the check against those forces that ensured that no matter what the city’s commercial fortunes the citizens had good parks, clean water, schools and the infrastructure needed for living.

While the opposition to the Forest Park lease may be more symbolic than anything given that BJC already has a lease on the land it is posed to get, the opposition recognizes the precedent the lease sets for future “needs” by big corporations like BJC. The lease makes law the trend of using city government to aid the powerful at the expense of safeguarding the public trust.

In that light, the lonely votes of opposition cast by Alderman Jeffrey Boyd (D-22nd) and Aldermanic President James Shrewsbury on the perfection of the lease deal are not foolish or ignorant acts. After all, BJC could seriously have chosen many other lands for the expansion project; the site is a red herring of epic proportion. They are the bare minimum we should expect of our elected officials in an age in which the very purpose of democratic government is under attack by hyper-capitalists who have managed to influence our government, nonprofit and intellectual spheres. This attack should be resisted everywhere, but it is especially pernicious on an urban city with relatively scarce resources like St. Louis.

Thankfully, we have two representatives in city government who are wary of the attack on the public sphere. We may every well have a third, if Comptroller Darlene Green votes against the lease when the final and binding vote by the Board of Estimate and Apportionment takes place.

Categories
Central West End Green Space Infrastructure Streets Urbanism

Park Space Isn’t All That BJC Threatens

by Michael R. Allen

If BJC gets to lease part of Forest Park, can the city not require them to reopen Euclid Avenue to through traffic? I am very disturbed that the city would contemplate leasing part of a public park to a private entity for new construction, but I am even more upset that the city has already granted BJC de facto ownership of public thoroughfares through their “campus.”

The park space issue raises a huge red flag with the voters, who overwhelmingly seem to oppose it. I suppose park space is obvious community space that people generally value. Street space, much more fundamental to building good neighborhoods, is also public space and worthy of defense. Yet few people defend streets against closures, cul–de-sacs and such. In fact, some vocal Forest Park Southeast residents oppose the proposed new BJC lease as vocally as they call for making some culvert-pipe barriers permanent closures with gates or walls.

BJC’s rampant expansion is creating a problem far worse than, although reflected in, the proposed lease: the creation of a virtual citadel that will sever connections between the Central West End and Forest Park Southeast (or “The Grove”). This is a terrible thing for FPSE, which is showing miraculous signs of recovery and the resurgence of the Manchester Avenue commercial district. That rebound will suffer if people cannot find FPSE or get to it quickly from other neighborhoods.

If Mayor Francis Slay wants to continue his public-defying embrace of the lease, he ought to demand that BJC provide some thing other than money in return. He needs to make sure that BJC stops closing streets and stops building parking garages that have no street-level retail or office space. Taylor Avenue in particular is a major connector between the CWE and FPSE, yet BJC treats it like their service alley and rush-hour freeway. The worst buildings, garages and lots face Taylor — yet Metro is relocating the Central West End MetroLink station entrance to Taylor from Euclid.

Save our park, and restore our streets!

Categories
Downtown Green Space

Idle Men in Lucas Park

by Michael R. Allen

In 1940, the Salvation Army opened an Industrial Center for job training adjacent to the YWCA Building at 1411 Locust Street, now the New Life Evangelistic Center. A January 1940 report from the Advisory Committee of the local Salvation Army on establishing the center notes with concern that a “floating population of idle men fills the benches in the park back of the library [sic].” This park, of course, is Lucas Park and this situation, of course, continues to this day.

The building housing the Salvation Army’s Industrial Center, by the way, has been demolished for a surface parking lot.

Categories
Architects Architecture Green Space

Statement on Government Hill

by Michael R. Allen

At a special meeting on July 31, 2006, the Preservation Board of the City of St. Louis considered preliminary approval of a redesign of Government Hill in Forest Park. The Board unanimously approved a revised proposal submitted by Forest Park Forever. I submitted this statement.

I want to offer some comments about the Government Hill proposal being considered by the Preservation Board today.

On June 30, after the Preservation Board decided to defer consideration on preliminary approval a radical revision of Government Hill, Mayor Slay wrote in his blog that “there’s time” for more consideration and public input on the redesign.

When the Preservation Board agenda for the July meeting was released, myself and others were relieved that Government Hill was not on the agenda. It seemed that Forest Park Forever had heeded the call of the Preservation Board and the Mayor to give such a major proposal regarding a much-loved landscape ample time for revision and comment.

Then, last night when I read the mayor’s campaign website, I saw a notice that there would be a special Preservation Board meeting today at 4:30 p.m. to consider the matter of a revised proposal from Forest Park Forever and others for revisions to Government Hill. While there may have been some warning elsewhere, it was the first I had heard of the meeting and I had less than 24 hours to review the plans and provide commentary.

Earlier, I had assumed that myself and others concerned about the matter — including members of the Board — could study the issue and provide measured testimony at a future hearing. Apparently, that will not happen. I am disappointed in this hasty process, and disappointed that I cannot attend today’s meeting due to previously-scheduled appointments. Had I know sooner, even on a week’s notice, I would have made plans to attend the meeting.

As it is, I can barely offer commentary on the new proposal based on the abstract plans contained in the report of the staff of the Cultural Resources Office. The plan seems to be more respectful of the original design, but since no renderings are enclosed it is nearly impossible to tell.

The existing landscape, designed by noted landscape architect George Kessler around 1911, is a stunning example of the “City Beautiful” era of Beaux-Arts formalism. Some of the landscape designs from that period have not held up well as gathering places, due to aesthetic programs that look better than they function. Not so with Kessler’s Government Hill design, which seems to get more popular as time goes by. His grand staircases, central fountain and terraces amid sloping hills create an inviting context with a scale that is respectful of both the World’s Fair Pavilion and the users of Forest Park.

The only flaws in this landscape are the lack of universal accessibility and the lack of maintenance. The new proposal seems to take a good step in addressing accessibility without intruding on the existing landscape. The plan unveiled in June was little more than a giant zigzag ramp, based on intriguing medieval designs but totally inappropriate for the site. In terms of restoration, it seems that the new plan is more sensitive to the Kessler design but still aiming to remake it according to modern designs.

That’s where the first plan for rebuilding Government Hill is better; if something new is going to happen, it should be complementary to the landscape of the park and a compelling and original design in itself. The proposal being considered today is not compelling or original, but the Kessler design even in its decay remains so.

I urge the Preservation Board to deny preliminary approval, and to urge Forest Park Forever to consider funding the restoration project that the wonderful Government Hill landscape deserves. If they seek a grand gesture or some other imprint on the park, they need not worry. Their restoration work to date has been one of the grandest civic gestures in recent history, and a sensitive restoration of Government Hill would be an excellent capstone.