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The central
corridor in St. Louis is a principal strap connecting the city to
the rest of the region.
Arrayed west of the Arch are other icons that, stainless steel or
not, inform the region’s identity: a heartening quilt-work of economic,
educational, cultural and research institutions running from downtown
to Clayton.
The swath is also envisioned as the home to initiatives that knowing
people believe hold important answers about the corridor’s—and the
region’s—future.
“It has always been the heart of the region,” says Richard Ward,
senior principal & CEO at Development Strategies. “And it is even
more so today. It’s where our major institutions reside. If you
count downtown and Clayton, you’ve got about 50 percent of the region’s
office space. And Forest Park is a major cultural and entertainment
center, and serves a unifying purpose.”
Earlier this year, Development Strategies completed a research assignment
underwritten by Civic Progress to document the revitalization efforts
underway in the central corridor. “We catalogued and mapped active
projects from the Mississippi River to Washington University. People
hear about them, but don’t connect them in space. By mapping these,
people can see how the Technopolis, for example, ties into Grand
Center and ties into the Washington University Medical Center and
ties into the Central West End.”
The document itself is almost entirely visual—its half dozen maps
would look familiar to planning & zoning commissioners—and details
four areas: downtown, Grand Center, Central West End/ Midtown, and
Forest Park.
“There are strong circulation linkages that tie this together,”
Ward said. “Highway 40 is the river that runs through it, and that
is paralleled by Interstate 44 on the south and all the major east-west
thoroughfares, not least of them Forest Park Boulevard, Chouteau
and Delmar.
“More important is how people interact,” Ward said, “how people
use the urban core, how they take advantage of the rich diversity
of assets in the central corridor.”
Ward underscores: “The study also emphasizes that, notwithstanding
all these assets, there is a lot of room for growth and development.”
The corridor is economically underutilized, in large part, because
of a concentration of older industrial and warehouse buildings along
with obsolete infrastructure. Consider all those train tracks under
the overpasses at Tucker, Jefferson and Grand avenues. Back when
Tucker was Twelfth and Saint Louis University had football, those
tracks saw some action. Not much now.
Ward reports that it presents an opportunity, however, for a subsidiary
“strap,” connecting downtown to midtown: the Chouteau Greenway.
It would be anchored on the east by the Chouteau Lake District,
a mixed-use development proposed by McCormack Baron Salazar, calling
for 3,500 housing units and tying together the campuses of Ameren,
Nestlé Purina PetCare and downtown.
On the west, Chouteau Park would replace Union Pacific’s “Sarpy
Yard,” in the quadrant northeast of Vandeventer and Chouteau. “That
amenity could become another focus to encourage redevelopment,”
Ward said.
What’s more, it would be smack in the middle of the Technopolis,
an initiative of Cortex Inc. and headed by former Mark Twain Banker
John Dubinsky.
Envision the square whose corners are the Washington University
Medical Center; SLU’s Frost Campus and University of Missouri’s
Center for Emerging Technologies on Forest Park Boulevard; SLU’s
medical school campus; and the Missouri Botanical Garden.
Ward’s narrative describes it as “a mixed-use, scientific and technological
community, an ‘urban research park’...some 1400 acres of which several
hundred are prime redevelopment or new infill development of office
and laboratory space.”
“The concept,” he explained in an interview, “is to encourage high-
tech development that complements the research spun off by those
institutions—private businesses looking to take their ideas, patents,
and licenses to market.”
Besides places for people to work, the report assays where they
can live, too: Washington Avenue lofts (of course), Murphy Park,
JeffVanderLou, the near Southside, Blumeyer, Forest Park Southeast
and McRee Town.
Rebuilding neighborhoods as tough as McRee Town, Ward observes,
“will reduce a perceived threat north of Interstate 44.” Progress
has been made. “There’s a movement,” Ward said, “coming back toward
the center with rehab and infill housing. You’re seeing rising housing
prices in the city and the inner suburbs. That’s not puff. It’s
really happening.”
Evidence, both anecdotal and statistical, backs Ward’s assertion.
Tom Pickel, executive director of DeSales Community Housing Corporation,
said, “There’s no question that over the last three-to-five years
that home sale prices have increased strongly in the city in general,
and particularly in the area where we work in the near South Side.
We see developments going on right now that we could not have imagined
five years ago.”
Meanwhile Pickel cited statistics from the St. Louis Association
of Realtors that show average home sale prices in the city are up
35 percent since 2000: what was $78,754 in September of that year
is $106,396 in 2003.
A rising median price also implies that this phenomenon is not concentrated
in a few homes on Hawthorn, Longfellow, Lindell and Portland Place.
Forest Park Southeast, the wedge-shaped neighborhood bound by Kingshighway,
Vandeventer and Manchester, has no such fancy addresses.
But according to resident Mike Goeke, a city-saving economist and
vice president at McCormack Baron Salazar, it does have a fancy
place to eat: Jaboni’s, an eclectic Euro-bistro at Manchester and
Tower Grove avenues.
He points out that one of the other fashionable nouveau establishments
in the area—Monarch—is also on Manchester, albeit at 7401 instead
of the 4301. “It’s phenomenal how hot Maplewood’s becoming—people
wanting to open galleries, dance studios, things you’d have never
dreamed about opening up there just a few years ago.
“These are both areas that five or eight years ago, if you had said
they would have some of the hottest restaurants in town, you would
have been laughed at,” he said.
Perhaps two restaurants could anchor another subsidiary strap connecting
city and county?
“What’s in between is old industrial infrastructure that served
historically as an important economic asset,” Goeke said. “It would
make sense to reinvigorate it as a light industrial district, perhaps
an extension of the biotech corridor that Cortex is working on.”
Why not? After all, as Goeke remarked, “If Maplewood and Forest
Park Southeast can be resurrected, who knows what could develop
in between. We shouldn’t write off any part of the region.”
Copies of the maps and plans are on public display in the lobby
of the Regional Collaboration Center at the RCGA, as well as being
posted on the RCGA website at www.stlrcga.org under the Urban Progress
link.
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