Tension on the St. Louis riverfront
Former U.S. Sen. John Danforth has exhorted the St. Louis region to “think big” about the future of two of its transcendent assets — the Gateway Arch and the Mississippi riverfront.
He sees both as moribund, for all of their majesty — as a poorly connected, needlessly passive, inaccessible world apart from the lives of the community and everyday people they should be serving.
Last weekend about 35 student architects, engineers, artists, and landscape architects from Midwestern universities descended on downtown St. Louis. Their 30-hour mission: Explore “fresh, new possibilities” for reconnecting and revitalizing the riverfront, Arch grounds and near-downtown district.
The students came at the invitation of the St. Louis Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and members of St. Louis’ professional design community. They convened at downtown’s Mansion House and worked as teams, the panorama of the Gateway Arch and Arch grounds before them.
The first lesson the students learned was about the tension that Mr. Danforth’s proposal has created.
At a panel discussion Friday evening, Danforth Foundation President Peter Sortino argued the Arch grounds need to be re-energized, possibly by a brilliantly designed iconic structure that respects the Arch’s “magnificence.” This structure also could help revitalize the downtown riverfront, Mr. Sortino said.
But Tom Bradley, the National Park Service’s superintendent for the Arch, reminded them that the American people had set aside the Arch and parts of the Arch grounds to be preserved. He urged the student teams to look beyond the park boundaries when considering strategies.
There was plenty of tension in the students’ own deliberations:
• The Arch is a protected part of the nation’s history. But a significant piece of the nation’s history — a large 19th-century cast iron warehouse district whose architectural significance rivals New York City’s SoHo — was razed so it could be built.
• Communities rightly get excited by the possibility of a new architectural treasure — what one student referred to as “another wow.” But shouldn’t such a structure be just one element of a much broader strategy to reverse downtown inertia?
The student teams worked to reconcile these and other paradoxes while mapping their visions for what might be.
All of them wanted to tear out the tangled barrier of drives and depressed lanes that isolate downtown, the Arch, and the Riverfront from one another.
Otherwise, imaginations diverged.
Some held that nothing is sacred about the Arch grounds, which they saw as due for radical reordering. Others saw the park’s captivating remove as irreplaceable and critical to the city’s long-term future and focused their planning on how to connect people to the park and rebuild the nearby community.
At the end of the process, the students presented their ideas with precision, passion and provocation — totally unencumbered by the layers of politics and manners that so often inhibit local civic conversations.
(The public can view the proposals at an exhibit soon to be set up at the Landmarks Association of St. Louis’ gallery at 911 Washington Avenue.)
It’s doubtful such a discussion would have been held were it not for Mr. Danforth’s challenge. Or that the National Park Service would be considering putting another generation of brilliant minds to work on a new design competition.
The last one, in 1947, yielded the Eero Saarinen masterpiece that symbolizes this city.
Eddie Roth writes about education, social justice, public safety, transportation, legal affairs and historic preservation. He joined the Post-Dispatch editorial page in 2008 after six years as an editorial writer with the Dayton Daily News. But he is not new to St. Louis. Eddie grew up in Webster Groves and south St. Louis County. He's a lawyer who for many years practiced with a downtown firm, and was active in civic affairs, including serving a term on the St. Louis Police Board. He and his wife, Jeanne, and their three daughters, Emily, Julia and Alice, live in the Shaw Neighborhood.
When it comes to community organizing, he endorses Quentin Crisp's advice: Rather than keeping up with the Joneses, it's better to pull them down to your level. 
The St. Louis riverfront is a disgrace. The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial and its signature Gateway Arch celebrate a narrow drainage ditch. If you want to think big, excavate about five thousand acres on the Illinois side to create a large pool capable of housing boat harbors, restaurants, swimming beaches and other attractions and bring some expanse to the riverfront.
Many cities have incorporated beauty into their riverfronts but typically, St. Louis lags behind. Louisville, New Orleans, San Antonio, Pittsburgh and even Charleston, West Virginia celebrate their rivers while we look at a ditch and talk about selling hot dogs at the Arch. St. Louis is a joke.