Championing urban national parks
Laurie Skrivan/Post-Dispatch
St. Louis is on today’s itinerary for Ken Salazar, the former Democratic senator from Colorado whom President Barack Obama appointed as the nation’s 50th Secretary of the Interior.
It’s a stop in a series of low-key visits the secretary is making around the country. He’s checking on projects under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, one of the administration’s main efforts to stimulate the economy by saving and creating jobs.
The department has about $3 billion in recovery projects allocated among its various operations, including the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
St. Louis is receiving $5.9 million in funding. It’s directed at the Gateway Arch (whose tram will be updated) and the Old Courthouse (which will get a new roof). They make up the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, operated by the National Park Service.
Mr. Salazar will visit both for the first time. His timing is auspicious.
The secretary’s stop is about jobs. But Mr. Salazar also should consider it to be a scouting trip — ideally, the first of several over years to come. The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial is uniquely situated to help advance a key part of his ambitious plans for the Department of the Interior.
This spring Mr. Salazar outlined a sweeping vision in his 2010 budget presentation to Congress. Jobs and the economy came first. He also focused on long-term global initiatives involving national lands, such as promoting renewable energy resources and dealing with climate change.
But it’s clear the secretary has spent time thinking about how to protect and promote the nation’s “treasured landscapes” — not only the Yosemites and Yellowstones in all their grandeur, but the full range of National Park Service treasures.
He has said he wants to engage more children and encourage underrepresented groups to participate in parks programs. Metropolitan areas are fertile grounds for such initiatives. They are where 80 percent of America’s people live.
Urban centers largely have been second-class citizens throughout the celebrated history of the National Park System. St. Louis’ Gateway Arch, and the national park in which it is situated, stands out as an exception — a soaring symbol of a great historical movement and cherished element of the American character.
Former U.S. Sen. John Danforth has exhorted this community to rethink the park in ways that respect Eero Saarinen’s masterwork but reanimate the park for a new age. This precipitated a public planning process, capably managed by the National Park Service, that is expected to culminate in an international design competition that will solicit the best thinking of the world’s best and brightest designers and architects.
St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay is pushing Oct. 28, 2015, the 50th anniversary of the Gateway Arch, as the completion deadline for the project.
By helping to promote a treasured cityscape, Mr. Salazar could become the first great champion of urban national parks. When he visits the Arch, he’ll understand the possibilities.
(Note to the secretary: Arch tram cars offer very tight quarters. Someone on the ground will have to hold your cowboy hat.)
If he is the thoughtful visionary you seem to portray him as, he’ll realize that building in the already dynamic but precious limited acreage of the Arch grounds will ravage this national treasure and demean Saarinen’s already fully-realized vision on the riverfront. Rather, he will look elsewhere in the great blights that scar so much of slouis to acquire land for the park service to administer as another urban national park, within the parts of the city in which people live, geared for the residents more than for tourists, and enrich their daily lives by bringing the national park experience to them in their own back yards.
I had a brilliant idea yesterday. Why not add a scale working fountain model of the Upper Mississippi (Lake Itasca to Cairo, Ill.) to the Arch grounds? This could complement the Cairo to the Gulf model at Mud Island in Memphis. And downstairs, dedicate a portion of the museum to steamboating and river traffic? Although Memphis has some issues with Mud Island, their model and museum are what draw out of towners. Hey, we could add the Missouri to it, and that’s the tie-in to westward expansion, Lewis & Clark, etc.
Mr. Secretary, are you listening?
I posted this over on the news article about this–
I took Donnie Most (Ralph Malph) to the Arch. This was in 1976, at the height of the Happy Days popularity. I called ahead and asked if they would let him cut in line because I feared a riot if we had to wait. The guy who I talked to said, just tell the guard at the head of the line and they will take you aside. We get there and this guy who was obviously a week away from retirement says, “ain’t nobody cuts in line ‘ceptin the President of the United States and the Secretary of the Interior, is your friend either one of those?” I said, “No, but the guy on the phone said…” He cuts me off and shakes his head and says, “President of the United States or Secretary of the Interior.” Donnie, who was a very nice guy says, “its ok, we can just wait”. So, he and I and our dates skulk up the line, Donnie’s wearing a ball cap and a jacket with the collar turned up. We make it all the way down to the cars when a kid about 12 on a class field trip looks down at us and says very quietly, “you’re Ralph Malph, ain’t you?” Donnie says, “Yeah” The kid screams at the top of his lungs, Hey, I got Ralph Malph down here”. The line breaks, about a hundred kids start tearing down the ramp, the door of the car opens we jump in and just as the door closes, the kid dives in head first and got a ride up the arch with Donnie. I hear after that incident, the rules changed to the Preisdent of the United States, Secretary of the Interior and Ralph Malph.
Although I agree with the editorial, I was wondering why there was no mention of the GOA spending $18 million to revamp the http://www.recovery.gov website that tracks the TARP funds.
Apparently the company that got this contract donated lots of money to Cong. Steny Hoyer’s (D) campaign and doesn’t even list website services as something it offers. Perhaps when the media stops worrying so much about what Sarah Palin’s next move is, they will start reporting on how the government is raping the American people.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/07/18m-being-spent-to-redesign-recoverygov-web-site.html
If we didn’t waste money like this, we’d have more money for more important things.
Susan, that is a brilliant idea! I hope somebody is listening.
A river model is a great idea for adding program to the arch grounds. But the real priority should be about making connections to the city first. A re-development on the archgrounds is thinking small scale. This isn’t about improving the arch grounds, it’s about improving downtown St. Louis by creating a seamless identity between the national park and downtown St. Louis. Our group at one time was called Arch Connections. It was named this because the issue we feel is most important to deal with is connection to the park.
No one disagrees that the park program needs to be improved. But improving the park program without first dealing with the issue of connectivity would be a mistake. The greatest plan would be to spend all of the stimulus money on the areas around the park and not a single dime in the park. Visitorship in turn would increase at the park and the revenues generated by the increase in tourists could pay for any improvements to park facilities. National parks are supposed to be self sufficient anyways.
This really is an opportunity for a true downtown renaissance. I liken the condition downtown to a diamond ring. The most beautiful diamond however has been placed in a plastic setting. In this situation would you spend money on polishing the diamond or buying a gold setting more fitting for the diamond. Of course spending the money on the setting makes more sense. Let’s do the same downtown. Let’s buy the arch a better setting.
I realized in my post I made reference to “Arch Connections”. This is a grassroots group of citizens who are interested in changes downtown. The group was renamed the “City to River” group because we felt it better described the goals of our organization. Those interested in this issue are invited to join our group and track our conversations online at the link provided above or search google groups for Arch Connections.
The previous propaganda piece written about the Arch park in this blog was totally dishonest in saying that building in the park would be a fulfillment of Eero Saarinen’s vision. His vision has already been completely fulfilled in the park as built, according to his finely-detailed and lyrically beautiful plan. To build in the park would be a corruption of his vision and his genius [a genius far greater than that of claire mckaskill or the p-d] and not only a misguided waste of scarce funds and efforts but a savaging of one of the nation’s and the city’s most magnificent places. What should be done is to bury or reroute the insane highway that separates the park’s meager 67 acres from the city so that actual human beings can have free access to the park.
And it would go a long way towards re-establishing a connection to the river, for those who still think that the sad brown waterway is an asset to slouis, if the park service would use some of those funds instead to acquire what remains of the S.S. Admiral and fully restore it to its pre-gambling grandeur [that's right: gambling, not "gaming!] and start running it again on the riverfront. It was slouis’ very first stainless steel jewel on the riverfront, and bears a kinship to the Arch and to slouis and slouis history fully as strong as the oft-touted Musial-Pujols relationship. And it would be a great and once-again popular asset to the city and to the park service. Letting it rot is a criminally gross mistake.
The late Sen. Paul Tsongas (D-MA) was already “the first great champion of urban national parks.”