Illinois is a vital component in transforming the Arch grounds
Photo by Bob Schorfheide
Ken Salazar was among the tourists who visited the Gateway Arch for the first time in July. He got the deluxe tour, inasmuch the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial is a national park and Mr. Salazar, a former Democratic senator from Colorado, has jurisdiction over it as secretary of the Interior.
The timing was not a coincidence. Over the past year, the park has been the subject of a far-reaching planning process. For the first time since the Arch’s completion, the public had been invited to consider how the park might be improved.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., had asked her former colleague to tour the park, behold St. Louis’ soaring icon, talk with area leaders and Park Service staff and judge for himself the progress and promise of such a project.
The leading proposal would make the park the subject of an international design competition, much like in 1947, when the world design community was challenged to imagine how St. Louis’ old riverfront warehouse district could be transformed into a brilliant memorial.
That contest culminated with the selection of Eero Saarinen’s masterwork, the Gateway Arch.
“One of the things that became very apparent to me as I studied the Arch and the Mississippi,” the secretary said, “is that there is a connection to Illinois, and that East St. Louis is a very important part of the picture.”
Mr. Salazar’s reading of history is correct.
Mr. Saarinen’s concept called for prominent improvements on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. They included “forested green spaces, museums, a marina and boat basin, formal gardens and landscaping, and an amphitheater along the water’s edge.”
“We would hope that this [east] side of the river could be developed so that it, too, would become part of one great composition,” Mr. Saarinen wrote at the time.
Mr. Salazar said that the current park study should help figure out “how we can connect up this side of the river to East St. Louis as well.”
Doing so wouldn’t just advance Eero Saarinen’s vision, it also could help repair long-neglected relationships and promote unity in the St. Louis region.
Mr. Salazar said he was deeply impressed with what he had seen and heard. “We need to find a way to connect the Arch and the community of St. Louis,” he said, and doing so will be “a priority of President Obama and it will be a priority of mine.”
The secretary set a deadline of Oct. 28, 2015, for the project’s completion. That date marks the 50th anniversary of the day the final piece of the Arch was put into place. He said he was looking forward to “a great celebration here,” and he vowed to “move heaven and earth” to try to have the project completed even sooner.
For too long, Missourians have taken the Metro East for granted. From airport planning to a new Mississippi River bridge, officials in Missouri have given short shrift to legitimate concerns from their counterparts in Illinois.
The Metro East area is home to more than 650,000 people and has a substantial industrial base and a major military installation. There is much developable land supported by convenient, well-maintained highways, roads and bridges.
And Illinois’ congressional delegation has the seniority and clout that is indispensable in getting things done in this metropolitan area.
The time has come for the Metro East to receive its rightful due - out of fairness and for the sake of the region. That means making sure, as Mr. Salazar suggested, that Illinois finally shares in Mr. Saarinen’s dream.
If you’re going to build an “East Archgrounds” you’d better surround it with a tall fence, and staff it with appropriate security. I’d hate for people to remember St. Louis as the place where their car was broken into, their purse was snatched, or worse, because they made the mistake of visiting East St. Louis instead of continuing over the PSB.
1) the Illinois legislature needs to pass the historic rehab tax credit that is working its way through Springfield.
2) the highway ramps that cut off Downtown E. St. Louis from the riverfront need to be relocated (just like on the St Louis side). run them south of town, and put them in a tunnel under Holden State park.
3) The grain silo on the E. St. Louis Riverfront needs to be relocated.
None of these are easy(!), and #’s 2 and 3 are neither quick nor cheap either (in fact the exact opposite). But, if we are serious about brining the East Riverfront back to life these are necessary projects.
I don’t think Illinois has to worry about getting its fair share due. Especially with Obama and the congress delegation. You also have to look at the choices being made.
1) DOE has reinstated $1 billion in subsidies for the next generation coal plant to be built in Southern Illinois.
2) High Speed rail is coming to downstate Illinois. I have no doubt that Illinois will see a big share of the $8 billion in stimulus funds or any future fed expenditures (Jim Oberstar’s bill 5 year transportation bill wants to set aside another $50 billion). Millions that will be spent from Madison county to Chicago
3) DOD continue to pump millions into Scott Air Force Base after the feds essentially paid for Mid-America. Illinois politicians are smarter then what people think. Mid-America might have been advertised as a reliever airport but was built for keeping Scott Air Force Base open. It was one of the shrewdest move ever made for Metro East.
4) large Subsidies(most have been developed on the basis of not paying any or greatly reduced property taxes) have gone to large distribution warehouses on the back of cheap farm land in Metro East. This has nothing to do with not getting its fair share. Its about choices made locally. A good example of the next big subsidy that Illinois will support, STAR BONDS
I do feel Metro East is not getting a fair shake of flood protection help from the Corps and Feds. Corps will spend $14 BILLION alone on New Orleans 100 yr flood protection since Katrina. How many billions more will be given for 500 yr flood protection. Yet, Metro East is funding its own flood protection with sales tax. Nor has any of the authorized $3.5 billion for Mississippi navigation and environmental work been appropraited.
Mr. Kasoff raises a legitimate point: East St. Louis has problems with crime.
The way he raises this issue, however, contaminates what could be a productive discussion about improving the Illinois side riverfront. Nothing in this editorial suggests that we should construct a big new parking lot on the east side where cars are broken into and purses are snatched.
I would ask Mr. Kasoff to take a deep breath while looking in the mirror and ask himself whether he furthered this conversation with his snarly comment about East St. Louis. I would further recommend that he ask himself whether attitudes like his contribute, in any meaningful way, to restoring the Illinois side riverfront.
There are good ways to raise points and unproductive ways. Maybe next time, Mr. Kasoff can take a little extra time to formulate his comment so that he can be seen as a person who cares about solving problems rather than merely lashing out.
Unfortunately, I don’t think an expanded Arch Grounds gobbling more land for green space will have any net benefit for East St. Louis. I didn’t agree with Dansforth idea of another museum. However, he was right about the Arch Grounds already taking up so much space in the center of an urban core. What does this accomplish?
Sadly, this area once was a strong industrial area supporting jobs. Something that East St. Louis resident above anything else. If anything, the region as a whole should spend money clearing out brownfield sites and organizing its infrastructure as Reality Check alluded to so we quit building on productive farmland when their is termendous amount of developable land already available as in here on the riverfront and surrounding communities. What would be so bad about viewing a working riverfront from the Arch
This arch makes me think of what I read today: the entire human race outside Africa owes its existence to the survival of a single tribe of around 200 people who crossed the Red Sea 70,000 years ago, scientists have discovered.
So we are, indeed, one people. Remember the sixties, “We are the world, we are the people”? Looks like the song had it right. My mother still carries on about being the “old guard,” and her health hasn’t fully recovered from the last election. Do you suppose this article would enhance her perspective? Vive la difference, c’est my motto. Differences in culture, custom, behavior, appearance, physical capabilities and how these hard wire people in a multitude of ways has always fascinated me. Perhaps in a future distant enough to spare us, the world will be populated by a homogenous homo sapiens. No matter. The homogenized will figure out a way to quarrel. - Ann Seymour, author of “I’ve Always Loved You,” a true story of ww2 in the Pacific.
If they would have taken my advice back in the sixties and put one leg in Missouri and the other in Illinois, none of this would be a problem.
The problem with Illinois are the Chicago politicians. You would think that Springfield would put more focus towards the poorest part of its state, but the politicians have chosen to let East St. Louis and Cairo rot. Serious attention needs to be diverted away from Chicago and down to these areas. There won’t be a short term fix and money alone isn’t the answer.
Maybe he’ll also look into how to remove gyo obata’s green-roofed monstrosity from the slouis roofline, especially as seen from the east side of the river?
Saying that the Arch grounds take up too much space is as ludicrous now as when the muddle-headed ex-senator said it. And they are hardly in an “urban core”. They are located at the very edge of the city, on a riverfront that was dead for over half a century before the Arch was built, and was ugly as sin. The Arch grounds constitute approximately ONE-FIFTH of the acreage of Grant Park in Chicago, and that doesn’t include the recent inclusion of Millenium Park to Chicago’s lakefront green space. Do those who see no value in green space but only in greenbacks believe that Chicago committed folly by creating parkland in its “urban core”? Or New York, with Battery Park, Riverside Park and all the others?
It is ironic, but no less a river enthusiast than Samuel Clemens, in “Life on the Mississippi”, spoke in wonder of the green space in this city that was then new: Forest Park. He would have cherished the glory of the Arch grounds, and the honor they do to an otherwise dead history: this city as a riverboat town. And had he heard the ex-senator’s astonishing lowbrow comments about these same grounds, he would have nodded his head knowingly, as the comments of just another run-of-the-mill politician, the kind Mr. Clemens regularly derided.