ST. LOUIS • Former U.S. Sen. John C. Danforth, whose call for transforming the Gateway Arch grounds helped inspire the design competition now under way, heartily endorses the work to date.

"I admire greatly the efforts being put into this," Danforth said in an interview last week. "The people involved really understand that the current state of the riverfront is dreadful and forbidding."

But he sticks by his decision in November 2008 to withdraw from the effort and said the Danforth Foundation and its money won't be rejoining.

"We had to fish or cut bait," Danforth said. "No more money."

In 2005, the Danforth Foundation began studying ways to make the riverfront livelier and better connected to downtown. It spent $2 million on that work, leading two years later to Danforth's suggestion — with Mayor Francis Slay's support — that local interests buy some of the 91-acre Jefferson National Expansion Memorial and develop it.

Their idea was to give people more reasons to stick around after visiting the popular Arch. Danforth said the foundation was ready to spend $50 million and help raise an additional $100 million for such things as a new museum, cafes, an amphitheater and other attractions. He estimated it would cost $90 million to solve a longstanding local frustration — how to get people safely across Memorial Drive and peacefully over the noise of Interstate 70's depressed lanes.

The National Park Service never warmed to the land-transfer idea. In November 2008, Danforth and the foundation withdrew, citing stock-market losses that shrank the foundation's holdings.

Slay said last week that Danforth's efforts were the catalyst for the design competition, announced in December. Last week, five finalist design groups were chosen to continue competing for the job.

"We wouldn't be here today if not for his groundwork, passion and leadership," Slay said of Danforth. "He may have his frustrations about this, but he got everybody talking."

On Thursday, the finalist design teams are to spend the day at America's Center explaining their ideas to an eight-person jury, which will pick a winning design on Sept. 24. The National Park Service and CityArchRiver2015, a new local foundation, is sponsoring the competition.

The goal is to complete work by Oct. 28, 2015, the 50th anniversary of the topping of the Arch in 1965. The idea lacks a budget and financing, but Slay and others are confident they can get the federal government and local institutions to help.

Danforth confirmed that the foundation won't be among them, even though it did donate to formation of CityArchRiver2015.

A driving force in that group of Walter Metcalfe, one of Danforth's partners at the Bryan Cave law firm downtown. Keeping the praise going around, Danforth complimented Metcalfe for his "determination. That's what it takes — somebody who is willing to take the matter into his own hands and push it, and that's what Walter is doing."

Danforth declined to discuss the particulars offered by the five finalists. Each proposes ways to get over Memorial Drive and the depressed lanes, add attractions to the riverfront park and extend it across the Mississippi River to East St. Louis.

Danforth, a Republican, represented Missouri in the U.S. Senate from 1977 to 1995.