Final Four and the Future of St. Louis
Tonight is the last of game of the Final Four in St. Louis. I could care less about basketball but I am glad St. Louis was chosen to host the Final Four. It was exciting to see all the activity downtown over the weekend. Celebrities were also in town for the event. In fact, I walked right past the SUV of Lil’ John and the East Side Boyz. Yeah!
Tomorrow the banners will come down and the City will begin counting the money made from tourists. We will return to a non-event economy. The take home message to City Hall will be that we need more conventions and sporting events. This is true but if only to pay for our investment in the convention center and convention hotels.
We have to work on getting a 24/7, 365 days a year economy. I’m talking residents, not tourists. Hopefully this weekend we put on enough of a show that some attending the Final Four might consider relocating to St. Louis after college. Five years ago we would have had little to offer downtown.
Whom do we thank for the change? The Rams? Cardinals? SBC? City Hall? Downtown Now Partnership? Sure – to a degree. But we need to thank the people that took the financial risk to get the lofts built. We need to thank the first wave of loft dwellers. These are the pioneers.
Some would argue that without major sports teams like the Rams or Cardinals we wouldn’t have the lively downtown we are seeing emerge. I disagree. I think money raised from these teams has likely been helpful in projects such as the Washington Avenue streetscape but the pieces were coming together anyway. Metropolis had spent a number of years successfully getting people downtown for The Walk with restaurant & bar owners responding.
If anything, the dome and Busch Stadium are an impediment. Yes, I said it. These venues have nothing to do with creating vibrant neighborhoods. They create vibrant hours on selected weekends. These few vibrant hours come at the expense of the remainder of the year where the surroundings are barren. By the vary nature of these venues the surrounding area will never be a vibrant neighborhood comprised of local residents, shops, restaurants and night life.
The “Ballpark Village” that is promised after the completion of the new Busch Stadium will at best be a tourist neighborhood. A tourist neighborhood will have things like a Barnes & Noble, Urban Outfitters, Gap, and plenty of chain restaurants. Larger cities all have this type of area and sometimes the locals mix into the area. If only to do some chain store shopping.
If I were trying to determine where the first St. Louis area Urban Outfitters store should be located I don’t know that I’d pick the new Ballpark Village. Looking at downtown St. Louis I’d see that residents and the street life are located North of Market and West of 8th street. The most energy is on Washington Avenue between Tucker (12th) and 14th.
Between the Ballpark Village site and the home grown excitement is the useless Gateway Mall and too many boring parking garages and generic office towers to count. This is a dead zone. A ugly and lifeless pedestrian barrier. Unless the ball players stand on the street corners around the clock sports will do nothing to help this area become lively.
Lets keep working to bring events to St. Louis. When we get them here we need to make sure we keep a few as residents. In the meantime we need to look at the dead blocks downtown and see how can add life. In some cases this will mean putting up a building where none exists, to encouraging street vendors to replacing/renovating lifeless buildings.
The future of St. Louis depends on creating vibrant neighborhoods, not on weekend events. Yeah!
– Steve
Yeah!
I’ll second that.
While hosting major events will always result in a net positive result for St. Louis, there needs to be more coordination and cross-promotion between city businesses.
From talking to a number of folks working around the city it seems the Final Four contributed little to business West of Tucker. The Landing and businesses near the cluster of downtown hotels seemed to benefit, but the crowds didn’t seem to spread out much. (In areas like the Loop, however, there was a visible uptick in people, if not business)
Even those businesses along Broadway seemed to be wondering what happened. BB’s, Oyster Bar and Beale all were left scratching their heads; after all their preparation there was very little action.
Their were shuttles running all over the place, but seemingly few stops. Given the dispersed nature of St. Louis, perhaps a little more coordination for the next event will help bring attention to all the different areas St. Louis has to offer.
Murphy makes an interesting point about the disconnected nature of DT from the rest of the city.
If there was one thing I could change, it would be that disconnection, perceived or otherwise.
Having 28 wards probably helps to build that sense of disconnection, along with 78…or is it 79 individually defined neighborhoods.
Can someone describe to me the difference between Princeton Heights and Southampton? They’re not even divided at Eichelberger (according to the neighborhoods at least-the city indeed does divide them there).
What about Gravois Park and Benton Park West?
Benton Park West north of Cherokee and Marine Villa south of Cherokee? Doesn’t Broadway make a more natural boundary than Cherokee?
Drive on Gravois near St. Francis DeSales and you see a business named “Dutchtown Automotive”, even though the location is Tower Grove East (or is it Fox Park?).
And the grandaddy of all disconnectedness is between downtown and the rest of the city.
Downtown gets lots of press, lots of bandwagon-jumping type hype, but its only a tiny fraction of the whole city, nonetheless carved up by three wards.
As one of the members of the failed Advance St. Louis effort, I’ve heard lots of the reasons why we want to keep 28 wards.
Mostly, I think having 28 wards reduces our sense of city-wide identity and increases our sense of disconnectedness.
Think about how few people really think of issues outside of their own ward/neighborhood, let alone two or three wards or neighborhoods away…
RB
You’re right about the sports stadia not really contributing to downtown. The new Busch is perhaps the lone exception, a baseball stadium can fit well in an urban environment, but I don’t understand why people insist on placing all sports stadia and their attendant parking garages downtown, when they could be spread throughout the area, bringing different uses to different areas that need them. Now we’re hearing talk about an MLS soccer team in the St. Louis area, and the usual chorus from people who want to see the stadium downtown. Please, no more!