The Real Link To The Downtown Gallery Walk
Last night I was looking up future St. Louis events and stumbled across a listing for the popular Downtown Gallery and Design Walk. This is one of my favorite events and if I am in town I make sure I’m downtown for all the fun.
The listing, shown at right, is from the St. Louis Convention & Visitor’s Commission website www.explorestlouis.com. What I found interesting was the website link for the event. Downtown Now!? What do they have do with it? If you go to their website you find zero information on events.
“Downtown Now! is a public/private partnership created in 1997 to develop a five-to-seven year action plan for revitalizing Downtown St. Louis, Missouri. The City of St. Louis officially adopted the Downtown Development Action Plan in December of 1999. The Action Plan comprises $1.5 billion in public/ private investment and identifies four focus areas for revitalization.”
The site has links to a proposal for connecting the Arch to downtown, Loft district guidelines and a downtown development plan. The latter has a whole section on the Old Post Office District which includes the following:
“The historic character of the area, the continuity of building faces on the street, and the need to enhance street level activity argues for careful siting of parking resources on other blocks not fronting the Old Post Office unless the parking is located below grade.” [source]
Read the plan — it is a good one. But when developers come calling and want to raze a historic building facing the Old Post Office the plan is conveniently ignored. What is the point of having people develop plans to be ignored?
But, back to the issue at hand. Downtown Now! is not the organizer of the Downtown Gallery and Design Walk. I don’t think they are trying to get credit for it either. I think the CVC made a mistake on their site. At least I hope that is the case. But given how interconnected the CVC, Downtown Now! and the Downtown St. Louis Partnership are this type of mistake is inexcusable. To it’s credit the Downtown St. Louis Partnership has the correct link on their site. What I do find annoying on the Partnership site is when you click on their “events” menu. You don’t get events starting in August 2005 and later. No, you get January 2005 events and you must scroll down to find current events. OK, not a huge deal but given their budget you’d think they’d be able to make it a little more user friendly.
And to set the record straight the Downtown Gallery & Design Walk is organized and promoted by the owners of the gallery and design business on the walk. No huge budget, no big time salaries. Just business owners promoting themselves. Information can be found here: www.downtowngallerywalk.com. The next Downtown Gallery & Design walk is Friday September 2, 2005.
– Steve
Steve,
You’re good. I went to the website and the downtown now website reference is already gone.
Of course that’s a rather half-assed fix, since they didn’t add the real website.
I wonder if anyone pointed out they say it’s on the “FRIST” Friday.
[REPLY – Good catch AWB! I didn’t even notice the word First spelled Frist. Why reason would they have for not including the correct website address that has been around for 3-4 months? – Steve]
Yo Steve, checking in from Buenos Aires here — and of course I had to take a minuto to see what you´re up to blog-wise. Good catch there. As one of the organizers of the gallery walk, I don´t mind anyone helping to plug it, but you´re right, they should point to the right information. The map at http://www.downtowngallerywalk.com is usually updated in the week prior to each month´s walk, as final exhibition info rolls in from all of the galleries. And to set the record completely straight, you´re right that there are no salaries involved. The Downtown Gallery and Design Association is a 501c3 organization that organizes the walks; it includes both businesses (like Gallery Urbis Orbis) and non-profits (Art St. Louis). We also welcome one-time exhibits such as school groups that are showing in venues such as Mosaic or other ¨special¨ space.
Hasta luego,
Margie
While we’re talking about being user-friendly, why can’t the DT Gallery Walk page be something other than a PDF file? A simple HTML page, with a JPEG image of the map and a text description would be a nice improvement.
And I agree the DTSLP calendar is kind of silly. It’s just a straight text page, updated infrequently; not dynamically-generated, although since it’s JSP, you’d think it was. They probably bought some fancy Content Management System software, and just post content to it.
The St. Louis CIN Calendar of Events, while not perfect, is a little better: it lists this week’s events first, followed by ongoing current events. (And, I might add, it has the correct link for the DT Gallery Walk.)
By the way – Ambiente is a cool space, but is it really an art gallery?
Since it’s designed for ease of printing, as in “print this and carry it with you,” is a pdf less convenient than a jpeg? We know the map is important vs a text file because many of our visitors are first-timers from parts not urban.
Also, note it’s the Downtown Gallery and Design Walk. Entities like UMA and Ambiente and Niche are clearly identified as part of the “design” category.
Thanks,
Margie