Why Not Bury Part of Highway 40?
Bringing in guys from Boston’s Big Dig might have been a mistake as myself and others are thinking how can we bury part of our highway. I’m going to be brief:
The suburban areas were largely built after the highway so in those cases neighborhoods were not severed like older areas of the city. We have an opportunity to reconnect older neighborhoods that were cut off from each other when the highway was constructed. The highway currently is recessed below grade between Taylor & Boyle and will be after reconstruction. Forest Park Southeast is about to lose nearby park space to BJC.
The solution is to bury/create a lid over I-64/Hwy 40 for the short distance between Taylor and Boyle. The resulting land on top of the highway should be new park space to offset the 12 acres that BJC is taking from Forest Park. Playground equipment, tennis courts and racquetball courts displaced from the small piece of Forest Park should get rebuilt here, at BJC’s expense. Regardless of the highway situation, BJC should not be allowed to remove the existing facilities until the replacement facilities are constructed and operational.
MoDot has a detailed drawing of their proposed reconstruction here. Looks like they are planning additional ramps at Tower Grove.
Sure it will cost more but I think the city deserves to get more than just a faster exit out of the city. Give us back our city in the process!
– Steve
Seriously. What would be the cost of rebuilding the mill creek valley to support 40?
Why not bury it all from the park to the bridge? Put the Chouteau Greenway on top of it?
I’m particularly fond of the way our leaders boast about new development and added density to our city yet can’t seem to think of the CITY as anything other than a destination for commuters rather than a place where people live. I don’t understand why we continue to invest our money in making it easier to live outside the city, rather than making it easier and more desireable to live IN the city.
How long are we going to continue to miss opporunities to stop sprawl, reconnect our city, and add density when the funds are available? And furthermore, delaying any possibility of that for at least 10 years by doing so.
Why Taylor & Boyle? Why not between Big Bend & MacCausland? Why not through Forest Park between Skinker & Kinghighway? There are all sorts of arguments for any neighborhood, but the reality is there is no money available, so why get people’s hopes up? And if BJC actually does come up with some cash (bribe?), it would make more sense to buy more dirt than it would be to buy a lot less concrete / structure over a highway! If anything, sell BJC the air rights over the highway instead of leasing them the park . . .
[REPLY – Why Taylor to Boyle? Well, it is part of the reconstruction area and is already lower excavated. Of the entire area being rebuilt this is the least costly area to consider such a treatment and is also the most urban.
Why not look at the costs to cover this section of highway vs. replacing all four bridges. What is the difference? Can we find a way to fund it? I think it is worth the discussion. – SLP]
I strongly doubt any tunneling of 40 would provide sites for urban infill. Between Kingshighway and Skinker, you’re actually in Forest Park. Between Hanley and Brentwood, everything is already auto-oriented lining Eager. Richmond Heights didn’t even go for New Urbanism with their Hadley Heights RFP. West of McCutcheon, you’re in low-density Ladue and Frontenac.
About the only spots where urban infill could MAYBE happen over 40 are between McCausland and Hanley within the denser sections of Richmond Heights and east of Kingshighway between the CWE and FPSE neighborhoods. But instead of expensive tunnels or even still pricy lids, development could just be built over the highway in these more urban sections of 40.
However, with Richmond Heights botching the opportunity at Hadley Heights, I doubt that community would be currently inventive enough to promote development over 40. Heck, Richmond Heights is just caught up fighting the redundant and property-impacting Bellevue interchange.
As for linking CWE and FPSE, maybe the gradual expansion of BJC and/or the possible boom of CORTEX could make such development over 40 there more likely. For BJC will never expand into Forest Park west of Kingshighway, so maybe south is a future leap, when constrained. However, future developments as such could be achieved via air rights and building over the highway as another mentioned, not tunnels or lids added to the New I-64 project.
I think this is a nice way to link two projects in St. Louis (BJC and hwy. 40 expansion), with one providing the solution to the other. Though I would rather see the new land sold for development to help pay for the lid as opposed to parkspace, which I think can be found in the FPSE neighborhood somewhere, especially with the proposals for demolition pending there.
I would agree with burrying part of 40, but I would be more extensive in what I did. Given the current state of forest park and the desire in the CWE to build towers with those great park views, i really belive the most valuable area for burying 40 is between Kingshighway and Skinker along the park. While i know 40 is not all below grade in that area, given the complete reconstruction of the highway, lowering the grade some might not be as hard. secondly, in NYC, Central park is a good floor below grade along Central Park West and so if the new development in this area were still above grade wouldn’t be bad at all.
Since none of this is going to happen anyway, we can be creative. Allow MoDOT to sell or lease the air rights over the highway. Private developers would therefore contribute to the cost of building and maintaining the road, and MoDOT would have an incentive to do this with as many highways as possible.
East of Kingshighway you’d probably wind up with more of the same medico-industrial ghetto that you have north of 40 there now — but there would be something tangible to be gained by doing it — revenue from the new real estate — rather than an increase in the parks budget. Rather than having to be funded from somewhere else, it would be self-sustaining.
But it’s west of Kingshighway that the scheme really pays off. Three sides of Forest Park are some of the most expensive real estate in St. Louis; the fourth side is twelve lanes of roadway and then a horrible community college, a suburban office park, and houses and apartment buildings that don’t really benefit from their proximity to the park because of all the traffic (and the lack of bridges).
Instead, you could essentially extend the Forest Park south over the highway, and sell off much or most of the space for apartment buildings with addresses on Oakland and with back doors opening directly into the park. You could create more valuable real estate all the way down to Big Bend without too much trouble, and while you were at it you’d increase the value of the existing property that’s currently next to the highway. I used to live in Richmond Heights right next to 40, because the rent was so cheap — but if you opened the windows, everything got covered with soot in short order.
It’s likely that my estimates of the cost are way off; I’m thinking of this as constructing buildings that happen to have an interstate highway in the basement, but there’s probably some deal-killing thing like a requirement that buildings over highways have to be equipped with individual rocket escape pods for every inhabitant or something. I still prefer the idea of something that produces its own revenue than something (like a park) that requires outside funding to survive.
It’s nice to dream big, but I’d much rather attention focused on the ‘lid’ over I-70 between the Archgrounds and downtown, making the underpasses between the Landing/Casino site and the Dome/Bottle District more attractive, and maybe even trying to soften the impact of Highway 40 on the south edge of downtown. In some ways, the new stadium helps with that.
The unfortunate reality is that Highway 40 largely runs through an industrial corridor east of Kingshighway. While the houses on the north side of the 4500 block of Chouteau back to the highway or to the College of Health Careers, east of Taylor the property adjoining Highway 40 is non-residential and not especially high-density.
Changing that development pattern is unlikely.
FPSE, meanwhile, has a tiny little playground called Rainbow Park at Taylor and Gibson, as well as the larger park behind Adams Elementary School. Sure, more park space would be desireable, but I’m not sure the ideal location.
I hate to lose the Hudlin tennis/racquetball courts and the adjacent playground. Why can’t they be replaced somewhere near the City TV 10 studios, off Oakland and Kingshighway? That’s also an orphaned corner of Forest Park; and hopefully the reconstruction of the interchange will make that area more accessible to pedestrians. It’s a short walk from the Science Center and SLUH.
I like Tino’s chutzpah. The only challenge will be where do you park the residents’ cars? 40/64 would have to be below the residential highrises, not underground parking . . .
Talking about “orphaned corners,” what about relocating the playground to the southeast corner of 40/Kingshighway, the corner of Forest Park within the FPSE neighborhood. City 10 is on the southwest corner within the Kings Oak neighborhood. Maybe as a win-win, each of these southern corners south of 40 could have a relocated amenity, a playground on one (southeast) and tennis courts on the other (southwest).
Depending on how the reconfigured ramps at 40 and Kingshighway are designed, I’m hoping that SE quadrant of Forest Park adjacent to FPSE across from the Lambskin Temple Apartments and other buildings facing old Kingshighway, would gain enough property to make enough room for a playground. That would be wonderful.