What Does a Neighborhood Center Look Like?
Perhaps a public square or park as a neighborhood center? Or a commercial district? Not if you live in Carr Square urban renewal area:
All the natural neighborhood centers were razed along with the rest of the neighborhood during the dreadful years of Urban “Renewal.” With community centers that evolved over time the planners & architects created faux versions. View the above on a Google Map.
The basketball and tennis courts, adjacent to the center, are quite sad.
Carr Square Village was one of the earliest clearance projects in the city. It was completed in August 1942. The 24.3 acre development consisted of 53 2 & 3 story buildings with a total of 658 units.
The above center was not in place as of a 1971 aerial photo of the city. The building appears to be from the 1970s or perhaps as late as the mid 1980s. By then the renewal area would be been 30-40 years old. The “neighborhood center” was likely another attempt to renew the area.
At some point after 1971 much of the housing was razed from the two green sections in the bottom left corner. The remaining buildings have also changed considerably since 1942. With enough time and money we will eventually reverse all the mistakes of the past. But will this neighborhood ever have a real center again? Doubtful.
Where is this? It looks like it is in the NorthSide project area. When NorthSide gets built, the plan is to have multiple town centers. So doesn’t that fix the Carr Square problems?
Sounds like a combination rec center and community center (one that provides resources like day care, after-school programs and senior activities, primarily to lower-income users), legacies, for better or worse, of LBJ’s Great Society. Basically, it’s a matter of semantics, much like how an IT architect has nothing to do with traditional building architects. We can question the architecture, we can question the good intentions, we can question the expenditure of tax dollars and we can question the effectiveness of the programs, but arguing whether or not this should be called a Neighborhood Center is a low(er) priority for most folks.
What really matters is working to create a new, physical, “traditional” “center”, IF that’s what the neighborhood actually wants. I’d just be careful of what you’re asking for – I’d expect a contemporary center would consist of a Walgreens, a QuikTrip, a Rally’s and a Cricket store, each with ample parking, and for it not to be street-hugging, mixed use structures with cafe seating, smoke-free bars, a locally-owned coffee shop and an organic grocer . . .
Having a bad day Jim? I think your comments exemplify why northside residents are clamouring for a community role in the planning of the NorthSide project. The mix you describe might work great at Manchester and New Ballwin Road.
For the city, some people want a more urban scale. Not everyone though. There is some tension. Some would be happier to have what you describe than nothing at all.
Not a bad day, but definitely tongue in cheek . . . we have plenty of “good” stuff being torn down because nobody is willing to pay what it takes to keep it functional and occupied, and we have too much non-descript, generic crap coming in because few people, including our leaders, are pushing for anything better! Why should Walgreens, QuikTrip or Rally’s a) do anything different and/or b) not come into a viable market for them? The customers show up and spend their money – it “works” for the merchants and apparently is good enough for their customers, and our leaders get their “pound of flesh”/sales taxes. Yeah, it may sound cranky, but it seems to be the reality for St. Louis outside of a few yuppie enclaves and around our universities . . .
The aerial photo is more recent than ’71. The houses on the bottom left corner are Murphy Park apts not built until the late 90’s. Also the green space that is across Biddle from the Community Space which is NE of the “A” and the Neighborhood Clinic which share the same parking lot had apartments up to 18th street. A better view is on the wikipedia page of Pruitt Igoe. On that page you can See another UR failure the Vaughn projects that occupied land from 18th to 20th streets O’Fallon to Carr. Similar to PI but smaller. Murphy Park sits there now. You can also see numerous rooftops that are now cleared in St Louis Place and the homes that were cleared in the 80’s to make way for O’Fallon Place apts which is across O’Fallon from the Community Space. The before and after is drastic in some cases.
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