Please clarify, who is the “We” in “We should be planning now for when the new I-70 bridge opens to the north”?  Is it the paid city planning staff?  The aldermen in the affected area?  The entire Board of Aldermen?  The Mayor?  The residents of the area?  Residents from outside the area?  Students at SLU and/or Wash. U?  The ULI?  Potential developers?  MoDOT?  The existing property owners?  Trailnet?  HUD?  NPS?  Paul McKee?

ALL of these should, and most do, have an interest in this area.  Who should lead the effort(s)?  Who should be the arbiter, the decider?  Who resolves the inevitable conflicts in visions and agendas?  While I understand your frustration with “developer-driven planning”, I’m equally frustrated with planning efforts that result in idealistic, at times, pie-in-the-sky concepts, that result in plans that just end up sitting on a shelf somewhere, gathering dust.  For any plan to be truly effective, it needs to be implemented.  And to get people engaged, and to keep them engaged, they need to see tangible results for their efforts.

The “we” is the parties you listed — the community.

Well Vessville maynot have come to frutition, there are a lot of issues out of the hand of the developer i.e. the tanking of the economy.  I think Ballpark non-village would have been a better use of your time.

Agreed on all parts. The large-scale developer-driven approach just creates islands. These projects can’t successfully find tenants (business or residential) because it exists as a separate island in an otherwise “undesirable” neighborhood. Meanwhile, the neighborhood doesn’t embrace it for the same reason.

Removing I-70, while certainly a risky move, is the right one. The future of the city’s growth is the north side. But in order to make that happen, we need bold, unified planning on downtown’s northern edge to spur the start. Bottle District, Near North Riverfront, Old North, the Trestle Project, the new Bridge…there’s a lot going on all ready (or at least planned). For a true success, each project needs to be done with respect and collaboration with the other.

I agree, we should all be a part of the process, but who will LEAD the process?  I don’t see the city being very motivated, so I’m guessing that Paul Mckee may end up by default, since he has both the motivation and the resources.

It’s not an original idea, but the most successful redevelopment has been organic and not planned.  It is when cheap rents in older, undesirable buildings allow for innovations in restaurants, boutiques, clubs and housing units at happend on Washington and now in mid-town alley.  Large scale development shouldn’t precede overall growth in the region.  It doesn’t create growth.  

JZ71 brings up a good point. If anything is going to happen here (including removal of i-70), it’s going to more than likely need Mckee’s fingerprint on it (as sad as that is). Steve, have you ever had a discussion with Mr. Mckee? It could be quite beneficial. Offer him an interview for the blog: he possibly gets the support of your readership and maybe you would be able to open his eyes to some areas for urban revitalization that would benefit his development plans (i.e, removal of the elevated lanes to connect his Bottle District to Laclede’s landing).

I’ve not talked to Paul McKee in a few years. St. Louis’ continued failure is to abandon it’s role as the big-picture planner, the one to connect the dots between different private developments.

Then how do we change this?  Elect more people like Scott Ogilvie and Antonio French?  Empower citizens and city staff?  Yes, but the biggest challenge remains demand.  We’re a city that continues to lose population and jobs.  Why build something, anything new, especially somthing urban, mixed use, higher density?  I’ve seen what’s being built – U-Gas, CVS, QT, Dunkin Doughnuts, the occassional small strip mall – and there’s little that “better planning” would improve.  And the biggest project in the works in my part of the world would be Shrewsbury’s plans to replace a fading shopping center with a Walmart – the only “citizen involvement” has been the NIMBY kind, with the city focused on sales tax revenues - inertia at its worst . . . .

We’ve continued to build and rebuild in the past six decades, despite population loss. During the “urban renewal” era the rebuilding accelerated population loss.

We need to elect enough aldermen to change how development gets done. They would perhaps create 4-6 planning districts to cover the entire city, these would intentionally ignore ward boundaries. Corridors, like Natural Bridge, would be studied and development guidelines created and implemented through a zoning overlay or through new form-based zoning.

flamingo bowling came in around that time, or shortly after, and it seems to be doing well.