Tucker Tunnel Not Quite Gone
The former commuter railroad tunnel under Tucker (12th) isn’t fully gone, but it’s a lot shorter now.
This project fascinates me, I wished at some point I’d seen the tunnel. I’m looking forward to being able to use Tucker to get further north as a pedestrian. I still question the quality of any new development we’ll see along this corridor given the city’s lack of leadership on good urban planning.
– Steve Patterson
The biggest driver (pun intended) for development along this corridor will the completion of the new Mississippi River bridge. I anticipate that it will look a lot like the existing Tucker and Truman corridors south of downtown, between Lafayette and I-64, areas to be driven through to get downtown, not areas that will be destinations for non-commuters. I also expect that the corridor will remain a mix of low-income residential and low-density warehouse / service uses, with a couple of new mini-marts constructed to “serve” Illinois commuters with gas and smokes. Yes, the city can and should plan for higher and better uses, but until the demand is there, they will remain just that, plans, much like the unrealized grand plans for Ball Park Village and the Bottle District.
It would be interesting to see if McKee can come up with something substantitive for Bottle Works now that he is part of it. A solid mixed use, dense residential would be a much better use of the Bottle Works in my mind and believe McKee would be open to the idea much more than the original proposals/sky in pie idea that their is a need for a big influx of office space that previous proposal/renderings suggested for this site.
The city in a way is an unique situation with every other muni trying to land the next big box store, think Walmart moving down the road in West County, the new Menards proposals for RIchmond Heights and Northwest Plaza, so on. Essentially, no muni is proposing or seeking housing of significant means and most of the recent additions to residential units is downtown itself as well as some solid proposes in the CWE/Forest Park East that will come to frutition with BJC/Cortex expansion. SLU putting law school downtown will strengthen the market and add the demographics needed to support more retail.
You may want to consider chaining yourself to your motorized device if you plan to venture north on Tucker. Someone just may want to consider stealing the copper windings from your electric motor. It happens for lesser payoff items.
Wasn’t this tunnel a maintenance nightmare and basically unnecessary now? Why was the entire tunnel not removed? Post Dispatch still require it?
Only a portion is placed at a time, they are working their way south a block or so at a time.
i was doing outreach during an internship with covenant house about 7 years ago and we went in the tunnel looking for homeless teens. It was quite fascinating, and a rather well organized community.