Sunday Poll: Feelings on Proposed Entry Markers for Forest Park?
In August it was announced new entry markers would be coming to Forest Park entrances:
The City of St. Louis and the private nonprofit conservancy Forest Park Forever have announced plans to construct the first of eight new arrival markers at key Forest Park entrances. Called for in the 1995 Forest Park Master Plan, these thresholds will more formally welcome visitors arriving by foot, on bicycle and by car, clearly identify the Park’s primary and secondary entrances — especially key for visitors from around the region and country — and create welcoming nodes where visitors can meet and gather.
At the first site selected, the popular entrance at Skinker/Wells/Clayton at the Park’s southwest edge, a temporary mock-up will be installed in fall 2015; this will allow stakeholders and the Forest Park Advisory Board — established in the Master Plan to ensure public involvement in any new capital projects in the Park — to assess scale, positioning and Park context before continuing on with construction, which is planned for 2016. Design and construction costs for this entrance are estimated to be approximately $300,000. Forest Park Forever has raised the private funds necessary to proceed and complete it. St. Louis-based SWT Design has served as the project’s designer. (Forest Park Forever — with images)
I didn’t see the temporary mock-up in person, but late last month St. Louis Public Radio had a story on pushback & support.
Today’s poll wants to see where readers stand.
As always, the answers are presented in random order. This poll closes at 8pm tonight.
— Steve Patterson
This is just another example of photo ops/ribbon cuttings trumping boring-but-important stuff like maintenance. $3,000,000, even if it’s “private” money, is still a lot of money to spend (waste?) on things “designed to be timeless, permanent, welcoming and in harmony with Forest Park, each marker will improve the visitor experience and aid in navigation.” Yes, they may “aid in navigation”, but so would better directional signage. What the markers do do is give donors something tangible to point to and say “I paid for that!” But, for 99%+ of the visitors, the new “markers” will have absolutely no effect, positive or negative, on their “visitor experience” . . .
Three Million Dollars! ($3M) ($3,000,000.00) !!! In whose pocket will the unspent money end up? The rendering shown looks no different from (or better or worse than) thousands of upscale subdivision entrance markers built around St. Louis County and in hundreds of other counties around the country. Look at it! It’s a embellished column with a tail (serpentine or otherwise). How can 16 of this design (or 16 similar designs) possibly cost $3M to design and build? That’s $187,000+ each, for god’s sake! I can buy a nice new masonry home in South St. Louis County for $187,000.! So JZ71’s question that this may be a “waste” of money (taxpayer or otherwise–doesn’t matter) is right on–not just because the decision to build them might be considered frivolous, but because it would appear there might be some friends-helping-friends nonsense going on here. I wonder if there are 16 other projects in Forest Park that $187,500 each might be better allocated? When I come back in my next life, I want to be a masonry contractor so I can get in on one of these sweet deals. (I wonder if Mason Homes spent $375,000 on the subdivision markers at their most recent subdivision development?)
The arrival markers near the History Museum are nearly done.