Pruitt-Igoe’s Foundations Have Not Prevented Development

For less than 20 years 33 towers stood on 57 acres on the city’s near-north side (map).  Pruitt-Igoe was a failure of massive proportions. The reasons are numerous and complex.  The towers were razed over a two-year period starting in 1972.  Since then the site remained (mostly) vacant.

I continually hear people make the false claim the site has remained vacant because of the old foundations that were left in place.  To debunk this often repeated myth I turned to the person that would know best: Martin Braeske.

Braeske, a planner formerly with St. Louis County, was working in the planning office for the St. Louis Public Schools in February 1994 when they broke ground on the Gateway Middle School for Science and Technology to be built on a portion of the former Pruitt-Igoe site.  Braeske, now retired, is an Adjunct Professor at Saint Louis University.  So I emailed my one-time instructor and asked him his thoughts on the foundations preventing site development:

Each tower had a partial basement for boiler and mechanical systems equipment. The ones we found were intact and simple filled in with dirt. We dug them out, punched holes in the bottom to equalize the water table and demolished the walls to about eight feet below the finished ground level. While this did cost a bit, it is not a major deterrent to redevelopment of the site.

The old foundations are not a big deal.  If anything has prevented development of the Pruitt-Igoe site it has been the city’s fragmented politics over the decades.  Late December 1992:

The federal judge overseeing the area’s school desegregation program is giving the St. Louis Housing Authority two weeks to hand over part of the old Pruitt-Igoe tract as the site for a $30 million magnet school.

U.S. District Judge George F. Gunn Jr. noted in his order that the federal court last year had approved the Pruitt-Igoe location as the site for the Gateway School.

In May, the St. Louis School Board filed an application with the Housing Authority to acquire 18 acres at Pruitt-Igoe, a public housing complex demolished in the 1970s.

The authority owns the property and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has a lien on the tract.

The Tenant Affairs Board, which represents public housing tenants, opposed the deal. It contended that under federal law it has the “first right of refusal” in land transactions that affect public housing tenants.

Gunn disagreed, at least regarding the Gateway case. In an order late Wednesday, he said the tenants’ board cannot block the Pruitt-Igoe deal. He pointed out that the site is a “vacant debris-strewn area” that has had no residents for more than 15 years.

He ordered the Housing Authority to disregard the tenant board’s intent to develop the site the School Board wants for Gateway School.
(Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch 12/25/1992)

The remaining 39 acres are still vacant 15 years after the school opened, becoming an urban forest.  Interest in Pruitt-Igoe remains as strong as ever.  Local filmmakers are hard at work on a documentary on the project.  See their site at Pruitt-Igoe.com (under construction) or follow them on Twitter @PruittIgoe.

Pruitt-Igoe is known around the world.  I recently received this email:

My name is Phil Bosch. I’m an artist based in Holland who is coming this Oktober and November to St. Louis to work on a special video documentary project.  I would like to investigate the memories of former residents of the now defunct Pruitt-Igoe housing complex. For the citizens of St. Louis this place is still an open space in the city, like an inverted monument of a history that seems to be forgotten.

Slowly this housing complex seems to have taken on a mythological status.   My film will be a study on its mythological status on the one side and the realm of experiences of the former residents on the other. The goal of my project is to enter, imaginatively, this huge building complex, even though its physical appearance is no longer there to be seen. While the Pruitt-Igoe no longer exists physically, it still exists in the memory of the former residents. It appears that despite the negative aura of the complex (the death of Modernism, the site’s history of crime and vandalism), there is still a coherent social group in the area who meet regularly. Thus, my goal would be to search for memories of a place where many lives were connected by this architecture that no longer exists.

I would like to document these memories. First of all, I would like to video the site of Pruitt-Igoe, which now has been taken back by nature. Next, I would like to contact people who had lived there or who otherwise have memories of the buildings.

If you can help Mr. Bosch email him.

– Steve Patterson

Downtown St. Louis has a Circulator Bus Route, Metro Routes on Google

I missed the news about this line when some bus routes were temporarily restored but as part of Metro’s Partial Service Restoration Plan includes a circulator bus downtown.

The route does a loop through the central business district along 4th & Broadway as well as a stretch both ways along Washington Ave.  At Tucker it drops down to make a stop at the Civic Center transit center (bus, light rail, Greyhound, Amtrak). Frequency ranges from 10-20 minutes depending upon the day of the week and the time of day.  During normal working hours the buses run every 10 minutes.  The route takes riders past two MetroLink light rail stations.

The other big news is Metro routes are now available for viewing on Google Maps!  The default setting is by car but you can request routes by foot or by transit.  I’ve tested a few trips and it did a great job and included departure times for both bus and light rail trains.  From my downtown loft to The Tivoli theater on Delmar it gave me three route choices — one bus and two light rail.  The bus is the most direct and includes the least walking, I can see the stop where I’d board from my balcony.

For more info on routes and schedules see http://MetroSTL.org.

– Steve Patterson

Readers Split Between Soccer and Basketball

A recent poll on this site asked readers which professional sports league, if any, should be next for St. Louis.  We currently have professional football (Rams), hockey (Blues) and, of course, baseball (Cardinals). Of the “major” leagues we lack only basketball (NBA).  Other leagues we do not have are women’s basketball (WNBA), soccer (MLS), and arena football (AFL).    Note, the AFL is currently suspended amid financial difficulties.

Women’s basketball, arena football and lacrosse received zero votes giving none of the above/who cares the 3rd place spot (17 votes) behind basketball (50) and soccer (52).  Single write-in votes included rugby, “foxy boxing” and an American League MLB franchise.  During the week basketball & soccer were neck and neck, with soccer usually in the lead.

While I’ve enjoyed the handful of Cardinals games I’ve attended over the last 19 years, I’m not a sports fan.  I’ve never attended a football game (except 1-2 during high school), hockey, soccer or basketball.  Of these, only soccer has me interested in personally attending a match.  I’ve watched the Cardinals on TV during the World Series but never during the regular season.

Prior to 1966 St. Louis’ major sports were played outside of downtown.  Baseball & football were played at Sportsman’s Park at Grand & Dodier (map) and hockey was played at The Arena on Oakland Ave.   The idea of constructing downtown stadiums was conceived across the country as a strategy to keep downtown’s occupied. Along the same lines, cultural institutions were also consolidated in many cities.  St. Louis bucked the trend in the late 1960s when the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra renovated a 1925 movie theater in midtown, the St. Louis Theater.   The Symphony left downtown’s Kiel Opera House for their new renovated digs in midtown.  In November 2005 I quoted architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable:

The success of Powell Symphony Hall in St. Louis is probably going to lead a lot of people to a lot of wrong conclusions. In a kind of architectural Gresham’s law, the right thing wrongly interpreted usually has more bad than good results. The first wrong conclusion is that Powell Hall represents the triumph of traditional over modern architecture. False. The correct conclusion here is that a good old building is better than a bad new one. Powell Hall represents the triumph simply of suitable preservation. And, one might add, of rare good sense.

But good sense went out the window in cities all over the country, including St. Louis.  Many good old buildings were replaced with bad new buildings, including concert halls and stadiums.

We have Bush Stadium III for baseball and Scottrade Center for hockey as well as any basketball team we may attract.  The size, location and design of these facilities works fairly well within the downtown context.  Busch holds 45,000 more or less and Scottrade seats up to 23,000 depending upon configuration.

As contributor Jim Zavist indicated in his post introducing the poll, we need to face the fact the Rams NFL team is for sale and it may not remain in St. Louis.  I feel that baseball & hockey/basketball are suitable in downtown, but NFL football is not.

The Dallas Cowboy’s new suburban stadium has a capacity of  80,000 and will hold over 100,000 with standing areas.  Saint Louis University’s Chaifetz Arena seats 10,600.   The scale required for NFL is out of place in a walkable context like downtown.

Soccer, like baseball, is on a smaller scale than football.  The new soccer-specific stadium for the New York Red Bulls, being built in New Jersey, will seat 25,000, a quarter of the new Cowboys stadium. For those that like basketball & soccer, check out games at SLU.

The Edwards Jones Dome downtown (capacity 67,000) where the Rams play looks like an outdated dark closet compared to the new Cowboys stadium with its glass walls and retractable roof.  I can see the implosion of the Edward Jones Dome within the next 20 years.  If we retain the Rams in the St. Louis region their new facility needs to be built out on the fringe surrounded by a big parking lot for the fans that tailgate.  Closer in sites include dying malls like Northwest Plaza.   But no site downtown or the city is big enough to be handed over year round for 8-10 games per year.

I think I get part of the appeal of downtown stadiums; for many it is the only time they leave suburbia and come downtown.  Build the stadium on the edge and they’ll never get a chance to leave their miserable environment to experience downtown life, unless they make it to a Cardinals or Blues game.  Best yet is to forget the games and come downtown, have lunch and do some shopping.

I don’t care about the Rams, I want the E.J. Dome gone from my downtown.

– Steve Patterson

Why We Need Non-Partisan Elections in St. Louis

Except one, all the elected officials from the City of St. Louis are Democrats. Local, state, or federal — if their district is in the city they are a Democrat.  I firmly believe we need to break up the political machine in the city. Why?  Corruption:

Another state politician from St. Louis pleads guilty to a corruption charges — revealing new details about allegations involving other local government officials.

State Representative T.D. El-Amin entered a guilty plea in U-S federal court to one count of soliciting and accepting a bribe.   El-Amin admitted he received $2,100 from a northside gas station owner, in exchange for helping the man get city hall  to stop a series of “nuisance inspections.” (Source: KMOX)

Of course State Reps would still be partisan even if our municipal elections were non-partisan.  It should be noted that the City of St. Louis is rare in having partisan municipal elections.  Cities such as Springfield & Kansas City appear to be non-partisan.  We should remember that Democrats are not the only ones that have issues.

Take former Republican State Rep T. Scott Muschany of Frontenac as an example:

On August 6, 2008, Muschany was indicted by a Cole County grand jury for the alleged sexual assault on May 17, 2008 of a 14-year-old daughter of a woman with whom Muschany had an admitted 2 year long extramarital affair.  Muschany resigned from the Missouri House of Representatives on September 9, 2008.

Muschany was acquitted of all charges March 20, 2009 after a jury deliberated for four hours. “Standing naked next to a 14-year-old girl in bed is not a crime,” defense lawyer Robert Haar told jurors who held the legal fate of Muschany in their hands.  (Source: Wikipedia)

We all need to remember that the majority of all elected officials, from a major party or not, are honest hard working public servants.  But I think the partisan machine in the City of St. Louis creates a closed system that can breed corruption.  Partisan elections for out local offices serves no purpose for the City.  In fact, it may work against the it.

We all know Missouri’s previous Governor, Republican Matt Blunt, made disparaging remarks about the city — something like a place where nobody would want to live.  Conversely, out-state Republican’s might wonder if a Democrat Governor is paying too much attention to St. Louis to earn party favors.

Partisan elections for local offices doesn’t help the city or its citizens, we need to go non-partisan.  This is the subject of the poll this week (upper right sidebar) so please vote.

– Steve Patterson

Irony or Evolution?

I grew up in Louisville, KY.  Like St. Louis, it’s a city that has its roots along a major river, with its economy based on manufacturing and trade.  And, like St. Louis, it’s a city of historic neighborhoods.

One of them is Butchertown, which, not surprisingly, got its name from the stockyards and packing plants that located there.  The neighborhood is the home of Stockyards Bank.  It’s also a neighborhood that’s seeing reinvestment and gentrification, and one that’s increasing in desirability.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but a recent case illustrates the tension that exists anytime change happens.  As with many traditional industries, the meat packing industry has been shrinking in Louisville.  The stockyards shut down in 1999, and there’s only one packing plant left now, but it’s been there for decades.  Recently, that plant was cited for zoning violations, and some of its neighbors were pushing the city to shut it down:

“In this day and age … it’s not an appropriate use here,” said Jon Salomon, an attorney who lives in Butchertown and represents the Butchertown Neighborhood Association. (Source)

Not surprisingly, the company “won”.  The combination of relatively-minor zoning violations and the potential for losing 1,300 jobs likely directly influenced the outcome:

After a 10-hour hearing Monday, the board approved JBS Swift’s request to modify its zoning permit to allow the expansions, after it illegally started construction on an enclosure for a hog-unloading area last fall. (Source)

The reality is that the plant generates truck traffic and some interesting odors.  When the area was primarily industrial, and the only residential uses were the workers’ shotgun cottages, these issues were the smell of money.  Now that many of the residents, especially the new ones, are no longer associated with the industry, the odors and the traffic are being viewed more and more as real negatives, especially to the further “revitalization” of the neighborhood.  This gets down to one of the fundamental challenges of urban living – when does being a historical use become a negative one?  When do the interests of new residents, especially well-educated ones with new and better ideas, start to take priority?

So what does all this have to do with St. Louis?  Simple – given our industrial base, we have the potential for similar conflicts.  The questions in Louisville really aren’t unique.  Was the decision correct?  Be careful of what you ask for? Don’t move somewhere and expect to change things to fit your definition of urban living?  Is NIMBY a good thing or a bad thing?  How do we balance reinvestment with retaining a diverse economic base?  How much gentrification is too much?

– Jim Zavist

UPDATE: 9/26/09 @ 7:45PM – comment section opened.