Entrance To Gateway Arch Should Have Faced Downtown From The Start

On Thursday morning last week I made my first visit to the Arch since the new downtown-facing entrance opened recently. Before we get into the nw entry I need to take you back to how it was for decades.

For so long it was just a big dirty hole, but slowly it began to take shape. Recently the entry was opened for visitors, but last week was my first visit to this entrance.

The lower level was open, though the museum wasn’t — it opens tomorrow. The lower level also has the gift shop, a new restaurant, a movie theater, etc. I decided to wait so my husband could help me get through security, help with bags, wallet, etc. I’m excited by the new entrance, it’s clear to me downtown has not capitalized on the millions who’ve visited over the last half century.

Local journalist/author Jm Merkel is out with a 2nd edition of his book The Making of an Icon: The Dreamers, the Schemers, and the Hard Hats Who Built the Gateway Arch.

With his fourth book from Reedy Press, The Making of an Icon, Jim Merkel captured the spirit behind the conception and construction of one of America’s most distinctive and beloved national monuments. More than two million visitors stand in awe at the Gateway Arch each year, and the stories behind it were unearthed in breathless detail in the first edition. Back with even more lore and the addition of beautiful color images, Merkel brings new information on the Arch grounds and museum to this updated and revised second edition. Now expanded, his book includes more stories compiled from interviews with the visionaries, finaglers, protesters, and intrepid workers who built the arch while one misstep away from a fatal fall. Merkel’s book will help us appreciate the relentless pursuit, innovation, and toil that raised the Arch to the sky. (Reedy Press)

As beautiful as the Arch is, I still think razing 40 city blocks was a huge blunder that we’re still suffering from today.

— Steve PattersonT

Sunday Poll: Should Fireworks Bans Apply Only To Minors, Not Adults?

As a kid I have vivid memories of 4th of July fireworks — with the only house on our block with a wood roof we had to make sure others’ bottle rockets and such didn’t set our house on fire. When I was a teen we reproofed with asphalt shingles so that concern dissipated.

Now fireworks seems to be a passive event, something you watch.

If you’re looking to set off a few fireworks over the Fourth of July weekend, your best bet for not breaking the law is on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River in St. Charles, Franklin and Jefferson counties.

Illinois bans the use of most consumer fireworks, including bottle rockets, firecrackers, Roman candles and pinwheels. In Missouri, the law is a little more lenient; any firework sold legally with the labels UN0336, 1.4G or novelty are OK to use.

However, counties and municipalities in both states might have further restrictions.

Consumer fireworks, which do not include sparklers and smoke bombs, are illegal in St. Louis and St. Louis County. (Post-Dispatch)

Today’s non-scientific poll is about fireworks, specially municipal/county bans on them.

This poll will automatically close at 8pm tonight,

— Steve Patterson

St. Louis Board of Aldermen Week 11 of 2018-2019 Session: Airport Privitization

The St. Louis Board of Aldermen will meet at 10am today, their 5th meeting of the 2018-2019 session.

Today’s agenda includes new bills:

• B.B.#93 – Spencer ? An Ordinance requiring a City?wide vote to approve any proposal aimed at or having the effect of privatizing the Lambert St. Louis International Airport (the “Airport”) by the sale, lease or transfer of the Airport, either in whole or in part, from the City’s ownership or control as may be permitted by the FAA’s Airport Privatization Pilot Program (49 U.S.C. §47134; Section 149) and the Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 (P.L. 112?95) and in accordance with all other applicable state and federal laws and regulations, and the Revised Code of the City of St. Louis; and containing a severability clause and emergency clause.

The meeting begins at 10am, past meetings and a live broadcast can be watched online here. See list of all board bills for the 2017-2018 session — the new bills listed above may not be online right away.

— Steve Patterson

Except Where Banned, Conversion Therapy Still Peddled to “Cure” LGBT

I know many of you didn’t like the recent Sunday Poll, I haven’t liked hearing for decades that I wasn’t born gay — I made a lifestyle choice. The only choice I made was to recognize who I am and live my life accordingly. Coming out in Oklahoma in 1983 wasn’t easy — but it was such a huge relief.

Here’s the non-scientific poll results:

Q: Agree or disagree: People aren’t born homosexual/bisexual/transgender — that’s a lifestyle choice.

• Strongly agree 0 [0%]
• Agree 0 [0%]
• Somewhat agree 1 [3.57%]
• Neither agree or disagree 0 [0%]
• Somewhat disagree 0 [0%]
• Disagree 4 [14.29%]
• Strongly disagree 20 [71.43%]
• Unsure/No Answer 3 [10.71%]

I was relieved only one answered “somewhat agree”, usually about 15% take the opposite view each week. So why did I pick this phrasing for Pride Sunday? Because many people still think those of of us who’re LGBT make a choice to be so. Look at recent news stories:

Before the Palm Beach County Commission in December passed a law banning therapists from trying to convince gay youths they can become heterosexuals, County Attorney Denise Nieman warned her bosses they were inviting a lawsuit.

Her predictions were borne out this week when a conservative Christian group sued the county and the city of Boca Raton over their separate bans on so-called conversion therapy. In the suit filed in U.S. District Court, the Liberty Counsel claims the measures unconstitutionally restrict free speech and infringe on people’s religious beliefs. (Palm Beach Post)

The Texas Republican party just adopted their platform:

As it did in 2016, the platform says the party believes in “self-sufficient families, founded on the traditional marriage of a natural man and a natural woman” and calls for the overturning of the U.S. Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling. And it repeats language from previous platforms about so-called conversion therapy: “No laws or executive orders shall be imposed to limit or restrict access to sexual orientation counseling for self-motivated youth and adults.” (Advocate)

Of course, conversion therapy and the belief it could work is nothing new:

In 1899, a German psychiatrist electrified the audience at a conference on hypnosis with a bold claim: He had turned a gay man straight.

All it took was 45 hypnosis sessions and a few trips to a brothel, Albert von Schrenck-Notzing bragged. Through hypnosis, he claimed, he had manipulated the man’s sexual impulses, diverting them from his interest in men to a lasting desire for women.

He didn’t know it, but he had just kicked off a phenomenon that would later be known as “conversion therapy”—a set of pseudoscientific techniques designed to quash LGBTQ people’s sexuality and make them conform to society’s expectations of how they should behave. Though it’s dismissed by the medical establishment today, conversion therapy was widely practiced throughout the 20th century, leaving shame, pain and self-hatred in its wake. (History.com)

More from the same article:

There were plenty of theories as to why people were homosexual. For Eugen Steinach, a pioneering Austrian endocrinologist, homosexuality was rooted in a man’s testicles. This theory led to testicle transplantation experiments in the 1920s during which gay men were castrated, then given “heterosexual” testicles.”

Others theorized that homosexuality was a psychological disorder instead. Sigmund Freud hypothesized that humans are born innately bisexual and that homosexual people become gay because of their conditioning. But though Freud emphasized that homosexuality wasn’t a disease, per se, some of his colleagues didn’t agree. They began to use new psychiatric interventions in an attempt to “cure” gay people.

Some LGBTQ people were given electroconvulsive therapy, but others were subjected to even more extreme techniques like lobotomies. Other “treatments” included shocks administered through electrodes that were implanted directly into the brain. Robert Galbraith Heath, a psychiatrist in New Orleans who pioneered the technique, used this form of brain stimulation, along with hired prostitutes and heterosexual pornography, to “change” the sexual orientation of gay men. But though Heath contended he was able to actually turn gay men straight, his work has since been challenged and criticized for its methodology.

An offshoot of these techniques was “aversion therapy,” which was founded on the premise that if LGBTQ people became disgusted by homosexuality, they would no longer experience same-sex desire. Under medical supervision, people were given chemicals that made them vomit when they, for example, looked at photos of their lovers. Others were given electrical shocks—sometimes to their genitals—while they looked at gay pornography or cross-dressed. (History.com)

The methods have changed, but the efforts to change LGBT people continue.  To counter this, Hawaii just became the 12th state to ban conversion therapy for minors. Other states are working on legislation to ban it. Religious groups that promote conversion therapy fight bans at all levels.

This is a current issue, the fight continues.

— Steve Patterson

Connecting The Dots Without Paul McKee

I’ve long argued one key to revitalization of St. Louis is to focus on major corridors. Concentrating on major transportation corridors, used by many means  efforts will get noticed, whereas rehabbing or building new houses in the middle of a residential block four bstreets away may not. Not that we shouldn’t do work on neighborhood streets, but perceptions of entire neighborhoods can be positively influenced along busy corridors. Along the way you can improve mobility for pedestrians, cyclists, transit users, and even motorists. My views ob the importance of corridors is why I liked some aspects of Paul McKee’s NorthSide Regeneration plan.

Two recent posts on McKee’s plans — which the city now says he’s in default on their agreements:

• Before It Was Officially Named NorthSide Regeneration, We Knew It As ‘Blairmont’
• Blairmont Became NorthSide Regeneration, Received Blessing of Mayor Slay and a Majority of Aldermen

The plan focused on four largely vacant spots where McKee wanted to put jobs.

• The 22nd Parkway Interchange (An outer highway  loop around downtown will thankfully never be built)
• The old Pruitt-Igoe site
• Cass & Tucker (downtown’s new entrance)
• Jefferson & Natural Bridge (technically the intersection of Natural Bridge/Parnell/Salsibury)

For the most part two corridors connect these four locations: Jefferson & Cass. As you can see from the image above, the total area is quite large. Overwhelmingly large.  St. Louis loves big projects, especially those that are too big to succeed.

St. Louis needs to look at these four spots and come up with a framework plan for each. Will one be mostly residential while another is industrial, and another a mix of uses? What is desired in terms of the form future buildings should take? What should the corridors look like? Travel speeds, width of auto lanes, transportation options? Answer the big picture questions and then developers (big & small) will know what is the desired outcome in 15-20 years. Players of all sizes can be a part of the effort.

I’d personally add a 5th spot to the list — the North riverfront area found at the East end of Cass Ave. @ N. Broadway.  Might as well look at the full length of Case Ave from Broadway on the East to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. just West of Grand Blvd. — a 2.5 mile-long corridor. What’s the development potential? Any historic buildings?

Many are interested in investing in a North-South transit line: light rail, streetcar, BRT, etc. One study included Natural Bridge as part of the route — a station at Parnell/Salisbury (Jefferson) would be the kind of public infrastructure investment that could spur private interest. There’s also been talk of connecting the new National Geospatial Agency  West HQ, now under construction at Cass & Jefferson, to downtown via a streetcar or some other means. These should all be planned together, not separately as we often do here.

These efforts won’t return us to our peak population of over 856k, but concentrating new housings, jobs, etc can make near North St Louis more sustainable so continuing to provide city services is a viable option. Residential streets may remain sparsely populated for many decades, but have a nearby corridor active with jobs & residents will allow the neighborhoods to hold on until they can slowly stabilize with lower density than the nearby corridors.

Along these lines the City’s development entity. the St. Louis Development Corporation (SLDC), is seeking proposals for a citywide economic development plan.

Alderman Joe Roddy, who as head of the Housing Urban Development and Zoning committee has called for a citywide plan for several years, said it was “long overdue.” He said a bill passed by alderman earlier this year calling for the creation of an economic development strategy, which would be updated annually, put some additional pressure on SLDC to move ahead with the strategy. (Post-Dispatch)

The last attempt at anything citywide was when Rollin Stanley was in charge of planning — he got a new land use analysis passed, but got pushed out before he could get needed zoning changes enacted. Lots of wasted effort in a city that resists changing despite plenty of evidence it needed to decades ago.

While I think St. Louis could bring affordable new housing, quality transit, improved pedestrian environment, and much-needed jobs to the Northside — I’m not convinced it has the capacity to change enough to do what’s required. Hopefully I’m wrong.

— Steve Patterson