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Danforth vision sets 2015 deadline for livening up Arch grounds
(by Tim Woodcock - May 20, 2008)
Plans to create a new attraction that will make the grounds around the Gateway Arch more than a quick photo op have taken a significant step forward with the release of an ambitious timeline by a taskforce looking at the issue.
The organization pushing for the redesign is the Danforth Foundation, which has pledged to make “a significant financial commitment” to the project.
The foundation intends to organize an international competition to generate the design for an addition to the Arch grounds. The three-person task force appointed by the Danforth Foundation wants to see construction underway by 2013 and completion of the project prior to Oct. 28, 2015 — the 50th anniversary of the Arch’s completion. Exactly what the addition would be has been only loosed defined as “a museum or other cultural facility.” The nature of the cultural facility is to be narrowed down over the next couple of years by a public planning process coordinated by the National Park Service.
When the idea was first floated last summer, the issue was framed in terms of locals who wanted to inject some energy into the area needing to wrest control away from the federal government and the National Park Service, whose vision for the parkland was seeen as too restrictive. Now the talk seems to be of partnership, and the National Park Service has said it has begun some preliminary design work “including reinvigorating the Arch grounds as encouraged by the Danforth Foundation.” In other words, the Danforth agenda has gained traction with the body that controls the land around the Arch.
Another aim of the project, endorsed by both the NPS and the Danforth Foundation, is finding a way to better connect the concrete-dominated riverfront, the pristine green space around the Arch and the commercial portion of downtown.
Currently, Memorial Drive and Interstate 70 run in depressed lanes between the two NPS properties, the Old Courthouse and the Arch, and there are only a few places to safely cross on foot between the two areas. The potential for a connector, or a bridge that is two to three blocks wide, has been discussed for years, but no solid plan — let alone the necessary funding — has ever emerged.
Improving the Arch’s surroundings is more than an aesthetic issue. “People are voting with their feet,” said Walter Metcalfe, one of the members of the three-person task force. The Arch has seen a 21 percent drop in its visitor count since 2001, while most other national monuments have seen an increase in attendance, Metcalfe said.
Any plan that is going to attract funding from private donors as well as the state and national government has to demonstrate its worth as an economic investment, Metcalfe said. He said two measures that will be used to assess ideas are: Would the new attraction warrant more than one visit by locals? And would it be good enough as an attraction for out-of-town visitors to consider an extra night’s stay in St. Louis?
Persuading funders to support the project will not be framed in terms of giving the St. Louis region or its downtown a shot in the arm, he said. “It has to speak for itself.”
Metcalfe said he doesn’t expect the city to contribute financially, but the project will require cooperation from its planners. It is realistic to expect funds from the state and national government, he said.
The Danforth Commission paid for a public-opinion poll last December to test the waters in terms of what kind of changes the public would back. Most locals supported greater programming in the vicinity of the Arch, and 69 percent said they would support the construction of a new cultural institution, such as a museum.
Although the timeline is a highly ambitious one, Metcalfe said, it is “doable if we spent every day thinking about it.”
The key to moving ahead effectively is for the riverfront, the Arch grounds, Memorial Drive and I-70 to be thought of as “one project area,” despite their differing owners. A new regional not-for-profit trust would need to be created to raise funds for the new attraction and to manage it, although the land in question wouldn’t necessarily have to change hands for the project to work, Metcalfe said.
Metcalfe said it is something of a local myth that Eero Saarinen’s design called for passive space of the kind that currently surrounds the Arch. His original drawings show an architecture museum and a history museum within the park and even an area for camping. However, it is up to the NPS-led process to set some parameters about what would be acceptable in the 21st century, he said.
To date, the potentially controversial plan has not meet with any organized opposition, perhaps because no visualizations of what might be built on the Arch grounds have been circulated.
Landmarks Association, the city’s preservation organization, issued a statement in January giving tentative support to the planning process. Landmarks said that it “supports a transparent planning process for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial that would be open to a wide range of public input and the counsel of design professionals.” It also specified that any thinking about the Arch’s future should be broadened to consider how the area relates to the Gateway Mall to the west, Laclede’s Landing to the north and Chouteau’s Landing to the south. “The architectural, historical and environmental ramifications of any alteration to this National Historic Site require much deliberation,” the statement read.
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