Examining “Downtown Next” as a Framework for the Future of Downtown St. Louis

Downtown Next is the document that “continue[s] our resurgence and advances to the next stage of Downtown’s revitalization” – at least to the year 2020 - and follows on the prior Downtown Development Action Plan of 1999. Acknowledged in the plan is the fact that there are limited resources to address the opportunities. Downtown Next is supposed to be more “strategic than prescriptive”. That (and the fact that it calls itself a “Vision”) allows it to be more of an ‘up in the air’ document with somewhat little regard to practical implementation. It’s primarily an aspirational document. It’s good to have things like this to inspire the possible, even if what can be done inevitably falls short. Even then, it would seem that this plan doesn’t capitalize on its potential.

Downtown Next (DN) fails to understand the fundamental differences between a goal, objective, strategy, and implementation mechanisms at times. Goal 1 (p37) is for “A Thriving, dense residential network”, with the objective being a total population of 20,000 people by 2020. These are consistent with their headings. Under Strategy, the first item is ‘Add 5,000 residential units’. This is not a strategy. This is a goal or objective, and can even be a benchmark, or key result. Strategies around increasing the number of dwellings include but are not limited to lobbying the federal government for funding to improve local areas to encourage private sector development, advertising to the local market to live downtown, partnering with universities to add student housing within the downtown area, etc. Further, adding people by adding units is logical, but only if people want to live in them.