Hearts and Minds: Shifting the ZMD Institutions from Attractions to Assets

As the Zoo and Museum District reaches its 40th year of operation, we find the population of the St. Louis region increasingly living outside of the core and discussion about the future of our flagship cultural institutions being miscast as a debate about admission prices and public subsidy of a frivolous entertainment district. We have improperly framed the conversation.

By the 50th anniversary of the ZMD, we should try to have a better picture of what we are discussing. We should set a ten-year goal as a region to shift our conception of the five ZMD institutions. We must stop seeing them as local attractions and begin to understand them as regional assets.

As attractions they are geographically limited to the urban core. They are physically limited to the size of their respective structures and campuses. They are the sum of their bricks, beams, and concrete. They serve only the neighborhoods near them, and their use of public money is inappropriate. Nobody wants to subsidize other people’s entertainment.