An Arch Grounds Design Primer for a Suddenly Aware Board of Aldermen

Something interesting happened at the City of St. Louis Board of Aldermen Transportation and Commerce Committee meeting recently. It seems some elected officials in the city just realized that a private organization with mayoral carte blanche has redesigned the Arch grounds. Who knew? One could exhaustively contemplate how an elected official could be unaware of the project (after all, the BoA did pass a bill putting a city sales tax that will total $120M+ over 20 years to voters), but one could also sit dumbfounded that CityArchRiver, MoDOT and the mayor’s office have all failed to adequately inform locally elected officials of their plans for the $578M project.

This lack of knowledge led aldermen to ask MoDOT for detailed plans for the redevelopment area before they would vote in favor of a bill that would allow MoDOT to take possession of city land in order to build the one block I-70 lid. This may seem an odd point at which to question the project’s design and history, but aldermen have never been given an opportunity to vote on any component of the project design, leaving moments like this the only point of possible leverage. It would appear that there’s much more of which the city’s representatives may be unaware. Luckily nextSTL is here. What follows is a concise guide to the CityArchRiver development plan, public input and detailed design of the “lid”.