The 55-foot whale will never plunge into water, but it just might help this city get back into the swim of urban success.
Sporting a lifelike rubbery skin, the huge mammal is being “born” at the new City Museum, a $2.5 million project currently under construction inside an old, 10-story shoe factory.
Visitors to the museum, scheduled to open Oct. 23, will be able to walk into the mouth and stomach of the whale, hear its heart beating and its breathing and even crawl up and look out one its eyes.
Besides the whale, other fanciful creatures–including a two-story brontosaurus and a giant squid–are planned for this “children’s museum for adults,” as its developers call it.
The oversized menagerie will form the nucleus of a new tourist attraction that officials hope will lure more people back downtown and help to jump start a city that has lost 7 percent of its population since 1990.
With a parking lot guarded by a serpent fence, the new museum is a symbol of the imagination that is transforming the Washington Avenue Loft District, just west of downtown, into a trendy neighborhood, similar in style to Chicago’s popular River North.
New uses are being found for obsolete buildings. Vintage factories and warehouses are being converted for residential uses, and new restaurants and night clubs are cropping up.
“The loft district is where it’s happening,” said Timothy Tucker, the principal partner in International Building Co., the developer of the museum. “A lot is going on here. It will be a catalyst that puts a favorable spin on downtown as a fun, safe place to be,” Tucker added.
The redevelopment of the loft district is just one of the signs of life in this historic river city. Hope for the future is reflected in several other recent projects. They include:
– The successful launching in 1993 of MetroLink, a 17-mile light-rail system that connects Lambert International Airport with downtown and across the Mississipi River to East St. Louis, Ill.
– A $97.5 million expansion at Lambert, scheduled for completion next year. The hub of Trans World Airlines, it is the 11th busiest airport in the nation. Plus, a second major facility, Mid-America Airport, is set to open in October at a site in Illinois 20 minutes from downtown.
– The opening in 1995 of the Trans World Dome, a $280 million expansion of America’s Center convention hall. The 1.7-million-square-foot dome houses the 66,053-seat stadium that is the home of the St. Louis Rams football team.
– The opening in 1994 of the Kiel Center, the $135 million sports and entertainment venue that is the home of the St. Louis Blues hockey team and the St. Louis University basketball team.
– Construction of the new $185 million Thomas R. Eagleton U.S. Courthouse. Completion is expected in the summer of 1998 for the 29-story, 1 million-square-foot building that was designed by HOK (Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum) Inc.
– The continuing redevelopment of Laclede’s Landing, a nine-square-block historic area near the river. The first phase, scheduled for completion by 2000, involves a $120 million investment that has transformed 19th Century warehouses that once stored goods for steamboats into a popular dining and entertainment area.
Despite these positive forces, the population of the city has dropped from 397,000 to 366,000 since 1990.
Why the flight from the city?
“It’s a classic case of suburban sprawl,” explained Maureen McAvey, the city’s development director and executive director of the St. Louis Development Corp. “We spread out. New housing was built on the abundant farmland encircling the city.”
But McAvey predicts that the downward spiral is about to end. “I see a leveling off of losses and a repopulation due to new housing. People will be coming back to the core of the city. Lots of young people want to be near downtown. There’s a market for housing in the city and we want to encourage it.”
In addition to new residences in the Washington Avenue Loft District, she expects townhouse construction to begin ringing downtown. The city will help by selling land it owns at a discount or providing tax incentives, she said.
While the City of St. Louis is just one cog in the metropolitan area of 2.7 million people that covers 6,397 square miles in Missouri and Illinois, it is of prime importance. “The city is our face to the world. It is the key to our future,” said John Fox Arnold, chairman of Downtown St. Louis Inc.
Citizens never tire of telling visitors that the St. Louis area has been ranked the sixth best place to live and work by Fortune magazine.
David Morris, vice president of Colliers Turley Martin, the leasing agent of the 42-story, 1-million-square-foot Metropolitan Square, the city’s newest high-rise office tower, noted that the Class A office vacancy rate is only 9 percent, but Class B is 17 percent and Class C soars to 70 percent. “Those empty Class C buildings may be converted to loft apartments,” he suggested, a trend that would parallel downtown Chicago.
Another boost to downtown will be a new 1,000-room convention hotel next to America’s Center. Construction is set to begin next spring, McAvey said.
She credits MetroLink and the new sports palaces as other magnets pulling people into the urban core.
“MetroLink, with 12 million passengers annually, is ahead of our ridership projections, so we had to buy 10 more cars,” said Susan Stauder, special assistant for strategic planning at the Bi-State Development Agency. Plans are under way to extend the rail network.
She said the $350 million project has been popular because it is destination oriented.
Train stops include the 1,300-acre Forest Park, a recreational wonderland; St. Louis Union Station, the once-busy train depot (now a national historic landmark) that has been recycled into a festival market place and Hyatt Regency Hotel; the Kiel Center; Busch Stadium (unfortunately the Anheuser Busch Brewery and its tours are not on the line); America’s Center; and Laclede Landing, which is within walking distance of the permanently docked Admiral Casino, and the 630-foot Gateway Arch, the visual symbol of St. Louis since its construction in 1965.
The aluminium arch, which soars above the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, is a reminder of the city’s key role as the Gateway to the West. Following Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Lewis and Clark set out from St. Louis in 1804 to explore the vast wilderness. Later, thousands of steamboats departed from St. Louis on voyages to the West on the Missouri River.
Ahead looms the year 2004, the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition and the 100th anniversary of the St. Louis World’s Fair. Some citizens already are viewing that date as an incentive to regain the glory of yesteryear.
Meanwhile, vestiges of the past are being preserved at the new City Museum, which will offer much more than the whale, a 35,000-gallon fish tank and a 145-foot climbing wall in an unused elevator shaft. Also featured will be architectural exhibits. Parts of noted buildings that have fallen to the wrecker’s ball will be displayed. One of them is the facade of the old St. Louis Title Co.
“We’re trying to preserve St. Louis’ heritage by taking what is worth saving–decorative friezes, for example, that may have been high up on a building–and bringing them down to eye level so they can be appreciated,” said Tucker.
Just across from the museum is another adaptive reuse–an 80-year-old warehouse that has been converted into ArtLoft, a residential development of 63 one- and two-bedroom live/work apartments. Renovation of the 10-story building was completed last year.
Eighty percent of the rental units, which have a basic, industrial look, have been taken by artists, who like the large windows and 11- to 13 1/2-foot ceilings for their studios.
“Artists can help to turn this area around,” said Tim Boyle, president of City Property Co., the developer of ArtLoft.
