Put on Your Ears…

When we began talking about the cover story for this issue - an examination of St. Louis' love/hate relationship with its riverfront real estate - our creative director Alex Paradowski said that he was sure that Walt Disney had once wanted to build a theme venue on the St. Louis riverfront.

Sure enough, the entire sordid episode is spelled out in the book, Walt Disney's Missouri: The Roots of a Creative Genius. In 1963 Downtown St. Louis Inc. began a dialogue with Walt and Roy Disney for a development on the riverfront that was dubbed "Riverfront Square."

In a chapter titled "Walt Disney's Vision for Downtown St. Louis," the book's authors wrote, "Dozens of cities had invited Walt Disney to build another Disneyland Park. He showed no serious interest in any such undertaking until business and civic leaders from St. Louis approached him..."

Actually, the book states, Disney was first approached about producing a film about the 200th anniversary of St. Louis. If you're old enough you remember the St. Louis bicentennial fl ags and license plates and other hoopla of the time. Walt Disney demurred, suggesting that the area would be better served by the construction of something permanent where St. Louisans and visitors could gather and enjoy the riverfront. Actually, it sounds a lot like today's lakefront in Chicago.

Walt Disney presented his concept at a press conference at the old Bel Air Hilton at Fourth Street and Washington Avenue. The civic fathers couldn't get past the notions that Disney wanted to own and develop "Riverfront Square" himself and that he wanted it to be a booze-free zone.

Afterwards at a private gathering for Disney and civic leaders August Busch Jr. made a remark in a very loud voice to the effect that, "Any man who would build something like that and not serve beer and liquor inside is crazy."

If you've been to Laclede's Landing or Soulard recently, you might argue that maybe Walt had something on the ball. In any event, he packed his Mickey Mouse ears and left town to devote his energies to a little project he had begun in Orlando, FL.

The history of our riverfront is very much a reflection of St. Louis' many abortive efforts to develop a regional identity. I would argue that when it comes to such issues as the riverfront we need to fi nd a way to get over ourselves, get behind our leadership, and get moving.

I love the reaction of the British public to the idea, recentlyfloated by their government, of creating a national motto. In short, they refuse to take the idea seriously. The winner of a contest sponsored by a British newspaper was "No Motto Please, We're British."

The British have a sense of who they are -- and who they are not. St. Louis, by contrast is still searching for its identity after almost three centuries. The closest we've come so far in my opinion has been critic Joe Pollack's "St. Louis is where trends come to die." Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan points out that St. Louis isprobably the hub of the universe when it comes to unrealized studies and plans for revitalizing the area.

What would it take for us to begin identifying ourselves by what we AREas a region, instead of what we are not? Probably we'd have to start by facing the truth. We'd have to acknowledge that we are politically and racially divided, that we often appear to be genetically resistant to change.

Admitting the negatives and letting our leaders lead is the first step to defining what it is that we find positive about our hometown.

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