Arch Project Dirt and Cash Piles Grow

 The reworking of the Arch grounds is shaping up into a huge earth moving and landscaping project. On January 26, Michael Van Valkenburgh took the wraps off of design revisions and Walter Metcalfe, a lawyer downtown and board member of CityArchRiver2015, unveiled a sharply higher cost estimate.

Van Valkenburgh, whose firm leads the design team that was selected to redesign the landscape of the Arch grounds and a larger park area that will run from Citygarden eastward to Illinois Route 3, announced several major changes while preserving the central element of the new design: enlarging the underground museum and moving the museum entrance to Memorial Drive. Some of the changes will help hold down costs on a projects whose estimated budget requirements have ballooned to almost $600 million.

The centerpiece of the plan is still the development of a new, larger museum underneath the Arch. In addition to carving out space for a 50,000-square-foot expansion of the underground museum, other major earth moving projects will include regrading the north end of the park after the demolition of the existing parking garage so that it slopes gently to align with the Laclede's Landing district through the arches of the Eads Bridge; regrading the western end of Kiener plaza to street level after the demolition of the Morton D. May Memorial Amphitheater; and the creation of a 60 acre park and wildlife refuge on the East St. Louis bank of the Mississippi River. The aim is to have all the work done by October 28, 2015.

What's out of the new plan: underground parking, water taxis, removal of the maintenance building and construction of a beer garden/ice skating rink on the south end of the park, replacing Leonor K. Sullivan Boulevard with an extension of the cobblestone levee, and some land in East St. Louis.

Van Valkenburgh said he abandoned the idea of constructing underground parking when he saw how little utilized were the existing parking garages in that area of downtown. He abandoned the idea of water taxis when he stopped to notice the amount of barge traffic on the river and saw in his months working on the design how much the river level rises and falls in a year.

What's new in the plan: a beer garden in Kiener Plaza, closing a small stretch of Memorial Drive, and an aerial gondola across the Mississippi.

This will be the third re-imagining of Kiener Plaza in 50 years. The buildings occupying the site were torn down and the original plaza was constructed in 1966. Twenty years later, excavation began for the amphitheater, which opened in 1987. Van Valkenburgh proposes to demolish the amphitheater and bring the site back up to street level. The plaza would be redeveloped as an activity space with a 9,000-square-foot "water element," a 6,500-square-foot restaurant with a outdoor beer garden, a carousel, and a pavilion.

The building elements in the current plan include the expansion of the museum and extensive renovation of the existing museum and gift shop space, a restaurant and pavilion on Kiener Plaza, a 9,300-square-foot restaurant near the Old Cathedral, and a 100,000-square-foot pavilion around the Gateway Geyser in East St. Louis.

The main new infrastructure element will be the construction of an one mile long aerial gondola from the south end of the Arch grounds and paralleling the Poplar Street Bridge across the Mississippi, then turning northward toward the Gateway Geyser.

Paving elements include narrowing Chestnut and Market Streets, rebuilding the intersection of Washington Avenue and the Eads Bridge, paved trails around the ponds, and rebuilding Leonor K. Sullivan Boulevard

Van Valkenburgh estimated that extensive new plantings throughout the City+Arch+River project will include thousands of native plants around the existing ponds and 10,000 to 12,000 new trees. In addition to new trees on the Arch grounds, his plan calls for widening sidewalks and planting trees along Market and Chestnut Streets and planting two lines of trees in Luther Ely Smith park to flank a promenade from the Old Courthouse to the new entrance to the museum under the Arch. Memorial Drive would be closed in front of Luther Ely Smith park and a lid put over that part of I-70.

Metcalfe announced a price tag of $578.5 million for the project, nearly twice the $300 million guesstimate bandied about in September. Dropping a new underground parking garage, shrinking new development around the Old Cathedral, keeping the existing maintenance facility, and reducing the number of acres that would be acquired for a park on the east bank undoubtedly kept the price tag from reaching even higher.

Metcalfe said that negotiations were underway with the Bi-State Development Agency to have it take on the role of developer with an eye towards issuing public bonds to fund the construction of the aerial gondola much like Bi-State issued bonds to fund the construction of the Arch tram system some 45 years ago.

You can see the presentation  by clicking this link.

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