CNR Editor’s Take on Arch Grounds Competition

When the National Park Service unveiled the five visions for transforming the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial from the five design teams picked to compete for the honor of redesigning the Arch grounds, CNR Editor Peter Downs attended the event. The following are his observations on the submissions:

Those alarmed by earlier calls from former Senator John Danforth and Mayor Slay to privatize the Arch grounds to make way for commercial activities, including the National Parks Conservation Association and the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees - will be reassured by the visions of the five design teams. None of them calls for more than modest commercial activities - a cafe here or a beer garden there - all well removed from the Arch itself and all within the realm of accepted practices at national parks.

Instead, the five design teams have presented inspiring visions for enlivening and reinvigorating the park grounds to make them more inviting and interesting for city residents and visitors alike.

The various plans do incorporate some common themes.

Theme # 1: Everyone Channels Lou Saur

Most of the plans seem to have lifted local architect Louis Saur's proposal (CNR March 2008) for the central axis of the park grounds en toto. Expand the museum and build a new visitor entrance above ground on the western side near I-70. Close or narrow Memorial Drive to reduce surface traffic. Build an entry plaza or bridge from Luther Ely Smith park to the new museum entrance and build underground parking beneath Ely Smith park.

Theme # 2: Isn't Citygarden Great?

Let's extend it east through Kiener Plaza or recreate Luther Ely Smith park as another sculpture park.

Theme # 3: Get Rid of the Garage

The parking garage on the north end of the park is a barrier to Laclede's Landing and has to go. Let's replace it with a new visitor's center or a cafe or a playground or ...

Theme # 4: The East Side is Just the Undeveloped East Bank of St. Louis

Given the parameters of the design competition, it will come as no surprise that the city of East St. Louis has disappeared from the designers' geography. A lot of attention is given to connecting parkland on both sides of the river to St. Louis, incorporating them into the city's geography and relating them to development and redevelopment in the city, but there appears to have been little, if any, thought on how to connect the park to anything that exists in Illinois. As design plans get worked out, one hopes that some thought will go in that direction.

Theme # 5: Naturalize the East Bank

Recall the historic landscape by recreating wetlands, a canal, or an oxbow lake. Build a fake Indian mound. Build an agriculture museum, an ecology center, an avian research center or a wetlands research center. Have experimental farm fields, a farmers' market, or an urban nursery.

Theme #6: More Ways to Cross the River

Build pedestrian promenades and bicycle paths on the Eads Bridge and the Poplar Street Bridge or MacArthur Bridge. Have ferries or water taxis cross the river from one park to the other or, more ambitious yet, build gondolas to soar over the river from the south end of the Arch grounds to the Malcolm Martin Park on the east side and back.

Certainly, the various plans differ in detail and in many other attractions and developments they include, from a floating stage on the east side to manmade "urban bluffs" built in the river in front of the Arch. One plan calls for more activities, including picnicking, on the cobblestone levee, another calls for a floating swimming pool in the river, a third calls for a swimming barge.

Some of the design teams appear unaware of how often the Mississippi River floods, or even of the prolonged flooding this summer, while one team would highlight the varying river levels as part of the Arch experience by putting highly visible flood gauges in the river in front of the Arch grounds.

And three of the design teams seem to like ice skating, but not rollerblading or roller skating, siting ice skating rinks either in the Gateway Mall or at one end or another of the Arch grounds.

SEE THE DESIGN CONCEPTS ONLINE

To view all of the finalists' submissions, click here.

SEE THE DESIGN CONCEPTS IN PERSON AND SHARE YOUR VIEWS

Arch Lobby: 8 a.m.-10 p.m., Aug. 17 - Sept. 24
Public comments welcomed through Aug. 23.

Missouri Botanical Garden, Orthwein Hall,
9 a.m. - 5 p.m., Aug. 17-19

Southwestern Illinois College, Main Complex, 2nd Floor Hallway
8 a.m. - 6 p.m., Aug. 21-22
8-10 p.m., Aug. 23-24

National Great Rivers Museum, 2 Lock and Dam Way, Alton
9 a.m. - 5 p.m., Aug. 27-29

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Morris Center
8 a.m. - 8 p.m, Aug. 31 - Sept. 2

Maryville University, University Library, Monsanto Room
10 a.m. - 4 p.m., Sept. 4 - 6

University of Missouri - St. Louis, J.C. Penney Conference Center
8 a.m. - 8 p.m., Sept. 8-9

Washington University in St. Louis, Givens Hall, Main Floor
Hours to be determined, Sept. 11 - 15

St. Charles Community College, College Center Rotunda
8 a.m.-6 p.m., Sept. 17-20

Missouri History Museum, Forest Park
10 a.m.-5 p.m., Sept. 22-26

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