Ballpark Village / Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory

The Cardinals wanted a new stadium and St. Louis wanted downtown real estate development.  In exchange for public financing the Cardinals got a new stadium and the city was supposed to then get a new 'Ballpark Village.'  That was the deal a decade ago, but google maps today still looks like this,

It's pretty unfortunate, but the Ballpark Village never happened.  It was supposed to be full of restaurants and office space.  The buildings would be tiered with lots of rooftop spaces to see the game.

The not-so-subtle implication being that we needed a stadium like our rivals the Cubs and a cool neighborhood nearby like those buildings next to Wrigley Field in Chicago.

For whatever reason residential units were not considered and big office space tenants were sought out.  Centene was supposed to anchor the area with their corporate headquarters, but they took incentives to move out to the county and and the city lost out.  The Bowling Hall of Fame that used to be there was essentially evicted to Arlington, Texas.  The whole area sat as a mud pit until the All-Star Game when they decided to make it into a softball field. 

The site has become a source of shame to many in the city, and there have been a lot of people calling for it to just be broken up and sold off as separate parcels with a restored street grid.  The future is uncertain, and the only sure tenant of the eventual Ballpark Village is the Cardinals Museum. 

If indeed the Cardinals Museum has any shot of being a downtown treasure, it's good to look for other examples.  A downtown baseball museum can revitalize a city.  Louisville, Kentucky has earned a lot of buzz in recent years for their ambitious downtown revival.  The Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory  can claim some credit for that success. 

Hillerich & Bradsby, the makers of the Louisville Slugger, anchor downtown Louisville with a museum on one end of Main Street and a stadium on the other.

The museum, with its giant bat fits right into the streetscape.

Inside there's a giant glove for kids to crawl around on.

With gloves in mind, it would be proper to keep in mind that Hillerich & Bradsby is the company that has historically given out the Silver Slugger Award in Major League Baseball for the best offensive hitters.  Its the counterpart, for good defensive players, is the Rawlings Gold Glove Award.

Logic would follow that wherever Rawlings is headquartered, there's probably a similarly cool baseball museum.  They're an old, established company with a great reputation after all.  Just look at thier old logos.

It seems the company used to call itself Rawlings St. Louis.  Where in St. Louis are they? 

They're twice as far from the Cardinals as Centene!  

Back in 2003, when Rawlings was looking for a new headquarters they chose Maryville Centre.  They would probably have made an excellent tenant for Ballpark Village, but they were given a better deal elsewhere.

It probably doesn't make sense for Rawlings to align itself too closely with the Cardinals since they sell to every MLB team, but it does make sense for them to put a Golden Glove Museum next to the Cardinals Museum.  As baseball in St. Louis is actually bigger than either of those groups, it would be better still for us to have a St. Louis Baseball Museum that incorporated both.  The Cardinals and Gold Glove exhibits would be the biggest tenants in the collection.  The Missouri History Museum might be able to take over more general aspects, and then other local interests could adopt sections as well.  The Cardinals are not the only baseball team in town that might have a stake in such a museum. 

The St. Louis Perfectos, a vintage baseball team, plays (without gloves) in Lafayette Park just south of Ballpark Village.  Watching them play is a great experience to enjoy with a baseball museum visit.

St. Louis is also home to the Frontier League headquarters in Sauget.  Two local teams are in the league:  the River City Rascals play out in O'Fallon, and the Gateway Grizzlies play in Illinois.

Deeper than that, there are many other companies that work in the baseball industry in addition to Rawlings.  Like Rawlings, these companies could also beneift from taking up office space next to a downtown museum.  If they had showcase factories in conjunction with the museum, they could add tourism to their revenue stream. 

A strong museum can be the anchor that holds the retail and office space together.  We can build the museum on one or two blocks now and leave the other parcels to later phases.  Anything is better than what's been there for the past decade,

The Iron Horse Trestle / The High Line

The High Line in New York City is being built in three phases.  Fast Company recently released some renderings of phase two along with the video above.

The High Line is an old elevated railroad that was reclaimed by nature and by citizens as park space long before the government stepped in.

Though overgrown, the walking trail worn by locals was clear evidence of its use.  In its transformation into planned park space proper, some of the old rail was retained.

In the upcoming phases, a glass floor will allow the ironwork to be seen.

Where tall sumac trees have grown above the trestle, a canopy walk is planned.

It willl be an exciting addition to the already very successful elevated park.

The one concern is the street below.  Back in the days of urban renewal when it was considered proper for cars and pedestrians to be completely segregated, skybridges between buildings and pedestrian tunnels were all the rage.  Instead of integrating cars and people in a complete street design, they were separated and the streets and sidewalks suffered. Looking at the High Line, we can assume that the great density of New York City might put some people on the street below anyway, but pictures suggest otherwise.

Walking under the High Line is not an experience that has been invested in greatly.  It's possible that while the park thrives, the street below may suffer.  At least that's the experience in St. Louis.  Even fancy light posts cannot save the wasteland under I-70 in downtown St. Louis.

There has been some attempt at putting art under the high line, but the people still prefer to walk above.  Interesting lighting and integrated cafes help though.

The dead space beneath is something NYC will have to figure out, but overall the High Line has been extremely successful.  It has drawn people to the surrounding neighborhood and drawn international landscaping buzz.

It's route goes through a pretty large section of western Manhattan and is credited with revitalizing nearby real estate.

 
Highlighting the success of the High Line and its expansion, creates some hope for the future Iron Horse Trestle in north St. Louis, which is slowly being reclaimed as park space by Great Rivers Greenway.

The main difference is that that the land under the Iron Horse Trestle is all industrial and off-limits to walking anyway.

Like the High Line, phase I is already complete.  This is the bikeway on the side of McKinley Bridge and the Branch Street Trestle.

It's just a sun-baked slab on concrete now, but it has a great future ahead of it.  It will connect into a larger network of heavily used trails on the north Mississippi riverfront and to the Old North St. Louis neighborhood.

Anyone who has ridden the riverfront trail before knows of the piles of sand and tailings, and the general smell.  This surely looks familiar and exciting,

A lot of the before and after renderings depict people on bicycles instead of the leisure walking crowds on the high line.

It seems like the trestle is primarily a bike highway with scenic overlooks of the river.  It appears a bit more narrow than the High Line too.  Clearly the designers haven't used mixed-use trails before though since the pedestrian/running path is not always separated from the bike path. 

The St. Louis biking culture tends towards the racing cyclist side with the rider's head over the handlebars pre-conditioned for head injury.  A leisure walk can end badly when you get hit by a guy training for his big race or eager to lose weight while biking to work.

Hopefully walking areas on the edge of the trestle will be safe and free of collisions.  In a way it is more like the Brooklyn Bridge than the High Line.  Indeed, it even connects to Brooklyn, Illinois.

The best part of the trestle is that it helps connect residential north St. Louis to the riverfront without bothering the industrial plants between.  It will cross I-70 and comes right down into a bicycle park in Old North.

From this bike park, people can go north to the vibrant Crown Square area and get some ice cream or bike south to the downtown bike station and on to their desk job.

Although the Iron Horse Trestle would join the High Line on a very short list of elevated parks, there are many differences.  The High Line is a residential oasis full of hangouts.  There are benches and even a planned museum.  The Iron Horse Trestle is all about connecting a neighborhood to the riverfront.  There may be a few spots to hang out on the trestle, but the majority of users will be going somewhere.  The High Line is an attraction, and the trestle connects attractions.  It will be a major bike commuting corridor for Metro-East residents that work downtown.  There are many, many trails around SIUE and they're all going to connect to the McKinley Bridge just south of Granite City eventually.

It is also worth noting that the bicycle park is very close to Cass around the entrance to the new Mississippi River Bridge, which will reroute I-70 and potentially allow the old interstate route downtown to be converted into a vibrant boulevard.  It would be a complete street, not a segregated highway and pedestrian mall.  The new boulevard put forth by City to River will connect downtown to the riverfront.  The trestle will do the same.  The two projects together have great potential to stimulate investment.  City to River's boulevard will have an estimated $1.1 billion dollar impact.  As the High Line stimulated investment, so too will the trestle. 

The Old North St. Louis Restoration Group is one of the most transformational organizations in the city.  In addition to their restored Crown Square, their gardens and farmer's market, their non-profit cafe, and their historic ice cream parlor, they will soon have a very large youth hostel.  Tourists, do come to St. Louis to bike our trestle and stay in our historic youth hostel. 

There are pleny of other good investments waiting to happen.  Just south of the trestle the Columbus Square neighborhood might be brought back with the new boulevard and the Bottle District on the vacant lots north of the Edward Jones Dome.  The Carr School is directly between the new bike park and the St. Louis City Museum.  It's the coolest building in the Carr Square neighborhood, and perhaps the whole region.  It's just waiting for a rehab.  The Pruitt-Igoe site sits nearby too, waiting for its future.  There are lots of vacant lots and surface parking areas that can be built on.

Boulevard + Bottle District + Trestle + NorthSide = St. Louis Renaissance

Forest Park / Seoul Grand Park

I had this idea that I was going to do a post called 'St. Louis Dinosaurs  /  Korean Dinosaurs,' and I had all sorts of stuff I wanted to include.  Like the big Sinclair Dinosaur from the Seodaemun National Museum of Natural History, his skinless cousins inside, and the guy I excavated in the playground outside.

Burying a metal skeleton under a playground is a brilliant idea.  I couldn't help but spend ten minutes digging and brushing. 

Things got a bit crazy, and I never got around to posting about dinosaurs.  Which is a good thing, because I have since found a lot more dinos. 

The Science Museum in Seoul is rather abandoned, and was closed the two times I tried to go.  It seems to government forgot about it.  There's a flashy new Gwacheon National Science Museum in a place called 'Seoul Grand Park' which is in fact not in Seoul at all, but in a suburb to the south. 

Seoul Grand Park is a museum district with a theme park, an art museum, a botanical garden, a zoo, and a giant science museum.  It's set in the mountains outside the city.

The new science museum was a huge disappointment for me personally.  It's another one of those flashy new money pits from the government that's more depressing than wowing.  Yet again, there seems to be some confusion between science and technology.  Science is the name used, and technology is what is displayed.  The museum is huge, and not at all reaching its potential.  Hopefully in time it will mature and become more interesting.  The dinosaurs are in the back next to a big wall of geological time (excellent idea). 

The museum is like a giant spaceship, and it's an amazing thing to see coming out of a subway exit.  The huge brick plaza in the front is sun-baked and empty, but the majority of the land is taken up by the gardens in the back (with the dinosaurs). 

The subway station is right in the middle of the park, under the giant parking lot.

The last time I went to visit the art museum, I came up from the subway into the parking lot and walked around the lake past the theme park and over a hill before I could see any outdoor sculptures. 

The only space that is shared by all the institutions in Seoul Grand Park is the lake and the parking lot.  The science park is behind the science museum.  The art park is next to and behind the art museum.  The zoo is just all by itself way up the mountain.  Each carries its own high admission's price, and each is a separate day's adventure.  They are islands to each other.  There is no real benefit to their close proximity.

The dinosaurs in St. Louis are in Forest Park, next to a bike path,

Hands down, the Gwacheon National Science Museum beats the St. Louis Science Center in terms of budget, environmental impact, and emptiness.  Yet, the tiny St. Louis Science Center is clearly the better institution in terms of positioning. 

Whereas the institutions in Seoul Grand Park are cloistered islands sharing a parking lot, the institutions in Forest Park are landmarks in a shared urban park.  Each enhances the others. 

The dinosaurs at the St. Louis Science Center are in the park proper, where they can be seen for free by anyone passing.  They are not hidden behind the building set away from the park like in Gwacheon.

All the Forest Park museums are free.  Each institution in Seoul Grand Park charges a hefty admission, and each is seen individually once a year or so.  Everything in Forest Park is free, so you can see them all in one day, once a week.  You can visit on a whim and leave on one too.

Recognizing that the park is a shared commodity and that the institutions are landmarks, each institution should project themselves a bit more into the park.  The Science Center could put up more than dinosaurs.  The Zoo could claim Turtle Park and put up more animal sculptures between (like the big tiger in Seoul Grand Park).  The SLAM could really take the Grand Basin as its own.  The history museum can bring in more than just a streetcar.  If each had its own zone of influence and they overlapped slightly, it'd make Forest Park easier to navigate, and more exciting.

Rather that invest in a private campus with a large fence and gate, the four big institutions in Forest Park can be completely open.  The more entrances the better.  It's free, so there's no need to keep track of people.  They should take over a zone of influence in the park, an adjacent neighborhood in the city (like Dogtown for the Zoo), an entrance to the park, and an approach that goes far into the city.  My suggestions are in the map above.

Forest Park is surrounded by the city, not mountains.  People should know that Hampton takes them to the Zoo.  Clayton Avenue goes to the Science Center.  Forsyth goes to the Art Museum (or Shaw Park).  The St. Vincent Greenway goes to the History Museum. 

The park is shared, and deserves to be invested in.  Thank goodness it isn't a parking lot.  Thank goodness its in the heart of our region and therefore shared by all of us.  It isn't set in a mountain valley somewhere around Desoto.