URBAN RENEWAL: Make Grand Center live up to its name - Give it back to the people

By FREDERICK D. MEDLER
Post Dispatch
Wednesday, Jan. 05 2005

It's a shell of its former self and won't change under the current central
planning.

After arising early Saturday morning, I commenced my new year serving as the
unpaid janitorial staff for the corner of Midtown St. Louis surrounding my
home, picking up drifts of trash and sweeping up glitter from the sidewalks and
curbs. What a disheartening way to begin the year.

Friday evening, throngs of migratory party-goers arrived here for First Night,
an event many may see as good for the area. After toasting my neighbors in my
home, several of us took to the streets to see how the event was getting along.
I will admit it was all very festive and seemed a pleasant way to take out the
old year and bring in the new, from a weather standpoint, at least. Yet there
was something strange and disturbing about the whole experience.

Nearly all the evening's activities were held in empty and deteriorating
buildings. Despite the concerted efforts of fixing them up with brightly
colored lights and tons of cardboard and colored paper, the damp smell of decay
still lingered. It struck me as yet another "smoke and mirrors" effort to
present an illusion of stability and health in a redevelopment district truly
in denial.

How could anyone fail to see the deterioration? Outside, above the brightly
colored holographic projections of vibrancy cast upon the exterior walls of
this "Potemkin village," broken and boarded-up windows screamed for real
change.

What once was a dynamic neighborhood in which to live, play and work - the most urban part of the city when I moved here in 1978 - now is very much a ghost town when concert venues are not in operation. The buildings lining both sides of Grand Avenue are facades for an old Western movie production; the sprawling acres of windswept superblocks extending east and west are the failed product of the disproved mind-set that claims the demolition of fine historic buildings for the construction of acre upon acre of convenient parking will somehow "revive" a community.

Nowhere has the suburbanization of the inner city brought back health and
vitality. Not one example stands to justify what has been so cruelly inflicted
here. Unless and until we, as citizens of this great city, take this neighborhood back from the special corporate and political interests that until now have run it into the ground via a Soviet-style central planning mechanism, nothing truly will change for the better.

I sincerely encourage the mayor, my alderman, and other members of the Board of Aldermen to put an end to this great urban tragedy. Allow us - the residents
and small business owners - to take back the control of our neighborhood so
that we again can accomplish here what has been so successfully done in such
places as Lafayette Park, Soulard, South Grand, the West End and the University
City Loop.

In the closing moments of First Night, after the fireworks ceased and most of
the revelers had departed quickly, I walked to the home of two of my neighbors
who also have a beautiful old historic home they have been restoring lovingly
for more than a dozen years. As I approached, the house was warmly illuminated, the Christmas tree was beautifully decorated, and everywhere, friends and neighbors were in high spirits.

This small part of Grand Center glowed with life and vitality. As I walked up
the steps to join the festivities, I looked back toward the darkened outlines
of the abandoned buildings along Grand Avenue and toward the windswept lots
nearby, now fully deserted again, and I sighed before opening the door and
ringing in the new year with my neighbors, my community: the real Grand Center.