ST. LOUIS • Dignitaries, including several federal officials, kicked off the $380 million renovation of the Gateway Arch grounds Friday morning, tossing a few shovelfuls of dirt and declaring the project unique.
“There is not another place in the country that has done this like we have done this,” Senator Claire McCaskill, D-Mo, told the crowd gathered at Luther Ely Smith Square, immediately west of the Arch. “There has not ever been a community that has taxed itself to support a federal park.
“There is only one other place where you have seen the kind of public-private partnership we have here in St. Louis, and that’s Ellis Island,” she continued. “So I’ll put my Arch up against that Statue of Liberty any day.”
First-year federal Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, who oversees the National Park Service, commended the community for raising private money to fund ongoing operations and maintenance. “It’s incredibly impressive,” she said, “and something other communities are going to emulate.”
People are also reading…
Newly appointed federal transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx called the project “a source of national pride.”
Walter Metcalfe, a Bryan Cave attorney and chair of the CityArchRiver foundation spearheading the renovation, applauded government leaders for their cooperation. “It’s time. Beyond time,” he said. “People in St. Louis have heard this is going to happen for the last 50 years.”
Construction starts as soon as Tuesday. The first project will reroute downtown roads and build a park over Interstate 70, linking downtown to the Arch grounds and Mississippi River.
Subsequent phases will expand the museum under the Arch, raise the river road, demolish the north parking garage, replace the threatened ash trees, lay bike and pedestrian paths throughout, redo storm water drainage and re-landscape everywhere.
About $70 million in project funding comes from federal transportation and parks dollars; $90 million will come in local tax-supported bonds; the final $220 million will be raised by CityArchRiver.
Mayor Francis Slay called the project one of the city’s “top development priorities,” and a “sentimental favorite” for him personally.
Leaders, Slay said, are committed to the Oct. 28, 2015 deadline—the 50th anniversary of the Arch’s completion. “That is the end date,” he said. “This is a very exciting day.”
MEANWHILE — After the ceremony Friday, transportation Secretary Foxx addressed some residents’ hopes that Interstate 70 could be altogether removed from downtown.
Foxx, the former mayor of Charlotte, acknowledged that some of the decisions made decades ago severed communities from their rivers. “It’s a reality that in previous eras, people weren’t always as sensitive to quality of life issues when they were building… highways and things like that,” he said.
“But it’s kind of hard to imagine undoing,” he continued.
Still, he said, gesturing at the highway that will soon be capped behind him, “what we’re talking about here is a mitigation strategy that works.”
