I found this report by the Wall Street Journal’s Konrad Putzier sad. When I was a kid, well over 70 years ago, downtown St. Louis was a busy, thriving place. St. Louis proper had a population of more than 800,000 people and growing suburbs. At least once a week my mom would take me downtown and we’d have dinner with my father who was an associate at one of St. Louis’s biggest law firms. We’d park on the street and go up to his office in an elevator with a gate separating the carriage area of the elevator from the door and an elevator operator who was invariably pleasant and courteous. We’d go past the receptionist’s desk (everyone else had gone home) and find my dad. We’d go back down in the elevator and walk to a restaurant—you could walk everywhere and everywhere was safe. We’d eat in one of the many restaurants nearby. Rosa’s, an Italian place. O. T. Hodges for chili. Miss Hulling’s. They’re all gone now.
Here’s his description of downtown St. Louis today:
The Railway Exchange Building was the heart of downtown St. Louis for a century. Every day, locals crowded into the sprawling, ornate 21-story office building to go to work, shop at the department store that filled its lower floors or dine on the famous French onion soup at its restaurant.
Today, the building sits empty, with many of its windows boarded up. A fire broke out last year, which authorities suspect was the work of copper thieves. Police and firefighters send in occasional raids to search for missing people or to roust squatters. A search dog died during one of the raids last year when it fell through an open window.
“It’s a very dangerous place,” said Dennis Jenkerson, the St. Louis Fire Department chief.
It anchors a neighborhood with deserted sidewalks sprinkled with broken glass and tiny pieces of copper pipes left behind by scavengers. Signs suggest visitors should “park in well-lit areas.” Nearby, the city’s largest office building—the 44-story AT&T Tower, now empty—recently sold for around $3.5 million.
Today St. Louis’s population is below 300,000.
I’ve never lived in St. Louis, but I stayed at the Union train station (Hilton) referenced in the article in December. Its wrong to suggest that it’s recently been redeveloped; it was redeveloped as a hotel, shopping center, amusement park in the 1980s. The shopping part failed and was replaced by an aquarium. The soccer stadium is being constructed almost right across from the hotel.
I don’t think things have changed that much since whenever St. Louis started hollowing out to the suburbs. Most of the crime is not happening downtown. The police chief said several years ago something like 80% of crime happens in 20% of the area (to the North by Northwest of downtown). But I imagine that commercial office space in St. Louis is having the same problems that other cities are having.
The Cardinals have invested in commercial/ residential / restaurant /bars developments around the ballpark. The International Shoe factory has been reinvented as a museum that is pretty unique, and there are popular apartments lofts in that area. We were in St. Louis to watch a college basketball game at the St. Louis Blues arena. The area near the offices I believe is next to where the St. Louis Rams used to play, but is now used for conventions.
Matt Yglesias has suggested that we need to reevaluate the studies on subsidies to sports teams, not because he disagrees with their conclusion that these are not good deals for government, but perhaps this might be one of the few things cities have to secure the center. I don’t want the state to help the White Sox pay for a new stadium, but the drawings and the location seem pretty cool.
One last thing though: Driving back home down Market Street toward the river I saw homeless tent cities along some of the public buildings which I’ve never seen before.
St. Louis’s problems are clear:
– bad governance and
– nearly complete collapse of its industrial base
St. Louis used to be known for “shoes and booze” now it basically has neither. The St. Louis GM plant closed in the 1980s; the Ford plant closed in the Aughts.
It doesn’t have mountains, an ocean, or a benign climate (it’s damned hot in the summer although springs and falls are beautiful).
That describes where Pruitt-Igoe used to be.
How long has St Louis been under Dem control.
I am confused about one thing. It has been reported on this very blog that crime is an issue for rural and suburban areas, not the cities. What up?
Wonder who said that? I know it was claimed, with provided evidence, that it’s also a problem in small towns and rural areas. Ahh, that’s right. You dont count recorded numbers as evidence just opinions that you heard somewhere.
Steve
I misremembered the actual percentages:
“[Police Chief] Hayden most recently served as the major overseeing the city’s North Side, and said 67 percent of the city’s 205 homicides last year and about half of the violent assaults happened within an area bordered by Goodfellow Boulevard, Vandeventer Avenue, Martin Luther King Drive and West Florissant Avenue.”
I’m not in the best position to know what happened to St. Louis, but it is still the 23rd largest metropolitan statistical area. Some of the things that Dave mentioned apply to a lot of places, but the ratio of the population of the core city to suburbs seems as high in this metro as in any place in the country perhaps.
One thing that might have influenced that was St. Louis’ withdrawal from the county. This means a lot of government offices, and the associated law firms and other businesses that would have been in downtown St. Louis are in Clayton. It might also mean that new towns emerged just outside city limits that drew some residents that would have helped the city with some of the higher public service needs in older or failing parts of the city.
Cities on state lines sometimes have issues. On my Cardinals blog there are people moving to the St. Louis area or returning who ask for advise over the years. I don’t have any, but sometimes read the discussion. Some with higher income expectations decide to move to the Illinois side of the reiver in some of the newer suburbs or exurbs because the income tax would be lower in their bracket, enough to offset the higher property taxes for the housing they are looking for. Also the airport project on the Illinois side was blocked by a Senator for Missouri (though supported by the Mayor of St. Louis), which could have made St. Louis a large hub with some spin-offs.