Arch grounds renovation kicks off; will it meet 2015 deadline?
5 hours ago • By David Hunn
ST. LOUIS • After a decade of hope and months of public debate,
the $380 million renovation of the Gateway Arch grounds is finally starting.
Dignitaries are set to turn a ceremonial shovel this morning. Construction starts as soon as next week.
The first project is largely infrastructure: Rerouting roads, building new bridges, and erecting concrete and steel across downtown’s Interstate 70, on which a park will soon sit over the highway.
Up next is a string of improvements stretching more than a half-mile, from Kiener Plaza downtown to the Mississippi riverfront.
Leaders charged with turning design into reality are already sweating. Their October 2015 deadline — the 50th anniversary of the Arch — looms just two years away.
“We’re doing our best to expedite the schedule, to move this thing along,” said Tom Bradley, the National Park Service’s superintendent for the grounds and museum. “It’s getting really aggressive.”
The project, as a whole, is the same as proposed to St. Louis taxpayers months ago:
A lid and park over the highway will link downtown to the Arch and the Mississippi River below. Bike paths and pedestrian walks will run through the park and down to an elevated Leonor K. Sullivan Boulevard. A grass amphitheater and garden will replace concrete and steel in the north parking garage.
The Museum of Westward Expansion will expand, reaching toward downtown and getting a new entrance facing the city.
Civic leaders have pushed for improvements to the Arch grounds for almost two decades.
Then, in April, St. Louis and St. Louis County residents passed a 3/16-cent sales tax, a boost of about 2 cents on a $10 purchase. The tax is projected to raise about $9.4 million a year and fund a roughly $90 million bond issue. Great Rivers Greenway, the regional trails district, will oversee the disbursement of tax money.
Much of the rest will be raised by the nonprofit group
CityArchRiver, created to spearhead the renovation. Foundation leaders say they now have $104 million in private funding and anticipate $26 million more by the end of September.
The first project — the “lid” over I-70 — is largely funded via state and federal transportation dollars.
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