Bringing St. Louis Back to Life Lecture
Gregory FreemanColumnist, St. Louis Post Dispatch
Thank you. It's a real pleasure to be with you today.
Unlike many of you here, my knowledge of city living is not academic. I haven't conducted major studies of urban areas. I haven't written lengthy reports on cities. I've never attempted to sit down and design a city on paper.
My observations come firsthand. As a longtime journalist in St. Louis and as a near-lifelong resident of this city, my insights come from observation.
I should begin by saying that the city of St. Louis, without a doubt, has its problems.
Some of those problems are the types of problems that many urban areas face; others definitely are not.
To be sure, a city is made of people. In 1950, the city of St. Louis hit its peak population at 856,000 people. The count in 1990 was 396,000 people. The most recent reported estimate is 356,000.
A half million people fled the city in 45 years. In fact, between 1990 and 1995, out city lost 7.2 percent of its population, the most severe core-city decline record among 35 leading metropolitan areas studied by the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council.
You may say that's not unusual for urban areas which, after World War II, lost population to the more modem suburbs. But even in comparison to other major cities -- Kansas City, New York, Atlanta, for instance -- St. Louis fares poorly. And as many urban areas are on an upswing now, St. Louis seems to be continuing its downward spiral.
More than 100 years ago, this city's fathers, in their great wisdom, convinced the sophisticated city dwellers to secede from their country bumpkin cousins, making St. Louis one of only two cities in the nation that are not part of a county. St. Louisans didn't want to be bothered with the burden of a rural St. Louis County. We were a thriving city and didn't want their problems to weigh us down.
The shoe's on the other foot now. But we clearly haven't learned from our mistakes. Now county residents don't want the burden of an urban city on their shoulders. Once more, the idea of regionalism is a foreign concept to many. 'fhe result is that despite a thriving region, national reports put us far back in the second or third tier of cities. When it comes to surveys of income, or population or health statistics or whatever, we almost always fare poorly because the count is made only of the city of St. Louis and not the entire region.
This is coupled with this area clearly having too many governments. The metropolitan area contains 771 units of government, more per person than just about any major region in the country. It's no wonder that it's so difficult to get things done here. And the city of St. Louis is probably hurt the most.
But that's hardly the city's only problem.
It suffers from major corporate headquarters leaving. Southwestern Bell, a major employer, left the city a few years ago, choosing the warmer climes of San Antonio. Boatmen's Bank is gone, taken over by NationsBank. Sure NationsBank is here, but the headquarters -- and the subsequent jobs -- have left. Earlier this year, Ralston-Purina made St. Louisans nervous by making rumblings that they would leave. They've since decided to remain in the region, but some still wonder whether they plan to leave the city for yuppier spaces in St. Louis County.
Ah, how easy it would be if those were the city's only problems!
But, as they say on the commercials, Wait! There's more!
St. Louis suffers from a deteriorating downtown, which, until about a year ago, few faced up to. Certain parts of downtown are in excellent shape. Kiener Plaza along Market Street is an excellent area. Union Station continues to draw tourists. The Washington Avenue Loft District is an up-and-coming city asset. But downtown has its ups and its downs, and its downs are way down. The area a couple of blocks north of Kiener Plaza is in serious troubled. Vacant or near-vacant buildings dot the landscape. Old, some historic, buildings are coming down, only to be replaced by parking lots. St. Louis is losing its heritage.
We're in trouble when the only new building going up downtown is a federal courthouse.
And we haven't gotten to neighborhoods yet. The city of St. Louis has some 70 neighborhoods, all with their own identities -- but I'd dare say most St. Louisans can't identify them. St. Louis doesn't market its neighborhoods, so those who come to the city are faced with what must appear to be a hodgepodge maze of a city. Some of them give up innuediately and move into St. Louis County or elsewhere. Others are even advised by their companies not to look for a home in the city -- even though the city has many fine neighborhoods.
Which gets to another problem. Stereotyping. The city of St. Louis is terribly stereotyped as a crime-infested, horrible place. Some county residents come to the city for one thing -- sports. They come and see a Cardinals game, or a Rams game, or a Blues game -- and then they get out of the city as fast as they can.
Yet another reason for the flight has to do with the schools. The city schools have some real problems. The School Board is trying to address many of those problems, and many schools -- especially the magnet schools -- are award-winning for the education that they provide.
Still, the schools retain a poor image. That's because of the many non-magnet schools, where the test scores are often low, where it sometimes seems that teachers are more interested in the paycheck than the pupils.
This has been a real detriment to the city. Even so-called urban pioneers -- who come to the city with the idea of diversity in mind -- often leave the city when their children become school-age because they're afraid their kids won't get the best possible education.
And we wouldn't be honestly discussing the city of St. Louis and its problems if we didn't address the issue of race. It's a driving force here. Unlike some urban areas, which seem to be going beyond race to deal across the board with serious problems facing them, St. Louisans are having a hard time getting beyond race. That was evident in the most recent mayoral election, when race -- and the question of which candidate was most loyal to black St. Louisans - - was a driving force in the campaign, even though the two main candidates were black.
When it comes to housing, St. Louis is one of the most segregated cities in the nation. Very rarely do blacks and whites live together here, and when it happens its often because one group couldn't get away from the other fast enough.
Race penetrates everything that goes on here. Take a look at St. Louis and see for yourself. In a city where blacks make up nearly 50 percent of the population, they come nowhere close to that when it comes to white collar jobs. Walk in downtown St. Louis some day and count the number of blacks wearing business suits. The number is depressing. St. Louis is not very friendly to black professionals. And because of that, many of the city's best black minds leave here for friendlier cities, like Atlanta or Chicago. Even Kansas City, which has a significantly smaller black population, is viewed as being more friendly toward black professionals than St. Louis.
That may be coupled with the fact that St. Louis isn't nearly as diverse as many cities its size. It is mainly black and white. There are Asians here and there are Hispanics here. But their numbers are small. When it comes to diversity, this city is lacking.
So, after stating all of this, can this city be saved?
I don't claim to have all the answers here. But I think it can be saved.
But it's going to take some changes in thinking among St. Louisans.
Despite all of the governments that we have here, for instance, most people in this area seem relatively satisfied with the system. Whenever suggestions are made that governments here merge, people are often outraged. Many suburbanites argue that they don't want changes in their government, that they like the idea of their alderman living down the street, or the school board member living around the comer. They like the small-town atmosphere that having so many governments provides. They often ignore the concerns of duplication of costs. How many police departments do we have? How many ambulance services? How many communities are buying their own street cleaning and snow removal equipment?
It would make so much sense for many of the governments here to merge, but the chances of voters approving that are small.
So other areas should be looked at. The city's population hemorrhage is a serious problem. I disagree with those who believe that the city is destined to become solely an entertainment center for those who live in suburbia. Steps can be taken to first, stabilize and, then, increase the city's population.
The first step may seem simplistic, but it would make a significant difference: marketing. The city of St. Louis doesn't do a very good job of marketing itself to those in this area. We have an excellent Convention and Visitors Commission, and they do a very good job of marketing this city to those in other cities. But their marketing is external, not internal. The fact is, the city of St. Louis has some significant assets. But we don't market them. If you pay attention to the news -especially television news -- you might think that St. Louis had nothing good to offer. Fires, crimes and events that make splashy pictures are what drive TV news. Stories about good neighborhoods aren't as likely to attract television cameras.
Yet we have some great neighborhoods here.
The Hill is an area of strong Italian tradition, dating back to nearly the turn of the century. Some of the area's finest Italian restaurants are there, along with interesting Italian stores and people who retain tradition there. The housing stock there is good, and the tidy homes are kept in good shape.
The Penrose neighborhood is an area of old and new housing, a sturdy, black middle- class neighborhood where family and attention to neighborhood are important. It has a strong neighborhood association, homes here are regularly rehabbed. Politicians refer to the ward that includes this neighborhood as the "schoolteacher ward," because so many of the city's teachers live here.
The Skinker-DeBaliviere neighborhood, near Forest Park, is one of the city's most diverse. It includes elegant homes built at the beginning of this century, boasts a great deal of homes and apartments that have been rehabilitated, and includes a mix of blacks, whites and Asians, a population that includes the well-to-do, the middle-class and the poor, and people who refused to flee when flight from the city began. It has one of the strongest neighborhood associations in the city.
In fact, St. Louis is filled with lots of different neighborhoods with many different flavors. But the word doesn't get out. The city doesn't market itself and its neighborhoods. it's clearly time that the city began its own marketing campaign, marketing both to city dwellers and others living in the St. Louis area. If city living is good living, the city has to tell people why.
Marketing alone, however, isn't all the city needs to do. Marketing by itself won't rid the city of its problems.
The city's schools have a bad image. Some of it is deserved; some of it isn't. But parents shouldn't feel that putting their youngsters in city schools is a crapshoot. The city School Board has done some remarkable things in recent years. It's taken some schools that had become so rundown as to be a disgrace and turned them into state-of-the-art educational facilities. The problem right now is that the city schools are so hit-and-miss. The new Gateway Center for Education, an elementary and middle-school built a couple of years ago is clearly an educational Mecca. Everything there, from the equipment to the teachers, is first-rate. But less than two miles from there sits Vashon High School. An old technical high school that looks more like a factory than a school, it suffers from peeling paint, facilities that don't work and demoralized teachers and students.
The schools must come up with a way to have more of the former and few of the latter. All of this is coupled with confusion over school desegregation and the misguided thought by many that most of the money that goes into city schools through the desegregation program will still go to the schools if the program ends. The politics of that issue are a major impediment to improvement of our schools and our school system. Still, at this point, St. Louis might be wise to consider the idea of charter schools as a way of improving the education that youngsters receive and to make the schools much more competitive.
But that's not all. St. Louis has a strong architectural heritage. Many of its buildings carry so much history with them, history that's being all but ignored here. Architecturally significant buildings sit vacant in downtown St. Louis, while someone or other develops a plan to tear them down to build parking lots. I won't say that downtown is paradise, but it certainly shouldn't be paved to put up a parking lot.
Instead, considerable thought should be given to developing a significant master plan for downtown, increasing the minuscule number of city planners that St. Louis has currently. It also should enlist the aid of such groups as the American Institute of Architects and the Landmarks Association, which is concerned with historic preservation. While I realize that every old building can't or shouldn't be saved, we should be more careful in our decisions concerning which buildings stay up and which ones go.
A prime example of what could have been disaster took place here recently. In the downtown area, the Court Square building was built early this century. hi poor condition by the 1980s, the building attracted a developer, who spent a considerable amount of money rehabbing it -- after getting assurances from a city agency that the city would not try to take over the building or tear it down after the rehabbing had taken place.
Then, last year, the city decided to build a new jail. They wanted the jail to be near the new federal courthouse that's going up, and chose the site where the City Square building stands. Despite earlier assurances, the city initially offered a weak excuse, saying that the deal had been worked out with a city agency, but not with the city itself.
After much uproar, Mayor Clarence Harmon recently announced that the city would not try to take the property but would instead rework its plans for a jail. The decision was a wise one, because not only was the city going to knock down an historic building that had been rehabbed and was fully occupied, it was about to send a message to potential developers not to do business in St. Louis because its officials don't keep their word.
The city has got to stop shooting itself in the foot. The mayor has recently received a study of city government done by FOCUS St. Louis, a civic organization, that examined the operations at City Hall from top to bottom and made a number of recommendations to streamline government and make it more efficient and less bureaucratic. The mayor would do well to adopt those recommendations. If we want this city to work and attract others here, we need to have a government that makes doing business in St. Louis clear and easy. People shouldn't be forced to go through a maze and jump hoops before they can take care of business in the city. St. Louis needs to think of itself as a business with plenty of competitors out there. If you want customers, it's imperative that you provide the best product.
So what about crime?
We've got crime here. So does New York. So does Chicago. So does Denver.
I can't think of an urban area in this country that doesn't have crime. But that doesn't mean that its residents live in fear. In St. Louis, as in many other cities, crime is dropping.
And St. Louis residents don't live in fear either. More and more, city residents are fighting back.
More neighborhoods than ever before are forming neighborhood associations, working together to deal with their neighborhoods' problems, which may include crime. They're working closer with the police and with each other, and they're finding that it makes a difference.
Still, as most police officers here will tell you, much of the city's crime is limited to certain neighborhoods. Nonetheless, some insist on painting the entire city with the broad brush of crime. The city has to convince people that the city isn't nearly as dangerous as some fear it is.
Part of the way of doing that gets back to the idea of finding uses for abandoned or vacant buildings. Downtown St. Louis, for instance, is very safe. But people are sometimes afraid there, especially at night, because the buildings that are empty are imposing and, to some, scary.
Yet many of those old office buildings can be put to other uses. An example might be to turn many of those buildings into loft apartments. There are some lofts downtown now, but they go like hotcakes. There is a waiting list right now of people who want to get into these apartments. Many of them are young, single or childless couples. People who would like to live downtown and who would add life to an area that now seems to roll up its carpet at 5 p.m. Taking some of those buildings and turning them into lofts would let the city kill two birds with one stone.
Perhaps the most difficult nut to crack in St. Louis has to do with race. Blacks and whites here, for the most part, lead separate lives. We live in different places and we rarely deal with one another except in work or academic settings. We are racially polarized, and that polarization infiltrates so many of the other problems that we have here. This is one problem I don't have the answer to, other than to say that we've got to realize that we've got a problem here along these lines and deal with it. Organizations like Bridges, which operates through FOCUS St. Louis, and the National Conference have ways of helping people deal with polarization and their own biases on an individual level. These programs need support and need to be expanded to help us deal with our racial problems. If we can't deal with them and learn to face a common enemy -- a city some believe to be dying -- we'll be fighting one another until our city is six feet under. We can't afford that.
We've also got to get rid of our self doubt. Some of us have a complex about ourselves. On more than one occasion when I've overheard a conversation where someone's just moved to St. Louis from another city, another person asks them, "Why? " as in why would any self-respecting person choose St. Louis over some other city. The best sales people for a city are those people who live in that city. But we're not doing a very good job of selling ourselves. We've got to rid ourselves of that self-doubt and move forward.
A key is that we can't be afraid of change. We've got to be willing to experiment with new ideas, to try things that haven't been tried before. It's hard for us, because we're a conservative city and we don't jump into things with abandon. But it's time for us to do some thinking outside of the box. What does St. Louis need? What would make it a better place? How can we take the steps to make those changes?
It's been 93 years now since the St. Louis World's Fair. While it's an important part of our history, it's just that: history. We can't afford to graze on those memories anymore. We can't afford to talk anymore about what St. Louis once was. We've got to think now about what St. Louis can be.
Meanwhile, some of the things we can do are feelgood things. Charles Brennan, who hosts a morning program on KMOX radio and I are on an ongoing mission to bring street musicians and street vendors to downtown St. Louis. If you travel to other major cities in the United States -- and around the world -- what you often find downtown are musicians and vendors, someone who might play a tune on the guitar with a guitar case in front of him for your appreciation, or someone who sells steaming hot dogs to grateful buyers. These folks add color and atmosphere to a downtown area. No, that alone will not make someone want to live in the city, but it's little things like that that make a difference and which, when considered together, will give people a much better impression of our downtown than many have now.
So while St. Louis has its problems, it has countless assets as well. Whether you live under the watchful eye of the Bevo Mill, near the colorful shops and restaurants of Grand South Grand, among the fine homes of the Penrose neighborhood, with the aromatic smells of firesh fruits and vegetables at Soulard Market on a Saturday morning, or with the cosmopolitan air of the Central West End, St. Louis is a good place.
What we need now is a vision, grit and determination to push this city into the 21st century in a big way.
I believe it can be accomplished. It will take a lot of hard work, a lot of rolling up of shirtsleeves to make it work.
But it can happen.
And for St. Louis's sake, it's got to happen.
Thank you.
