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Downtown renewal nets national award
By
Bill Lambrecht
POST-DISPATCH WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF
Thursday, Mar. 09 2006
WASHINGTON
Mayor Francis Slay and St. Louis civic leaders accepted a coveted national
award Thursday night for a downtown renovation campaign referred to as one of
the most impressive turnarounds in America.
Slay and a contingent of St. Louisans were on hand to receive one of eight
Entrepreneurial American Leadership Awards sponsored by the Washington-based
Partners for Livable Communities.
"The materials that make up a great city are more impervious to time than steel
and bricks - the people of St. Louis," Slay said as he accepted the award.
Sharing in the award were the St. Louis Development Corp., the St. Louis
Regional Chamber & Growth Association, the Downtown St. Louis Partnership and
the nonprofit Downtown Now.
Partners for Livable Communities is a 30-year-old nonprofit funded heavily by
the Ford Foundation for programs aimed at economic development, quality of life
improvements and social justice.
Among the award recipients were two other cities, San Jose, Calif., and El
Paso, Texas; and Jan Kreamer, former president of the Greater Kansas City
Community Foundation.
Kreamer was recognized for promoting regional cooperation. San Jose won for its
attention to affordable housing, and El Paso was lauded for restoring a
performing arts center seen as vital to the city's future.
Peter Harkness, editor and publisher of Governing Magazine, remarked at the
ceremony that a decade ago, St. Louis "was not a place that you really wanted
to visit all that much."
He added, "Slowly and surely, the great center of one of our greatest cities,
the gateway to the West, is on its way back."
Robert McNulty, Partners' president, said before the event that downtown
vitality is the key to a city's economic health and overall livability.
Neal Peirce, a syndicated columnist and a Partners for Livable Communities
board member, was among those at the ceremony. In 1997, he profiled St. Louis
in a series of articles in the Post-Dispatch.
He recalled portions of downtown St. Louis back then as "an utter tragedy, with
little rehabilitation and buildings standing their moldering and decaying."
In a visit five months ago, he was struck by the renovation of historic
buildings along Washington Avenue, he said.
"A city like St. Louis has to recycle its old stock in addition to putting up
new buildings," he said. "Unless you do something for your downtown, you don't
have a focal point for the region."
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