This next sentence is gonna hurt a little bit.
Ed Golterman was right.
He emailed me last month to respond to about ºüÀêÊÓƵ Mayor Francis Slay’s making the advancement of the long-proposed north-south MetroLink line a priority in his last year in office. Like all of Golterman’s emails, this one had a certain negative tone to it.
Depending on your perspective, Golterman is somewhere on the spectrum between government gadfly and civic watchdog. For more than a decade, the septuagenarian for the city to save and reopen the Kiel Opera House. His parents and grandparents had worked there. It was a special place that should be the center of the city’s arts world, Golterman would argue in letters to the editor and daily emails and phone calls to editors and reporters.
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Even after civic leaders pitched in tens of millions of dollars to reopen the renamed Peabody Opera House, Golterman wasn’t satisfied. It should be open more often, he said. , the group of business executives who make many of the big decisions in ºüÀêÊÓƵ, long ago sold out downtown in favor of building an arts district in Grand Center, he says.
Everything that’s wrong with the city, Golterman can tie to the old Kiel, or to Civic Progress, or both.
But back to MetroLink.
Golterman thinks the mayor is right to make the north-south mass transit line a priority.
Here’s what he wrote to me:
“Four decades ago the good citizens of south City and County, many of whose parents and grandparents and great parents built a pretty good city, were ‘cut off’ from the center by something called Civic Progress,†he wrote. “The south area would simply provide tax money for the favored central corridor and for a favored METRO service north to UMSL, which is now failing. For entertainment they would be forced to grand avenue or to the Zoo and Museums, and most of them moved away. Slay is 40 years too late. And, he knows it.â€
For the most part — especially the line about being 40 years late — Golterman isn’t wrong.
There are a lot of good things going on in ºüÀêÊÓƵ that would have been better if they began decades ago, the focus on mass transit among them.
ºüÀêÊÓƵ has always been a river city, though it’s been awfully late to the party in realizing that its downtown should actually connect to and take advantage of the Mississippi River. The Arch grounds revitalization took too long and cost too much. It would be better if developer Paul McKee’s NorthSide Regeneration project hadn’t needed the relocation of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency to jumpstart it. It would be better if the uptick in downtown dwelling units started 10 years ago. ºüÀêÊÓƵ would be more unified if it hadn’t taken the Missouri Legislature more than a decade to rein in abuses of tax-increment finance districts. ºüÀêÊÓƵ would be a completely different place if the city and the county hadn’t divorced in 1876.
All of these things are true.
But none of them matters right now.
As laser focused as Ed Golterman is on Kiel and the downtown of his memories, I’ve been spending a lot of time lately trying to see ºüÀêÊÓƵ from many different perspectives.
About a month ago, I drove for the first time from Illinois to downtown across the Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge. I saw a view of downtown that is completely different than the one I see nearly every day coming into the city from west ºüÀêÊÓƵ County on either Interstate 44 or 64. What struck me is how inviting the view is and how a massive football stadium along the riverfront might have ruined it.
“The bridge is just the beginning,†says a sign on a semi-trailer near the base of the bridge put there by McKee to advertise his development.
It’s a hopeful thought.
But the city’s myopia — it’s not just an Ed Golterman affliction — could get in the way.
Memories are old in this city, and rivalries die hard. Longstanding disputes between political families — black and white — often trump reasonable discussions about policies that might move the city forward.
There is a growing drumbeat, though, for change. From developers and business people who see opportunity downtown and elsewhere. From young people such as Jake Hollander who left a promising public relations career in Washington to come back to his hometown to start a nonprofit that hopes to unite a fractured region. From newcomers turned off by the city’s historic racial divide. From college students who come to Washington University from all over the world and see a city that is fostering the sort of entrepreneurial spirit that led to Twitter and Square and LockerDome.
ºüÀêÊÓƵ is at the precipice of change in 2016 because 40 years ago other cities passed us by.
So be it. The seeds of change being planted right now are tangible. Given time to gain roots, they could alter this city’s narrative for decades to come.
If only we don’t get in our own way.