Reconnecting Old North St. Louis

Reconnecting Old North St. Louis from a Business Perspective

By: Megan Gebke

St. Louis is named the Gateway to the West and remains to be one of the oldest cities in the Midwest.  With the Mississippi River located directly east of the city, it flourished as a river city in the 1800s. St. Louis thrived being alongside the river with many businesses and industries establishing their home.  St. Louis remained to be a strong business community until people started building businesses in suburban areas.  With businesses moving out of the city, buildings became vacant and the people living in these buildings left the area also.  This creates a huge problem that leaves blocks vacant and deserted.

                

 Old North St. Louis, located just north of the Edwards Jones Dome, played a crucial part in the economy in the 19th and 20th century.  Many ethnic groups such as German, Irish, Italian, and Poles settled into the area to get a feel for the lifestyle before moving elsewhere in the city.  Over the past fifty years, the Old North community experienced depopulation and deterioration leaving many areas abandoned.  In 1981, the residents developed Old North St. Louis Restoration Group.  Since the population loss, the residents left over began to work together and renovate each other’s homes.  Since then, they have come a long way and redeveloped the northern portion of the area and it has become one of St. Louis’s “up and coming” areas.  Thousands of volunteer hours have gone into restoring this historic neighborhood.  The southern portion, however, still remains empty plots of land.

                 

 This thesis would recognize the entire portion of Old North St. Louis by developing residential areas along with mixed-used spaces for retail.  With its location a couple blocks north of the St. Louis Rams football stadium, this site has major potential to reconnect to downtown St. Louis and to become a new hot spot for city goers.  Transportation becomes a big factor.  Providing public transportation to pass through the neighborhood would allow people access to and from downtown quickly.  The development of the buildings would remain true to the culture of the neighborhood by preserving the historic architecture and keeping the ethnic and racial diversity that made this neighborhood so special in the first place.

                  

 Also, this thesis will acknowledge and answer why reconnecting the Old North neighborhood is good for downtown St. Louis and why it is also good for the neighborhood itself.  This thesis will look into the business aspect of the actual cost amount these projects would have to borrow from the bank.  The master plan of the site will be designed in phases based on what can be built now and how that will make money to build and design the next phase.  This project will be as real as it gets by designing and planning on a budget.