HeyElliot's Blog

The weather this month has been extraordinary!  To take full advantage of it, I went on a bike ride from the Central West End to Downtown.  Along that 4 miles or so path, you see the best and worst that St. Louis has to offer, along with a number of projects that are somewhere in between.

Ride along with me as I rehash my journey from west to east:

Saint Louis University looks great--The new Chaifetz Arena is an asset to Midtown.  Sanford-Brown looks pretty good, too.  The Wachovia Securities (former AG Edwards) buildings are fine, though some of them are looking a bit dated with a hodgepodge feel instead of a cohesive campus.

Next, turn down Market Street where there's absolutely no vehicular traffic on a Sunday afternoon--The silence is almost deafening.  We make our way to Union Station for what was to become the biggest disappointment of the day.  Have you been inside lately?  I visited the Station back in the 1980s, clearly its heyday.  What a shame.  The building itself needs some basic maintenance work like painting and spruced up signage.  And the selection of tenants leaves a lot to be desired--It's nothing like the upscale collection that filled Union Station when it first opened.  I know retailing trends change, and many malls go through ups and downs, but it's hard to see an "up" coming to Union Station anytime soon.

Continue heading downtown where you pass condo projects that appear stalled, streets that are decaying, and again, a lack of traffic or tourists.  But there are some very bright spots: The revitalization of the Old Post Office building looks wonderful, as does the Federal Reserve Bank.  Some blocks of Washington Avenue look great, others look like an economic collapse is imminent..

Turning around and heading back to the CWE, we hit Grand Center, which looks pretty good.  The new Big Brothers/Big Sisters rehab project on Grand near the Fox looks wonderful.  Gaslight Square?  Again, seems like a development in transition that never quite materialized the way we envisioned.

This blog is almost as rambling as my bike ride!