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Old Posted Jul 6, 2020, 8:14 PM
Six Corners Six Corners is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2016
Location: Omaha -> Chicago -> St. Louis
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ardecila View Post
There's a logic to it, sure. There was logic to bloodletting in the 1500s too. But we know better now. You can't solve a failing city by cutting out chunks like a cancer - buildings are never the root cause of a problem, just a symptom of deeper social issues.

The sheer size of this site creates opportunities that don't usually exist in poor inner city neighborhoods. You could use it to create an entirely ground-up neighborhood like Stapleton in Denver, with a dedicated school and park space. Hell, invite DR Horton or Lennar or somebody to build small cottages on the existing street grid.

What makes absolutely no sense is putting a government agency that needs utmost security and privacy into a (still) densely populated urban area, and just handing over the insane amount of land they need to do it. You can tell just by looking at it that there will be zero spillover benefits to the surrounding community, except maybe a new gas station.
You certainly could try to create an entirely ground-up neighborhood like Stapleton, but you'd be hard pressed to find people to move there who aren't already in the neighborhood. Attempts have been tried to revitalize neighborhoods on the north side of the city for decades with different strategies and social programs. Typically it's a zero-sum game where it's rare for people who take up residence in these revitalized properties to come from outside the neighborhood or an adjacent, equally downtrodden neighborhood. Stapleton is not in an area of much prior disinvestment. The stigma and crime of this part of St. Louis is to such an extreme extent that reinvestment in simple neighborhood fundamentals as affordable, decent residential and retail alone will modernize the building stock, but nothing more. Market-priced housing and trendy small cottages would be quite a challenge to sell or rent. Outsiders do not and will not move there.

Keep in mind that the NGA is already in the City of St. Louis in an even more densely populated area. Their current location is on a site that has little buffer from adjacent properties. I concur that this project will do little for the area residents, but the city is not in much of a position to wait it out for jobs that could cater better to area residents to come along. They just don't come here that frequently and without a handful of stars aligning in our generally ineffective and uncooperative state and local governments, they won't. Letting NGA move to a location in the suburbs would not save this neighborhood. It would only slip farther into depression. Further, the city losing all the jobs from NGA to Shiloh, IL would deprive the cash strapped city of earnings taxes it collects on each of the 3,000 positions there. Ideally, we could keep the road grid intact and the city or state could invest in programs to increase economic development in this area resulting in plentiful jobs that match the area residents' skill set and education, in turn drawing people to move there or at least stop them from moving away. Realistically, this is about as good as it's going to get.
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