Ten Things I Love About St. Louis, and Ten Reasons Why I Left:

Editor’s Note: While Steve Patterson is recovering from his stroke, Urban Review St. Louis will present guest essays from a variety of perspectives. Discuss. Enjoy. Argue. Disagree. Stick around!

Guest Editorial by Margie Newman

I love St. Louis, even though I chose to leave it. Random reasons:

Things I Love About St. Louis …

1. The amazing architecture–at least the structures that haven’t been demolished for parking lots. Ahem.
2. The Arch. How did that happen? In St. Louis? Really!
3. People like Steve Patterson, Michael Allen, Antonio French, Marcia Behrendt and Roger Plackemeier, who’ve put themselves on the line to stand up for this place.
4. Forest Park. Man, I miss that park.
5. The North Side. I spent my earliest years in Walnut Park, and I have a deep, abiding, regret-filled love for that part of the city. The brick architecture, the density, the trees, the corner stores. The real feeling of neighborhood.
6. Washington Avenue’s renaissance. But see below for the flip side of that coin …
7. The neighborhoods, in roughly this order: Downtown, the Hill, South Grand/Tower Grove, Soulard, Lafayette Square, CWE, the U City and St. Louis sides of the Loop, midtown.
8. The water towers. Weird and wonderful.
9. Calvary and Bellefontaine cemeteries. Almost as much as Forest Park.
10. The art freaks. Even when they’re bellyaching.

But I Left St. Louis Because …

1. I’m 45, and while the city is getting better, St. Louis isn’t going to become enough city for me in my lifetime–at least not during the part of my lifetime in which I’m continent and ambulatory.
2. My industry isn’t happening or growing in St. Louis on the scale it is elsewhere, and pay rates for my work are less than half of what they are in Chicago (where I live now). Sad, but a fact.
3. I spent too much time in St. Louis convincing people, especially “leaders,” that the earth is round. If they hadn’t seen it with their own eyes, they couldn’t imagine it might work here. It’d help if they left town now and then, or listened to experts who came here to share lessons from the outside world (cf. Rollin Stanley).
4. There was work to do downtown, and not enough of us to do it. I admit: I burned out.
5. The people who run/ran Downtown St. Louis, the Partnership, and other “civic progress” groups are largely invested in NOT changing things. The old regime is fully entrenched, protecting its piece of the ever-shrinking pie.
6. Alright, you all knew this was coming, but … the Century Building fiasco. It proves (and taught me) the intractability of reason #5. I still find it unbelievable that it all went down like it did.
7. Washington Avenue. Yep, it’s cool. But what the hell? Why so much investment focused on and limited to ONE street? Turn north or south at 14^th Street, and it feels like you’ve suddenly left Disney’s Main St.
8. Empty promises. Drive around downtown and ask yourself: weren’t they supposed to re-time these lights? Wasn’t there an article about wi-fi being installed all over downtown … like four YEARS ago?
9. Violations of the street grid, such as amputating St. Charles Street block by block. Drive down 4^th Street and weep.
10. The unsettling feeling that no one’s minding the store. So many basic things untended. Examples; crumbling infrastructure, inadequate police patrols/traffic control, the sheer number of people running stop signs (and I mean RUNNING them) in mid-town. But hey, check out Ballpark Village! Oh, wait …

I love St. Louis. I miss St. Louis. But I can’t say that I will ever come back other than to visit. Not soon, for sure. But I applaud all y’all for hanging in there and fighting for what we all know St. Louis can be. In a younger person’s lifetime, at least.

Patterson on the Mend!

This update is being posted by Steve’s friends.

As many of you have heard, Steve experienced a stroke on February 1. He is making progress in his recovery, but he may not be able to post here for some time. We’ll provide updates as appropriate and according to his wishes; at the same time, we all hope that he will be publishing here again himself, sooner than later.

Please post your greetings and best wishes for Steve below, and we will make sure he receives them. He greatly appreciates the outpouring of well wishes many of you have already sent.

If you would like to send a card to lift his spirits just mail it to his office and we’ll get it right to him:

Circa Properties, Inc.
C/O Steven L. Patterson
4507 S. Kingshighway Blvd.
Saint Louis, MO 63109

Sincerely,

Steve’s Friends

PS Keep checking back for guest editorials to keep the urban discussions rolling.