Immensely rich in culture and history, St. Louis struggles to become a connected city, along with facing significant equity, economic and urban renewal challenges. In the face of these complex issues, Great Rivers Greenway along with the City and other key initiators, launched the ‘The Chouteau Greenway Design Competition’ in 2017. A 12 member, Stoss-led team, presented a winning concept called,‘The Loop + The Stitch’, which became the foundation for the ambitious Chouteau Greenway framework plan (renamed the Brickline Greenway)—a 10 year project that re-imagines St. Louis as a place linked by opportunity, access, and a diversity of shared experiences.

The concept was grounded in the team’s explicit intention to promote connection, prosperity, inclusion, reconciliation, and joy. This, along with the impetus to connect St. Louis’ Forest Park with the Gateway Arch—with spurs north/south to connect Fairground to Tower Grove Park—involved a focus on linking 20 city neighborhoods (both those with a burgeoning vibrancy as well as those suffering from historic disinvestment), parks, business and arts districts, transit corridors, and cultural and educational institutions. Stoss, leading a diverse, interdisciplinary project team of local and national firms, artists, and entrepreneurs, managed the year-long engagement, planning and design process which culminated in a framework plan consisting of a series of geographic, equity, economic, architectural, programming, art and design guidelines that will serve as the master plan for future break-out and catalyst projects. Throughout, the guiding principles were; unearth, connect, heal, provoke, cultivate and envision.

The project team aimed to bring together a network of embedded histories, discovered and undiscovered, to the forefront of the greenway. The project activates key existing amenities while also redirecting attention to forgotten civic spaces like the Griot Museum of Black History at St. Louis Place, and the historic Mill Creek Valley, a vibrant African American community erased in the creation of a freeway overpass, hereby creating a new network of 100 unique spaces for St. Louis to celebrate. The catalyst sites contain unique landscape opportunities and poignant architectural details like the reflecting pools memorializing the lost foundational structures of Mill Creek Valley. In addition, a design toolkit of paving patterns, benching, lighting and sculptural beacons was articulated by the design team, giving future development a cohesive template from which to draw. The framework also provides guidance on how to reinvest in the city equitably and responsibly through phased development, vacant lot activation, and temporary and permanent art installations.

The design team articulated a design toolkit of paving patterns, benching, lighting and sculptural beacons that provide a cohesive template for future development. Elemental paving patterns take the rolling form of arches, rock and cave-like shapes that provide an iconography that is even expressed three-dimensionally in forms like “the stoop”. This concept celebrates the residential stoop, where generations have gathered and shared stories, bringing this intimate communal activity out into public space giving people a place to connect. These local touchstones are informed by local artists, Damon Davis, De Nichols, Mallory Neezam, and the Artists of Color Council who have been integral to the overall vision for the greenway, advocating for voices from the neighborhood. Adding to this, the planting strategy is intentionally varied. Four ecologies are highlighted, upland, prairie, wetland and cultivated moments where food production can be experienced. This diverse ecology culminates in the Kings highway overpass designed by Stoss and Marlon Blackwell Associates, where a cloverleaf design winds through a new art park, then launches across the roadway to connect with Forest Park. Says Reed, “Brickline Greenway is an ambitious, ground-breaking project intended to reset social, cultural, and racial relationships in what is now characterized as a ‘city of islands’, often punctuated by disconnection and barriers.”

The framework plan crucially addresses and provides guidance on how to equitably reinvest in the city through phased development, vacant lot activation, and art installations. In totality, the plan strives to increase walkability and vibrancy throughout neighborhoods, to bridge geographical and cultural divides, to incentivize greater social and economic equity, and to deeply engage and reflect the diversity of cultures that exist in the city. The process to date exemplifies how a very complex, ambitious urban planning and design process can be managed successfully to incorporate a diversity of voices and points of view, thereby creating a new network of 100 unique spaces for St. Louis to celebrate.

client

Great Rivers Greenway

location

St. Louis, MO

TEAM

Stoss
urbanAC
Lamar Johnson Collaborative
ALTA
Marlon Blackwell Architects
Damon Davis / Heart Ache + Paint
De Nichols / Civic Creatives
Mallory Nezam / Joy + Justice LLC
David Mason and Associates
HR&A
Lochmueller
DJM Ecological
Tillett Lighting Design
Bruce Mau Design

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