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Old Posted Jul 2, 2020, 5:38 PM
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Plan Maps Out How St. Louis Could Become A Global Geospatial Hub Over Next Decade

Plan Maps Out How St. Louis Could Become A Global Geospatial Hub Over Next Decade


By CORINNE RUFF

JUN 23, 2020

Read More: https://news.stlpublicradio.org/post...er-next-decade

Quote:
A group of St. Louis economic development and civic leaders released a plan Tuesday detailing how the region could turn the geospatial industry into a global hub over the next 10 years. The plan, dubbed GeoFutures, outlines next steps for developing the workforce, infrastructure and entrepreneurship needed to attract more companies and investors in the industry.

- Andy Dearing, GeoFutures project lead and president of Spatial STL Advisors, said the new $1.75 billion NGA western headquarters is the catalyst for growing a much larger local industry. Construction in north St. Louis is underway, and about 3,000 local employees are expected to move to the new campus in 2025. Dearing said there hasn’t been an opportunity to grow a new industry in St. Louis since the boom of biotech and ag tech industries two decades ago. — “We've seen the transformative impacts that that's made to the local St. Louis region,” he said. “Ultimately, we're trying to create more jobs, create more innovation, create more capabilities, create more opportunity.”

- Dearing sees the potential to double or triple the number of geospatial-related jobs in the St. Louis region. He said the plan lays out a concerted effort to develop that workforce locally by working with K-12 schools and universities, while focusing on under-represented communities. — Jason Hall, CEO of Arch to Park, weighed in on the plan. He said it signals to investors and companies across the country that St. Louis is serious about geospatial. “Funding follows good ideas and a plan,” he said. “I think by showing where this region is going, it helps create investor confidence that if you invest in St. Louis in geospatial, you’re a part of something much bigger, not just an isolated idea.”

- The GeoFutures plan is one piece of a much larger city-backed initiative to bring economic equality and growth to St. Louis, said Otis Williams, executive director of the St. Louis Development Corporation. — Over the next 10 years, he said that will include a lot of improvements to roads. Funding has been secured to start construction along Jefferson Avenue next year, he said. Williams added that diversity and inclusion need to be at the forefront of all development plans going forward. He said that means making sure African American residents around the NGA are a part of the change in their neighborhoods, where development has lagged for decades.

The GeoFutures plan outlines five overarching priorities:

• Scale up local geospatial talent and workforce development.

• Raise innovation capacity for the commercialization of geospatial applications.

• Increase entrepreneurship and pools of investor money.

• Support community-driven development in neighborhoods around the new NGA West.

• Brand St. Louis as a global thought leader in geospatial technology.

.....


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  #2  
Old Posted Jul 2, 2020, 5:43 PM
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What does this even mean?
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Old Posted Jul 2, 2020, 6:36 PM
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That rendering makes me so angry. "Let's put a giant suburban office complex with not one, but two giant parking garages smack dab in the middle of the city! Sooooo cool!"
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Old Posted Jul 2, 2020, 6:58 PM
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Originally Posted by uaarkson View Post
That rendering makes me so angry. "Let's put a giant suburban office complex with not one, but two giant parking garages smack dab in the middle of the city! Sooooo cool!"
This is going on next to the site of the former Pruitt-Igoe projects, so the land has been vacant for decades. It's not like there has been any other realistic redevelopment plan for the site.

If this was a normal corporate office park, I'd even support it so long as the landscaped areas were public - like the ConAgra HQ in Omaha. Having a decent sized park in a developing neighborhood is important if you want residents to move there. But this is a high security facility... all that landscaping will sit behind a 12' steel fence.

Also, it's not really correct to paint this as a gain for St Louis. NGA is already there, next to the A-B brewery. This is just a relocation, and a terribly inefficient use of space.
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Last edited by ardecila; Jul 2, 2020 at 7:11 PM.
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Old Posted Jul 2, 2020, 7:10 PM
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awful siting and design, however this IS the pruitt igoe site and i feel the u.s. government owes it something. the site needed extensive remediation, and has been a rubble strewn forest that has looked like something from Chernobyl for my entire lifetime. senator durban was pushing for this to this to go adjacent to the air force base just east of st. louis.
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Old Posted Jul 2, 2020, 7:12 PM
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I realize this is actually incorrect, Pruitt Igoe was south of Cass, while NGA will be north of Cass on a huge site that was a street grid with houses just a few years ago. NGA does nothing for the Pruitt Igoe site.

So.... boooooooo.

If leadership was actually making good decisions, they could have given NGA a fraction of this site (or the Pruitt Igoe site, which already had the street grid removed decades ago) and still had enough room for a secure perimeter. FBI in Chicago is like this, even though they had enough vacant land to sprawl even more.

Unfortunately, the goal was never to redevelop the area to build a better city... the goal was to get as much vacant land "occupied" as possible, one more example of how the whole idea of "blight" is toxic. I thought we moved past the sheer stupidity of 1960s urban renewal, but I guess not.
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  #7  
Old Posted Jul 2, 2020, 7:22 PM
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Even Pruitt-Igoe had roads through it. It didn't physically cut the city in half.

That said, if STL can grow another lynchpin industry, good.
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  #8  
Old Posted Jul 2, 2020, 7:53 PM
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Originally Posted by 10023 View Post
What does this even mean?
🙄 what does that even mean? the article is extremely self-explanatory.
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  #9  
Old Posted Jul 2, 2020, 8:13 PM
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Originally Posted by ardecila View Post
If leadership was actually making good decisions, they could have given NGA a fraction of this site (or the Pruitt Igoe site, which already had the street grid removed decades ago) and still had enough room for a secure perimeter.
but it wasn't UP to STL leadership. it was either give the NGA what they want or risk loosing thousands of jobs (a not insignificant portion of the city's earnings tax) and a $2B job creation engine to IL.

here's the site:


image souce

the tree-covered rectangle at the bottom is where Pruitt-Igoe was. the upper outline is the NGA site. i'm quite certain that something will get built on the P-I site eventually. and nothing about this "cut[s] the city in half". for comparison, it's about the same size as Wash U's campus, which also doesn't have streets running through it (though, granted, it's publicly accessible).

look, i get that everybody wants urban development everywhere but lets be realistic. LOOK AT THAT IMAGE. and that's a FRACTION of the north side. the north side is not coming back without an economic engine, and the NGA is the best chance it's had in a long time. there are blocks upon blocks upon blocks of mostly vacant street grid to fill up on the north side, and we are many decades away from that happening if it ever does. it's not like they raised an urban neighborhood to build this thing. the density in that rectangle was negligible, and i'd wager that the majority of the extant structures were in horrible shape. meanwhile the city can barely afford to maintain all of its infrastructure. is the form ideal? absolutely not. is it a good outcome given very limited options? yes.
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Old Posted Jul 2, 2020, 8:17 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Centropolis View Post
awful siting and design, however this IS the pruitt igoe site and i feel the u.s. government owes it something. the site needed extensive remediation, and has been a rubble strewn forest that has looked like something from Chernobyl for my entire lifetime. senator durban was pushing for this to this to go adjacent to the air force base just east of st. louis.
If they build it like this, that would have been a much better site (with rail access even!). But this is just ridiculous. This does nothing for the surrounding neighborhood either. The correct place would have been a non-suburban office building in downtown SL.
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Old Posted Jul 2, 2020, 9:02 PM
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Devil's Advocate:

Why would you go and design a mixed-use development full of new residential and commercial space at a time when there's a massive glut of vacant housing in historic, established neighborhoods that are teetering, and retail is struggling everywhere? Does anyone genuinely predict a sudden rebirth of greater St. Louis?

This plan removes the excess from the market and then increases demand for housing and services citywide. That is going to be a big boost to surrounding neighborhoods that are partially intact but desperately need investment. So you end up with more intact neighborhoods while deleting a massive dead area full of unused infrastructure that costs money and rotting empty houses used by criminals and drug dealers as hideouts? The only downside I see is the site plan is not transit friendly. But on the other hand, how many people who would work at this place would actually ride a bus in the northern half of St. Louis, anyways? I mean lets be real.

Urban renewal in the 1960s was pretty bad in retrospect, but I think from the perspective of someone living in that era who could not predict the future there was a logic to it. IMO its pretty tragic how badly planners spoiled old gems like Boston's Scollay Square and West End. But then there are other cities where a lot was demolished that was not realistically going to make it anyways, and maybe prioritizing a few healthier neighborhoods helped urban cores survive and come back? I dunno. I don't support plowing through neighborhoods with freeways and evicting or eminent domain taking resident's property or causing established businesses to close. But if a bunch of contiguous property sits vacant for a long time and is owned by some out-of-town slumlords or a public sector entity then maybe a time comes where you decommission infrastructure, disconnect streets and consolidate blocks.

After Corona I think some suburbs are going to be stuck with vacant malls and shopping centers and probably some vacant low end office space too. Maybe instead of being left with vast ruins of weed choked parking lots there would be some logic into putting public money towards demolition projects. Land could become park space, distribution and warehousing parks, affordable housing, etc.

Last edited by llamaorama; Jul 2, 2020 at 9:16 PM.
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Old Posted Jul 2, 2020, 9:14 PM
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Would workers even feel safe in that area of St. Louis, considering the crime situation it is suffering through at the moment?
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  #13  
Old Posted Jul 2, 2020, 9:15 PM
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Would workers even feel safe in that area of St. Louis, considering the crime situation it is suffering through at the moment?
Yes, they'll be in a gated compound designed to keep the surrounding community out. I suppose some fraction of employees might be hired from the surrounding community, but overall, a project like should just be in a tall building downtown (where it would be easily accessible for people from this community as well).
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Old Posted Jul 3, 2020, 12:07 AM
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I third the question: what do all those buzzwords mean?
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Old Posted Jul 3, 2020, 1:12 AM
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Originally Posted by llamaorama View Post
Devil's Advocate:

Why would you go and design a mixed-use development full of new residential and commercial space at a time when there's a massive glut of vacant housing in historic, established neighborhoods that are teetering, and retail is struggling everywhere? Does anyone genuinely predict a sudden rebirth of greater St. Louis?
because there isn't a glut of vacant housing that is inhabitable, and the established neighborhoods, by definition, aren't teetering. the cost of rehabbing many of these 100+ year-old crumbling structures is far larger than the cost of building new in most cases. and, since rehabbing these old structures is so expensive, the rehabbed ones typically aren't all that affordable unless they get LOTS of incentives, which is why the rehabbed historic neighborhoods are generally more upscale and gentrified—it takes money to buy, fix up, and maintain these old places. on top of that, in many of the decimated north-side "neighborhoods" there isn't much neighborhood left. it's not a matter of just building some infill. not sure what any of this has to do with the NGA facility, though. a side note: all of the new multi-family that has been built in the central corridor and on the south side in the last 5-10 years has had no trouble filling up, so apparently the demand is there.
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Old Posted Jul 3, 2020, 1:14 AM
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...a project like should just be in a tall building downtown...
that. was. not. an. option.
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  #17  
Old Posted Jul 3, 2020, 1:25 AM
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Originally Posted by SIGSEGV View Post
If they build it like this, that would have been a much better site...
except for the whole loss of several thousand jobs to IL, along with the associated contribution to the city's earnings tax.

Quote:
Originally Posted by SIGSEGV View Post
...(with rail access even!). But this is just ridiculous. This does nothing for the surrounding neighborhood either. The correct place would have been a non-suburban office building in downtown SL.
again, the downtown office building was never an option.

regarding rail service, studies to add a N-S Metrolink line that serves the new NGA facility were recently completed. next step is engineering, but money is a little tight right now and the Trump admin hasn't been particularly supportive of public transit.
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  #18  
Old Posted Jul 3, 2020, 2:18 AM
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While the NGA is a nice geospatial entity to have, it's still mostly a defense-related entity, which will probably limit its potential.

And as long as ESRI's headquarters remains in Redland, CA, Redlands will remain the geospatial capitol of the world.
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Old Posted Jul 3, 2020, 4:57 AM
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Originally Posted by IWant2BeInSTL View Post
but it wasn't UP to STL leadership. it was either give the NGA what they want or risk loosing thousands of jobs (a not insignificant portion of the city's earnings tax) and a $2B job creation engine to IL.

here's the site:


image souce

That picture is awfully depressing. Makes me really wonder what has been lost in St. Louis because of fucking “urban renewal”. That term was just codename for something sinister.
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Old Posted Jul 3, 2020, 5:07 AM
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🙄 what does that even mean? the article is extremely self-explanatory.
I know a lot, and I don’t know what “geospatial technology” is meant to be. Is this GPS mapping?
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