Hasta La Ideas

It’s now been more than a year since landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh‘s was awarded the project to redevelop the area around St. Louis’ Gateway Arch, and more than ten months since the project suddenly doubled in estimated costs. Now, like with many ambitious building efforts, reality seems to slowly be creeping back in. Despite having just landed a $20 million grant from the government to help the redevelopment, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the organizers have already had to start scaling back the project’s grand scope, as well as starting to consider what they can feasibly have done by 2015, when the Arch celebrates its 50th anniversary. Perhaps most telling is that the paper reports the project has raised just $57 million thus far, which includes that $20 million grant. Given that the effort was expected to cost somewhere in the $600 million range, that’s a lot of ground to make up. The new, scaled back plans are expected to be released sometime in January.

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