Monday, October 30, 2006

2006: A Great STL Year

2006 will go down as one of the best years in St. Louis history.

Visitors to STL Rising will note a recent drop off in posts. The last entry gave a list of possible St. Louis Cardinal accolades. Hesitant it might be bad mojo, I figured better to not change the blog until the Cardinals finished their post-season run.

Better still, after a Cardinals' loss in game 2 in Detroit, Fox 2 in St. Louis did a live remote from a block party, game-watching event in one of our neighbor's back yards. The reporter asked me for an on-air prediction. "Cards in 5" was mine. And it held!

The list of good things happening in STL is starting to boggle the mind. A great example was the ribbon cutting last week in Old North St. Louis at North Market Place Apartments. The event had a quality unique to any ribbon cutting I've ever attended. The success celebrated in Old North represents the culmination of over 30 years' effort by neighborhood residents.

Like Jeff Weaver, the cast-off pitcher salvaged from baseball's trash heap and finding new life in St. Louis, abandoned buildings in Old North are being rehabbed, despite gloomy forecasts of "experts" around the country predicting their demise.

The day the Cardinals won the World Series was the same day a deal was announced for Ballpark Village. And early indications are that even our town's most vocal urban critics are showing love for the plan.

Word on the street is that Target (and Trader Joe's?) are scouting locations in Midtown St. Louis.

Today, news reports say that St. Louis is the most dangerous US City. Tell that to San Diego, New York, and Detroit. I'm sure they would agree.

Strange thing, by all accounts, the 300,000 people enjoying the streets of downtown yesterday were totally at ease!

1 comment:

Michael R. Allen said...

That "dangerous" smear sure is handy for other cities trying to downplay our success.