I-229 St. Joseph Study

[Bobby5280]

The current pattern for locals (or semi-local college students) is to go to the chain restaurants along US 169 on the east side of town. I don't remember ever hearing anyone having plans to go to downtown St. Joe for fun (or even hearing of any events, though 20 miles blocks a lot of those things out). "Going to St. Joe" usually meant going to the Chick-Fil-A by the Walmart. I'm not familiar enough with OKC to know if there was a similar pattern of avoidance to Bricktown before the redevelopment.

Oklahoma City does have an advantage of a much larger metro population than St Joseph. Bricktown used to be a run-down looking industrial area that had very little to attract any visitors. OKC's leaders developed a game plan with a solid vision, called MAPS. The Riverwalk was built in the first phase and so many other things have followed. Additional MAPS phases are growing downtown OKC in a sort of "core to shore" strategy. The remaining run-down properties between downtown and the Oklahoma River are being transformed into something much nicer.

Modest sized cities can pursue somewhat similar efforts. The downtown area of Pueblo underwent a big transformation over the past 20 or so years. They built a river walk not long after the one in OKC was built. New businesses sprouted up around it. More and more parts of the old downtown area have been transformed.

St Joseph doesn't even have to built a river walk; they already have a river front park in place. It's just a matter of cleaning up the area and incentivizing new development.

[triplemultiplex]

I see a potential I-229 viaduct teardown as just removing the elevated portion and then reconfiguring the two stub ends to feed the local street grid.  That'll be plenty good to serve what's actually needed.  I-229 is way overkill for a city the size of St. Jo.  And even if it was a bigger city, that's still a bad place for a freeway.
I do like the idea of turning each of the two newly stubbed freeways into I-129 and I-329.  The remaining portions of freeway would be more than adequate to warrant 3di's.

[MikieTimT]

There is a riverfront park next to the I-229 elevated structure. With the structure removed it will be possible for new development to take place along the edge of the Missouri River. I don't know how busy the double-tracked rail line is through that location. If it has a lot of train traffic they'll need to build new vehicle and pedestrian bridges over the tracks to the river landing.

It is (was with dropping coal traffic?) a fairly busy line.

Not sure if a lot of the coal traffic to Iatan would come through St. Joe; I went to college in Atchison and there were a number of coal trains that came through there on a regular basis (usually whenever I wanted to run south and decided not to take either of the viaducts, but that's another story). There's a good bit of industry to the south along MO 759 as well that would take trains.

When we were at Snow Creek last weekend just immediately south of Iatan, there was a train hourly on average through there, even in the evening when we were night skiing/snowboarding.  Very busy line.

[skluth]

I see a potential I-229 viaduct teardown as just removing the elevated portion and then reconfiguring the two stub ends to feed the local street grid.  That'll be plenty good to serve what's actually needed.  I-229 is way overkill for a city the size of St. Jo.  And even if it was a bigger city, that's still a bad place for a freeway.
I do like the idea of turning each of the two newly stubbed freeways into I-129 and I-329.  The remaining portions of freeway would be more than adequate to warrant 3di's.

I'm fine with the remaining segments being I-129 and I-329. I'd also be fine if the entire thing was made US 71 since the current US 71 is concurrent with I-29 between the endpoints of I-229.

[Scott5114]

I'm not familiar enough with OKC to know if there was a similar pattern of avoidance to Bricktown before the redevelopment.

Before redevelopment, Bricktown was an abandoned warehouse district.

[SD Mapman]

There is a riverfront park next to the I-229 elevated structure. With the structure removed it will be possible for new development to take place along the edge of the Missouri River. I don't know how busy the double-tracked rail line is through that location. If it has a lot of train traffic they'll need to build new vehicle and pedestrian bridges over the tracks to the river landing.

It is (was with dropping coal traffic?) a fairly busy line.

Not sure if a lot of the coal traffic to Iatan would come through St. Joe; I went to college in Atchison and there were a number of coal trains that came through there on a regular basis (usually whenever I wanted to run south and decided not to take either of the viaducts, but that's another story). There's a good bit of industry to the south along MO 759 as well that would take trains.

When we were at Snow Creek last weekend just immediately south of Iatan, there was a train hourly on average through there, even in the evening when we were night skiing/snowboarding.  Very busy line.

That makes sense, it was hard to tell what goes on on the other side of the bottoms from 4 miles away.

The current pattern for locals (or semi-local college students) is to go to the chain restaurants along US 169 on the east side of town. I don't remember ever hearing anyone having plans to go to downtown St. Joe for fun (or even hearing of any events, though 20 miles blocks a lot of those things out). "Going to St. Joe" usually meant going to the Chick-Fil-A by the Walmart. I'm not familiar enough with OKC to know if there was a similar pattern of avoidance to Bricktown before the redevelopment.

Oklahoma City does have an advantage of a much larger metro population than St Joseph. Bricktown used to be a run-down looking industrial area that had very little to attract any visitors. OKC's leaders developed a game plan with a solid vision, called MAPS. The Riverwalk was built in the first phase and so many other things have followed. Additional MAPS phases are growing downtown OKC in a sort of "core to shore" strategy. The remaining run-down properties between downtown and the Oklahoma River are being transformed into something much nicer.

Modest sized cities can pursue somewhat similar efforts. The downtown area of Pueblo underwent a big transformation over the past 20 or so years. They built a river walk not long after the one in OKC was built. New businesses sprouted up around it. More and more parts of the old downtown area have been transformed.

St Joseph doesn't even have to built a river walk; they already have a river front park in place. It's just a matter of cleaning up the area and incentivizing new development.

It'll be interesting to see what comes of it, not sure if the collective willpower is there to make something of the riverfront but maybe that's just me being pessimistic. You look at cities along that stretch of the Missouri and none of them have a real big waterfront district (Sioux City and Omaha/Council Bluffs at least have riverfront parks, KCMO looks like they're trying to get something going). The river itself might be a hindrance here, it's brown, industrial and honestly kinda gross (we'd make jokes in college about throwing people in the river as punishment for things) so no one really wants to spend time next to it for fun. The Bricktown creek, at least to me, looks much clearer and pleasant to be next to while having a night on the town.

[skluth]

It'll be interesting to see what comes of it, not sure if the collective willpower is there to make something of the riverfront but maybe that's just me being pessimistic. You look at cities along that stretch of the Missouri and none of them have a real big waterfront district (Sioux City and Omaha/Council Bluffs at least have riverfront parks, KCMO looks like they're trying to get something going). The river itself might be a hindrance here, it's brown, industrial and honestly kinda gross (we'd make jokes in college about throwing people in the river as punishment for things) so no one really wants to spend time next to it for fun. The Bricktown creek, at least to me, looks much clearer and pleasant to be next to while having a night on the town.

St Joe could build some nice condo housing along with a couple restaurant outbuildings along the newly unblocked waterfront across from the riverboat landing to kickstart the redevelopment process. The area between the riverfront and downtown should infill organically from there though that giant substation is a problem. I don't know the demand for housing in St Joe, but most markets can handle a 20-30 unit complex of new, slightly above average cost housing.

I wouldn't worry about the condition of the river. The Missouri is brown because of sediments though I'm sure there's a fair amount of suspended nutrients from upstream wheat farms. The river is still cleaner than many in the Midwest as riverfronts in Green Bay, Milwaukee, and Cleveland have rebounded to being destinations over the past 30 years.

[Bobby5280]

In Oklahoma City's case it was a mix of various attractions that helped fuel the growth of that district. Really, that rule is going to apply anywhere. Visitors aren't just going to show up because a location in town has been made more pretty.

Restaurants were the first attraction in Bricktown; some have come and gone (like Spaghetti Warehouse), but others like Bricktown Brewery are still there. The Ford Center Arena (now called the Paycom Center) was built to attract an NBA and/or NHL team. The Bricktown Ballpark is home to the LA Dodgers' AAA farm team. I think the Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World store was a major addition (lots of free parking too). Harkins Theaters built their Bricktown 16 cinema as a major anchor along the Bricktown canal (its Cine Capri theater has one of the better Dolby Atmos installations I've heard). There's a lot of stuff open during the day and night to attract visitors.

In the past few years they've been building the new Scissortail Park, which features a large outdoor concert venue. Across Robinson Ave they've built a huge new convention center. I think the old Cox Convention Center has been partially retrofitted into a video production studio. A large amount of industrial property on the SE corner of Shields and OKC Blvd was bought and cleared to make way for more new development. The old Film Row district is getting a lot of renovation work.

The MAPS phases have made a lot of progress, but there is still a lot of work to do. There's still plenty of locations near downtown OKC that look like crap. So much of the rest of Oklahoma feels like it is stagnating. Bricktown seems like a bright spot in light of that.

[SD Mapman]

I wouldn't worry about the condition of the river. The Missouri is brown because of sediments though I'm sure there's a fair amount of suspended nutrients from upstream wheat farms. The river is still cleaner than many in the Midwest as riverfronts in Green Bay, Milwaukee, and Cleveland have rebounded to being destinations over the past 30 years.

Was more making the point that towns in the area really don't have riverfronts, and speculating it might be because the river is kinda gross. I mean, admittedly I don't know Omaha well but I don't think of the river as a trendy destination district there.

Modifying this to say that what the towns do have along the Missouri is parks. Going north from KC almost every decently sized town has a riverfront park, with the amount of use depending on the town (not directly correlated with size, either). I don't think there's a "riverfront" district between KC and Great Falls, MT. This doesn't necessarily prove that a redevelopment district won't work, but it would be going against the grain for the area.

Also for what it's worth my Nebraskan wife thinks it won't work either... we both could be wrong.

[triplemultiplex]

Tough to do something too elaborate on a Missouri River waterfront since you need a lot of room for floodplain.  Whatever gets built needs to be flood-tolerant.
One can see how all the big cities along the Missouri are at places where the river cozies up to the bluffs along the edges of the valley.

[The Ghostbuster]

Would it be possible to reconstruct the existing double-decked freeway segment as a single-deck freeway? Or isn't there enough room for a single deck along the riverfront?

[Bobby5280]

To me it doesn't look like there is enough room -at least not without the road actually extending outward past the river's edge. At the South end of the double-deck structure there are power lines running pretty close on the in-board/East side of the highway. Farther North the railroad gets in the way. A re-build that featured current Interstate quality lane and shoulder widths (along with adding any capacity, such as 3 lanes in each direction) would require a structure that straddled over the river.

[US 41]

I hope 229 doesn't go away. I love going through there in my truck and I think the double decker bridge is awesome. Anyone that stays on 29 is boring. 

[silverback1065]

I hope 229 doesn't go away. I love going through there in my truck and I think the double decker bridge is awesome. Anyone that stays on 29 is boring. 

sorry to inform you but 229's days are numbered