The Danforth Foundation is pleased that the National Park Service is initiating a public planning process that will consider improvements to the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. We appreciate the Park Service’s responsiveness toward our report of last August and its hard work in moving the issue to this stage.
As we said last August, we believe we are wasting our region’s two most valuable physical assets – the Gateway Arch and our position on the Mississippi River. There is little to do on the riverfront, and the Gateway Arch stands in splendid isolation amidst 91 acres devoted strictly to “passive use.” The riverfront and Arch grounds are cut off from downtown by six lanes of Memorial Drive and four lanes of Interstate 70. Small wonder that visitorship is declining and that the Arch grounds and riverfront are often nearly empty.
