From a story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch entitled “Demolition gets under way on 108-year-old building“:
Demolition of the Century Building downtown began this week, a major first step in the controversial redevelopment of the 1884 Old Post Office.
The first signs are evident. Piles of rubble lay on the sidewalk – the remains of what was a corner of the 108-year-old building.
You know, I’ve been a resident of the St. Louis area for well nigh eleven contiguous years now, and that description–rubble on the sidewalk and whatnot–sounds like how much of downtown St. Louis has looked for as long as I remember. Year after year, the same buildings with scaffolding, safety nets, or closed sidewalks to prevent the unused, crumbling buildings from killing passersby.
First signs of redevelopment? That’s a good and optimistic way of thinking about it.
