St. Louis Reconnects With the Gateway Arch and Its Pioneer Spirit<br />ST. LOUIS — In a year that placed monuments at the center of civic strife, a $380 million project to expand the grounds<br />and visitor center at the Gateway Arch, the tallest man-made monument in the Western Hemisphere, is bringing people together in this Mississippi River city.<br />Key features include the Park Over the Highway, a $38.5 million pedestrian plaza<br />that crosses over Interstate 44, as well as Kiener Plaza and Luther Ely Smith Square, both remodeled at a cost of $34.2 million.<br />“It’s a measure of how this city feels about its global icon,” said Eric Moraczewski, executive director of the Gateway Arch Park Foundation,<br />which led the capital campaign, producing the largest amount in private gifts for a National Park Service unit in history.<br />“The arch, our greatest symbol, was a subpar visitor experience,” said William O. DeWitt III, the president of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team<br />and a member of the Gateway Arch Park Foundation board.<br />The $17.5 million open space hosts regular outdoor events, among them concerts organized by the Gateway Arch Foundation<br />and the city’s National Blues Museum, which opened just blocks away last year<br />The project to beautify the arch grounds, redesign entrances and enlarge the underground visitor center drew such robust public support here<br />that voters approved a 2013 local ballot proposition to finance the restoration with $85 million in sales tax revenue.
