New designs unveiled yesterday for a St. Louis NFL stadium show a venue with "more plazas and gardens than parking lots, with more bridges and bike trails than roadways" and with "more daily attractions than football games," according to a front-page piece by David Hunn of the ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH. The designs for the city's proposed venue for the Rams "show a wall of public art, a three-story brew pub and a 30-foot-wide observation deck that stretches over the Mississippi River flood wall." HOK VP & Design Principal Eli Hoisington and Marketing Principal Lance Cage, whose architecture firm is overseeing the project, "described a design process driven by the constraints of the site." Sunken railways "required the architects to design bridges spanning the tracks and leading into the stadium," and sloping ground "meant rainwater gardens." A busy river "necessitated sound and light screens overhead." Hoisington and Cage identified a February '16 "construction start" and a June '19 completion. Hunn notes the HOK team is "now updating its presentation for the October NFL owners meeting," where Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon’s stadium task force is "expected to present its full proposal." Hoisington said of the fall meeting, "We have to stand by a guaranteed price in about four weeks. We have to go in front of the NFL owners and say for that $1 billion price tag, we can build that. And we can." Hunn writes the newest plans "show a clear turn," as the proposed stadium, "viewed by some as elitist and wasteful, has become an arena for the people." But Missouri Sen. Rob Schaaf said, "It doesn't change my opinion on how they're going to pay for it." Others have complained that HOK, which designed the Edward Jones Dome, already "had a chance to build an iconic stadium then." Hunn: "Why, they ask, should the public trust the firm again?" Stadium task force co-head Dave Peacock said that his group "had chosen HOK because it’s one of the top stadium planners in the country" (ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, 9/2).
