Bye bye Biondi

[willie]

Biondi didn't live in Jesuit Hall.

[bonwich]

Biondi didn't live in Jesuit Hall.

Fun fact. Before it was his house, Biondi's residence was my office. (And there was a photography studio out back. Neither was associated with the University.)

[Bobby Metzinger]

Biondi didn't live in Jesuit Hall.

I understand that. Was comparing the two main Jesuit residences.

[hsmith19]

Jesuits in community are given what is necessary for them to carry out their individual missions, yes, but I honestly believe that Fr. Biondi's expenses, etc. are justifiable.

The interview with Kim Tucci where he justified Biondi's tanning beds and other extravagances was one of the few funny things the RFT has printed in the last 10 years or so. I think it basically boiled down to a Lexus being cheaper than a Caddy or a Jag.

[Taj79]

Biondi did great things for SLU. Power corrupts. Time to move along, nothing to see here. DC elected Marion Barry as mayor after jail time. Baltimore is tryign to re-elect Sheila Dixon as mayor after jail time. Strange things happen. Biondi built an empire and doesn't want to leave. I get it.

[Old guy]

Napoleon built a bigger empire than Biondi's and managed to come back from Elba to lose all in Waterloo. Spent the rest of his days at a rock in the South Atlantic under heavy guard while he was questionably being poisoned with arsenic, until he died, of course.Does that mean to say that someone has to stick Biondi somewhere in Gulag (the arsenic poisoning is optional) before he leaves SLU alone? Chicago is a fine place to be with all the comforts he might want. A lot better than Irkutsk I would say.

[bonwich]

Napoleon built a bigger empire than Biondi's and managed to come back from Elba to lose all in Waterloo. Spent the rest of his days at a rock in the South Atlantic under heavy guard while he was questionably being poisoned with arsenic, until he died, of course.Does that mean to say that someone has to stick Biondi somewhere in Gulag (the arsenic poisoning is optional) before he leaves SLU alone? Chicago is a fine place to be with all the comforts he might want. A lot better than Irkutsk I would say.

[Old guy]

Biondi would like that clip, fits his conception of how the world should work.

[bonwich]

Biondi would like that clip, fits his conception of how the world should work.

That was for you, Old guy. We weren't worthy to read that magnificent post. (The only possible improvement would have been if you'd said he was exiled to Biondystok.)

[Pistol]

http://www.riverfronttimes.com/newsblog/2016/06/07/saint-louis-university-has-a-tanning-bed-to-get-rid-of

My question is - is this actually Biondi's personal tanning bed, or could it be a remnant from SLU Tan in Marchetti West (that still isn't there, is it?)?

[hsmith19]

7 minutes ago, Pistol said:

could it be a remnant from SLU Tan in Marchetti West (that still isn't there, is it?)?

That's been gone for years, plus a law student leased the space from SLU and ran the tanning business. I don't think it was ever a University operation. The timing of this sure screams Biondi.

[Box and Won]

Great!  Now sell some of the statues.

[bonwich]

20 minutes ago, Box and Won said:

Great!  Now sell some of the statues.

And fill in lots of the "green space." Given the amount of peripheral development around the University, lots of that land might even be quite valuable and could be filled in with stuff that actually belongs on or near an urban campus. 

[geerlingguy]

On 6/7/2016 at 11:26 AM, hsmith19 said:

That's been gone for years, plus a law student leased the space from SLU and ran the tanning business. I don't think it was ever a University operation. The timing of this sure screams Biondi.

According to this U News article, SLU Tan was owned by Jim Lauber (looks like this might be the same person?); I'm doing a little research around SLU Tan and tanning beds right now... and I'm wondering, does anyone here know Jim, or did anyone here visit SLU Tan when it was open?

[BigMouthBilliken]

@bonwich I disagree. The reason I chose SLU was in part to the green space on campus. Ever been to Marquette? Too urban  feeling and not that appealing of a campus.

[Box and Won]

9 hours ago, BigMouthBilliken said:

@bonwich I disagree. The reason I chose SLU was in part to the green space on campus. Ever been to Marquette? Too urban  feeling and not that appealing of a campus.

I ran through the entire campus a few months ago - thought it was nicer than ours, despite having less green space.  The buildings are much better.

[hsmith19]

13 hours ago, BigMouthBilliken said:

@bonwich I disagree. The reason I chose SLU was in part to the green space on campus. Ever been to Marquette? Too urban  feeling and not that appealing of a campus.

As much as Biondi went overboard in knocking down historic/usable buildings, I think the SLU campus still strikes a nice balance. It feels like a college campus in a way that a lot of schools plopped down in the middle of a city don't (ie, Marquette) and yet it still has an in-the-middle-of-everything feel that a campus outside the urban core (ie, Wash U) just doesn't.

[TheChosenOne]

1 minute ago, hsmith19 said:

As much as Biondi went overboard in knocking down historic/usable buildings, I think the SLU campus still strikes a nice balance. It feels like a college campus in a way that a lot of schools plopped down in the middle of a city don't (ie, Marquette) and yet it still has an in-the-middle-of-everything feel that a campus outside the urban core (ie, Wash U) just doesn't.

SLU also really isn't in the middle of some bustling city though. Wash U seems like it is more in-the-middle-of-everything than SLU, but maybe that is just me.

[hsmith19]

12 minutes ago, TheChosenOne said:

SLU also really isn't in the middle of some bustling city though. Wash U seems like it is more in-the-middle-of-everything than SLU, but maybe that is just me.

Midtown is pretty much as close to the city center as you're going to get, and the density of the immediate area is improving in spite of all the green space. There are urban schools in cities more "bustling" than St. Louis, but I can't think of too many that have a cohesive campus in the middle of them quite like SLU's. A lot of other campuses smack dab in the middle of cities have a definite commuter school feel, which reminds me a lot of what people who went to SLU in the pre-Biondi era talk about. DePaul's location is nice, but even it has more of a commuter school feel.

Wash U.'s campus is beautiful, but it's got a standard ivory tower vibe. It's very sheltered from its suburban surroundings, let alone from the urban core a few miles away. Delmar is close but not part of the Wash U campus like Grand Center and everything on Lindell is part of SLU's. Wash U  reminds me a lot of U. of Chicago's campus, which again is gorgeous but has always felt like a bubble removed from bustling Chicago to me.

[brianstl]

29 minutes ago, TheChosenOne said:

SLU also really isn't in the middle of some bustling city though. Wash U seems like it is more in-the-middle-of-everything than SLU, but maybe that is just me.

SLU is surrounded be some pretty happening places like Cortex, The Grove and Grand Center.  It will seem even more bustling when they break ground on the new SLU Hospital.

[bonwich]

This is one of our classic off-season off-topics. And the OBC knows how much I love playing along.

From my perspective: Biondi turned our campus into Fortress SLU. He even explicitly told students not to travel too far off campus. That's all well and good from a public-safety viewpoint, but SLU the fact that SLU refused to embrace its urban environment and especially the periphery of campus played as much role in the decay of the surrounding area as did general urban blight. SLU could have made Grand Center's (and Locust's) redevelopment move two or three times more quickly than what's happened, but rather than addressing crime head-on by helping to improve the neighborhood (see below), SLU shunned it. 

Compare WashU, from a peripheral standpoint. With all due respect to my friend Joe Edwards, The Loop would never have become "one of the best streets in North America" if it weren't for WashU, which actively bought up property, especially in the dreaded "north of Delmar." Not the same as Grand Center, you say? I grew up in U. City and my parents continued to live there until the late '90s. As late as the '80s, that area around Eastgate had a very high concentration of drug dealers. WashU saw how a vibrant Loop could be a recruiting tool and bought apartments and invested in (and, granted, tore down) a lot of the old buildings. Not to mention I'm pretty sure they've made a crapload of money on their investments. 

An even more glaring example of building up your surroundings is the Central West End, which also basically wouldn't exist in its current form without the extensive intervention of WashU. In the '70s and '80s, Laclede and West Pine (and even Forest Parkway) east of Euclid had as many bombed-out houses as they did nice large houses and mansions. The WashU Redevelopment Corporation very deliberately sought out people with the vision and the bucks to renovate many of those residences, some of which are now offices and some of which are very expensive residences. 

Compare that with SLU's lack of support (and almost willful destruction) of the neighborhoods surrounding Firmin Desloge and the med school. 

The Locust corridor east of Grand also developed in spite of, rather than with the assistance of, SLU and especially Biondi. And rather than leaving continuity leading into Grand Center, Biondi bulldozed a still-architecturally-pleasing, well-occupied old building and put in...a dog park. 

Bulldoze is a perfect word for him. When in doubt, rip it out. The campus does look great, but at the cost of slamming a suburban style into an urban environment. 

 

 

[hsmith19]

Wash U's Redevelopment Corp has done tons of great things, but that doesn't change the fact that their campus is walled off from the developments you're talking about in a way that SLU isn't, even today. They didn't need a Biondi to build a "fortress" because their campus was built as one as soon as they moved west in the late 19th Century, before most of the surrounding neighborhoods even existed as we know them today. Their students have to worry less about crime because they can walk to dorms and classes and not ever venture into the City in a way SLU students still can't, even after Biondi and his statues and dog parks. If SLU is "suburban" in style, then Wash U. is far more suburban, even after all the planning efforts surrounding the Med School.

I won't argue that SLU has matched the urban design or community development efforts at Wash U. (a school with world class architecture and social work programs is always going to have a leg up there), but looking at the two campuses as urban environments is still an apples to oranges comparison for all of these reasons. I also won't argue that Biondi was right to tear down all the buildings he did, but the end result today is still an attractive urban campus that, post-Biondi, has a chance to fit in well with the growth in the surrounding area. Could it be even better today if Biondi had been less bulldozer-happy? Sure, but I hear very few people saying they prefer the pre-1987 SLU campus to what we have today. The campus today would also be more urban and more cool had Mill Creek Valley never been wiped out long before Biondi got his mitts on the area. There are all kinds of what-ifs, but SLU today has an opportunity a school like Wash U. will never have to blend into the middle of a truly urban neighborhood.

One last note on Wash U.'s Redevelopment Corp--over the past few years, it has worked more and more closely with SLU's Center for Sustainability, and a lot of their personnel are graduates of SLU's Planning & Development program. Their last Executive Director before the current one graduated from our program a few years ahead of me. Our program is still tiny and therefore unaccredited, but it's the only one with a Masters in planning anywhere in the state, and one of a handful in the Midwest. It also breathed one of the biggest collective sighs of relief once Biondi finally left. But my point is that Wash U. and SLU are working together, and if anything the SLU CoS gets under-recognized for the role it plays in broader efforts at regional collaboration.

[Old guy]

Since we are comparing school campuses, specifically urban campuses. I have a few others to add. MIT is right smack dab in Cambridge, with Mass Ave cutting it in two portions the academic core, and the housing areas. MIT is a maze of grey squat buildings with a few exceptions, some green areas and some massive sculptures. The periphery of MIT is very much urbanized with many campus buildings spreading into the city like tendrils and accessed by normal streets. However the core of MIT is like a subterranean city with glass walled walkways and brightly lit tunnels, and some passages above ground as well, connecting the buildings. MIT is, despite its own core structure, very much integrated and very much a part of the city. Harvard is Harvard, it is different, only the medical center is integrated into the city. It has it all, a central walled core with ancient trees and courtyards surrounding stately buildings, academic centers and buildings beyond the walls, some of them with ultra modern buildings (science center), mixed with old granite and brick buildings, and academic satellites (large academic satellites) across the river into Allston and Boston proper. These satellite centers house a very urban and huge medical center (like Wash U's) and a business school / sports arena satellite (also walled and isolated from the surrounding city) in Allston. As far as Harvard is concerned, the city is just there as an impediment to Harvard itself. The place is its own universe, you could look at it like a piece of suburbia (which preceded the creation of roads, city sprawls, and suburbia as we know it) located there within a city. The truth is that Harvard was there before the city got there and the city grew around it and threatened to choke it. 

For an off season topic this one is not bad, by the way.  

[NextYearBill]

i really like the dog park, so does my dog

[Old guy]

Very nice post hsmith19, nice to know you are in Urban redevelopment. I always found Urban Redevelopment a wonderful area of work, capable of doing incredible things.