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St. Louis Front Page presents St. Louis CitySide, an overview of the City Government of Saint Louis. From time to time, we will take an indepth look at many of the projects in which the city is involved and how these projects will affect residents and visitors.
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Michael A. "Mike" Chance

Standing in the Shadow of the News Media,
Does Mike Have a Chance?
Part II continues with Mike Chance and his observations on St. Louis' rich history, diverse neighborhoods and its downtown revitalization.
City government is going to have to play a very strong role in bringing different segments of the community together. - Mike Chance

By Bob Moore, Editor, SLFP.com

ST. LOUIS, (SLFP.com), March 29, 2001 - A lifelong Republican, Michael A. "Mike" Chance has based his platform on the issues of radical change in his campaign for Mayor of the City of St. Louis. On Tuesday morning, March 20, I sat down with Mike Chance at an early breakfast at Uncle Bill's on South Kingshighway and asked him why would he want to be mayor of a city that has not had a Republican mayor in over fifty years. (See Part I)

Chance does not back away from tough personal questions about his political views. "There are going to be segments of the population that are not going to be able to get past the label of 'Republican.' There's not a lot that I can do about that. But what I can do is make myself open and accessible and willing to meet with anyone. I think that I've proven that already. Who would have thought that a Republican candidate could walk into a public forum and sit there and be able to answer some very tough questions and give honest answers," he said.

The role of city government is not to do it all itself but to bring all the players together to make things happen.
Chance interjected the old statement that 'those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it' to illustrate his personal view of city government. "That is certainly one of those principles that I bring to politics," he said. "Let's look at what we did and ask if it didn't work, there's no point in doing it again or at least not in that same way. We need to ask why didn't it work and change the concept around."

He explained that for a number of years now, the city government has tried to be the prime developer for development deals like the Trans World Dome. "It just doesn't work," said Chance. "We don't have the financial resource or the expertise. The government in general just doesn't move fast enough. And it's not just city government. It's just a condition of government everywhere. What the city government does work best at is being a facilitator by bringing all the players to the table, by providing a couple of incentives or nudges here and there to bring the deal together," he said.

"The role that I see the city playing is bringing new players and new entrepreneurs together. There's a number of people in the African-American community, the Hispanic community, the Asian community, the Bosnian community that if they could get connected with the financial community and the venture capitalist, they could be the next John Stephen or the next Richard Baron. Not just in real estate development but also in economic development."

Michael A. "Mike" Chance
"I think St. Louis really needs to take a hard look at where it wants the future of the city to be going," said Mike Chance, GOP candidate for mayor of St. Louis.
"I think Richard Baron's proposed Chouteau's Pond project is a marvelous example. It's one of those ideas that's a brand vision. That's really what we need. If you look at where the things that could fly have been in the past, it's been big, grand visions. The World's Fair in 1904; Henry Kiel's vision of a new downtown in the 1920s that resulted in passing an $80 million bond issue in 1923. It's almost inconceivable how large that would be today.

That bond issue ended up building Kiel Opera House, the original Savvis Center, several municipal buildings downtown, widening the streets and submerging the River Des Peres through Forest Park which has been recognized as a national historic engineering marvel. If you look at the concept of the Gateway Arch, it's brand vision on a broad scale. Those are the kinds of things that has defined St. Louis over the years. So, we need to start thinking in those kinds of scale again.

St. Louis has a very rich ethnic tradition and it's something that the city doesn't celebrated enough.
Chance acknowledged that as a history buff, he was fascinated by personal stories from the past. "St. Louis has a very rich tradition and it's something that the city doesn't celebrated enough, especially the successes of people and the ingenuity that existed," he commented.

"We should celebrate Madame C.J. Walker and her success an a entrepreneur in the black community and the tremendous work that people like Annie Malone and Homer G. Philips did. People may not realize that the first African-American legislator in the General Assembly came from St. Louis and was largely responsible for preserving Lincoln University at a time it was struggling. He managed to convince the General Assembly to make it a part of the Missouri State university system."

He stated that the black and white divide in St. Louis is going to be very rapidly eclipsed by a multi-ethnic community where you have strong ethnic constituencies.

"The new immigrant communities, such as the Bosnians, the Hispanics, the Asians, and to some extent the African immigrants coming in from Ethiopia, Nigeria and now the Congo, are very close-knit. It's very hard for city government to work with them because we have language barriers between third or fourth generation communities. But they are a political force because they are a singular block community that you don't see in other communities," noted Chance.

"The Bosnians are a first-generation immigrant population. They provide a little different challenge to the city than the European residents that have been here for several generations. About the only other ethnic community in St. Louis that is still that close-knit is the Italian community on The Hill," he continued.

When asked about the numerous studies that have been done on the city, Chance responded, "We know what works. We know that we can rebuild the neighborhoods by concentrating on the old neighborhood business districts and the neighborhood main streets. We've seen the successes on South Grand, the Central West End and Soulard."

"The city government is going to have to play a very strong role in bringing different segments of the community together," emphasized Chance. "We are getting more successfully integrated neighborhoods such as the Skinker DeBaliviere neighborhood and the Shaw neighborhood. I think new developments like King Louis Square are going to be integrated kind of neighborhoods, racially and ethnically as well as economically. Those kinds of mixed income developments are really the direction that the city needs to go," he noted.

"Do we want to stay the same or move forward into the twenty-first century? I think we have a very clear choice on April 3 between continuing with the status quo which means continuing the decline of the city or making a radical change and bringing in a new vision of where the city can go and how to get there," Mike said.Red Dot

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