St. Louis man walks downtown daily and sees “sudden progress”

ST. LOUIS — Denis Beganovic walks a stretch of Locust Street downtown and sees potential.

There is the Jefferson Arms building at the corner of Locust and Tucker Boulevard that is under renovation. The once grand hotel, which opened in 1904 for the World’s Fair and twice hosted the Democratic National Convention, is being remodeled into a new hotel along with apartments and retail. The old Shell building next door is now home to two hotels. Walk west past the stately and historic Central Library and the street begins to teem with hope.

There is the new 21c Museum Hotelbuilt in the old YMCA building. The basketball gym floor is still there, but now it’s a public art gallery. Then there is the massive Butler Brothers warehouse which had been empty for years but has been beautifully converted into flats and lofts. Head further into Downtown West and you’ll be just north of CityPark, the gem of a football stadium that drives foot traffic and development.

This is the center that Beganovic sees every day on his walks.

He goes at all times of the day and into the evening. The 38-year-old, who lives downtown, walks to Lacledes Landing, Arch, Soulard, Union Station and Carr Square. He’s walked more than 16,000 miles in the past four years, sharing his finds — a new restaurant here, a building permit there — with his social media following.

“There is steady progress downtown,” Beganovic told me.

He was 9 when his family escaped war-torn Bosnia and, like thousands of other refugees, came to St. Louis to make a new home. Beganovic recently invited me for a ride, as he has other journalists and civic and business leaders – and anyone who wants to take him up on the offer.

He talks about out-of-town visitors – he met a couple from Luxembourg the other day – and says they enjoy St. Louis, from the arch, to sports and entertainment venues, to the iconic city museum. “The idea that it’s unsafe to come downtown and enjoy a restaurant,” he says, pausing for effect. “I can’t understand it.”

His gait, and his status as perhaps downtown’s no. 1 cheerleader, started during the pandemic. It was May 2020 and the gym where Beganovic trained was closed. He started taking long walks to get his exercise. He saw something new every day.

There was a time, he says, when he “believed all the stories about downtown.” What he saw began to change his mind.

For his day job, Beganovic is a city planner. He is currently working on planning military installations around the world. Data is important to him and it helps him reinforce what he sees with his own eyes.

Take crime. As I’ve written before, crime is down in St. Louis, and it has been significantly decreasing in the past three years. It is also decreasing in the center. In fact, crime is down nearly 40 percent downtown since its pandemic-era high. Meanwhile, both costs in the center and job creation are increasing.

When there’s a bit of bad news at the center — a company exiting or a high-profile crime — Beganovic takes to Twitter and other social media and pushes back on the negative chatter and adds data to the conversation. Like this nugget: In the first six months of 2024, downtown St. Louis, according to state tax statistics, more than $900 million in taxable sales, far more than any other neighborhood or municipality in St. Louis region.

A world traveler, Beganovic understands why some civic leaders often wring their hands when comparing St. Louis with other cities. A walk in downtown Nashville or Cincinnati, for example, can make those cities seem more alive. But part of that is simply because St. Louis, both its 2 square mile downtown and the surrounding region, is more spread out than many other areas.

As we stood outside the construction site at the Jefferson Arms building, Beganovic pointed out the stretch of Tucker Boulevard, 10 lanes wide in some places.

“It was built for another city,” he said of the road.

City leaders plan to give it a “diet” by cutting lanes and making it more bike- and pedestrian-friendly. These kinds of changes happen slowly, but they will make a big difference to the perception of downtown, Beganovic believes.

“The real issue at the center is connectivity,” he says. “We have all these great things. They just need to be better connected.”

Not everyone is willing or able to walk as far as Beganovic is — from Union Station to Ballpark Village, north to the Convention Center and west on Washington Avenue. Downtown has pockets of success, but they are in silos. Giving pedestrians, cyclists and motorists a clear path to connect from one place to another must be a priority, he believes.

Meanwhile, he continues to walk. He will continue to challenge civic and business leaders to take as much pride in downtown as he does. This is his home and he wants others to appreciate it.

“We can be proud of the progress being made,” says Beganovic. “You can’t deny that St. Louis is safer this year than it was last year and the year before that. I don’t feel unsafe. I just don’t.”