This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Dec. 3, 2009 - The Chesterfield home and studio of sculptor Don Wiegand, once threatened by construction of a levee to protect the eastern end of the Chesterfield Valley from flooding, will be saved under an agreement announced Thursday.
Instead of building a levee that would have led to demolition of the 83-year-old building, the Monarch Chesterfield Levee District and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers worked with Wiegand on a new design that would provide the flood protection needed yet spare the building.
Wiegand said the settlement could not have been reached without the efforts of a group known as Save Our Studio, which has worked since the summer to inform elected officials and the public about the possible razing of the studio.
"With the power of the press and everybody's support and outcry to try to save the property, we did come up with a pretty good resolution," Wiegand said in an interview. "I think both sides had to give a little bit."
Wiegand's property stands at the eastern edge of the Chesterfield Valley area, in the area once known as Gumbo Flats, which was inundated during the flood of 1993. Since that time, with all of the development that has occurred in the area, the Corps and the Levee District have worked to protect the area from a so-called 500-year flood.
To do so, part of their original plan was to demolish the Wiegand studio and fortify the current 100-year flood protection with an I-wall levee. It would have replaced an existing earthen levee that is so close to the back of the Wiegand building that you can practically reach out the window and touch it.
Because of Corps regulations, the building would have had to be razed to construct the I-wall with the necessary clearance.
Under the compromise configuration, the current levee will be replaced by a T-wall about 30 feet behind the edge of the studio, rising to a level about the same elevation of the building. I-walls will be built on either side of the T-wall, totally about 330 feet, to complete the needed flood protection.
Asked what stopped planners from proposing that design in the first place, David Human, attorney for the levee district, said it was purely a matter of money. The compromise costs more than the original plan; the difference will come from money that Wiegand has agreed not to accept for the use of about 8,500 square feet of his land as part of the project. The site totals about 125,000 square feet, he said.
"To come up with this concept," Human said, "when you looked at the comparative costs of the project, it was several hundred thousand dollars more expensive. Then you said, what if the property owner is willing to waive what he might receive otherwise to get it done? No one felt they could be putting in public money for in essence private purposes. They are very sensitive to that, as they should be.
"There is no money coming out of his pocket for this, but there is no money going into his pocket either. That is the way we could get it done. There was a tremendous amount of cooperation from everybody involved."
For his part, Wiegand said the money was not as important as saving the studio where he has fashioned sculptures of such luminaries as Bob Hope, Charles Lindbergh, Stan Musial and more.
"I was offered $3 million for the whole piece of property," he said, "but it's not for sale. They could have offered me $10 million, and I wouldn't have sold.
"The power of condemnation puts you in the position that you don't have much power. They can do what they want. But with the outcry all around the country, that's why we're where we are. It's not what we are doing but the fact that people want us to continue what we're doing."
Nancy Carver, who led the public effort to save the studio, said Wiegand hopes to be able to have enough land left in a configuration that allows him to put up additional buildings on the site. In addition to serving as Wiegand's home and studio, the main building also is headquarters for the Wiegand Foundation, which promotes artistic endeavors and serves as a community meeting place.
Carver said a letter-writing campaign to public officials and a publicity push to let people know about the threat to the property made a big difference in reaching the final agreement.
"The large public outcry actually helped people come to the table and seriously discuss alternatives to the project," she said.
But Human, the levee district's lawyer, while praising the spirit of cooperation that helped save Wiegand's studio, said the public campaign didn't have much of an impact on the officials involved.
"The reaction from the people within the city of Chesterfield, within St. Louis County, is that this is Don Wiegand, we want to do everything we can to help him," Human said. "People may think that it helped, but it didn't help within the corps. We've been talking over these issues with Don for the past 15 years."