The nonprofit that supports Gateway Arch National Park wants to expand it into Illinois, plans to soon launch a fundraising effort and is already working to acquire land.
The Gateway Arch Park Foundation announced Tuesday that it’s started exploring what it would take for East St. Louis’ Malcolm W. Martin Memorial Park and the surrounding area to be part of the federal park.
“Where we are standing right now was always envisioned to be part of Gateway Arch National Park — and it is time that we see that through,” said Ryan McClure in East St. Louis on Tuesday.
The initial phase will focus on evaluating the land, considering any environmental concerns and how much investment would be needed to make the idea a reality.
East St. Louis has already acquired roughly 50 acres of developable land along the riverfront to the north and south of the park, according to St. County property records. East St. Louis has also secured grant funding from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to clean up the land, said City Manager Robert Betts.
“We believe that this is the engine that could really be the catalyst to drive economic development in the East St. Louis downtown corridor as a whole,” Betts said. “So, we're excited about the possibilities of what lies ahead.”
Expanding the site into Illinois was part of the original vision for the park by architect Eero Saarinen when the design was first pitched in the 1940s. Congress funded an expansion of Gateway Arch National Park into Illinois in the early 1990s, but that never amounted to anything concrete.
McClure has been publicly floating the idea of Illinois expansion for a couple of months now, while acknowledging the expansion may take years, if not decades, to complete.
“There's going to be a lot of steps, and it's going to take a lot of time,” McClure said. “It's definitely not going to happen overnight. The important thing is that we're taking all those steps at the right time and with diligence. I feel very confident.”
Federal lawmakers from Illinois have been pushing to make Cahokia Mounds, a prehistoric Native American site in Collinsville, a national park or national historic site since the mid-2010s, but the effort hasn’t produced any results.
Given that the Malcolm Martin Park has already been approved by Congress for potential expansion, the legislative hurdle the foundation will need to tackle will be making sure the boundary and the current parcels of land align, McClure said, who added they have been in contact with U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski’s office.
Exactly what the Arch expansion in East St. Louis will look like has yet to be determined. Architectural firm PGAV will work with the foundation to create a vision, which could include determining if there would need to be transportation across the Mississippi River, McClure said.
Once the vision has been better formed, McClure said the foundation will be able to estimate how much the project will cost and turn to pursuing private donors who could be paired with public funding.
The more than 20 acres directly to the south of the Martin park, which is currently forested, could be used in the potential expansion. The other roughly 20 acres, located farther north of a nearby grain elevator and casino, could be developed separately.
“This is a chance to erase the Mississippi River, which has been a barrier for East St. Louis and St. Louis for so many years,” East St. Louis Mayor Charles Powell III said.
The Metro East Parks and Recreation District, which owns the Martin park, would be ready to donate its 25 acres to the National Park Service whenever it’s necessary, said Bryan Werner, the district’s executive director.
The district took control of the property in 2005 with the hope it could one day be part of the expansion, Werner said.
To save money, the park district turned off the Gateway Geyser in Malcolm Martin Memorial Park in February 2024 for good, Werner said.
“We’re actually in the process of removing all the infrastructure related to the geyser for the purposes of creating a blank slate, providing an opportunity for the Illinois expansion,” he said.
