You couldn’t miss the article in last Wednesday’s Post Dispatch, front page above the fold: ”Bottomland battle over development brewing in Maryland Heights”. Seems someone wants to “develop” a 191 acre “destination” shopping center to be called Maryland Pointe right smack dab in the Missouri River Bottoms at the intersection of Maryland Heights Expressway and the Page Avenue extension – a place now being used for vegetable cultivation by my friends and long-time suppliers Dave and Darrell Thies. The PD printed my letter of response on Sunday. But why do shopping center developers think they have to spell the word ”point” with an “e”?
Let the land feed us
Regarding “Bottomland battle” (May 18): Any realistic cost/benefit assessment based on the public interest wouldn’t allow even consideration of a Maryland Pointe “destination” shopping center in the Missouri River floodplain.
While shopping centers are downsizing and going broke all over the area because of speculative over-building, farmers markets and the demand for locally grown produce has skyrocketed. The property in question boasts some of the best farmland in the country — precisely because it’s in the floodplain. It should be zoned only for agriculture so that it can continue to feed us, provide flood protection and remind us of how good food used to taste before we started shipping it in from factory farms thousands of miles away.
Andy Ayers • St. Louis
Eat Here St. Louis