Rebounds of all sorts renew Jesuit St. Louis U - St. Louis University - special section: Catholic Colleges and Universities

National Catholic Reporter, Sept 26, 1997 by Pamela Schaeffer

ST. LOUIS -- When Jesuit Fr. Lawrence Biondi became president of St. Louis University 10 years age, he found it hard to distinguish the campus from its inauspicious surroundings.

Like several other Jesuit urban universities, it was situated in a deteriorating part of the city. The campus offered little protection against encroaching urban blight and street crime. An architectural mishmash, the campus "lacked boundaries," Biondi said.

So, it seems, do his dreams and drive.

The priest, widely admired here of late for his accomplishments, is known privately around campus as "the Italian stallion," tip-off to his hard-charging ways. He is credited with turning a depressing collection of aging buildings into a remarkable oasis -- and doing much to revitalize midtown St. Louis in the bargain. "We have become an anchor to the city," he says without apology.

And, he vows, there is more to come from this sometimes controversial president who has been described publicly in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as "aggressive and visionary" and privately as "brash," "sincere but naive," and "a street fighter."

Born to Italian immigrants from Lucca, Italy, in the Tuscany region, Biondi blends Italian sensuality with a free-and-easy demeanor and a disarmingly direct conversational style. Those qualities make him approachable and engaging, but also mask what, by his own admission, is a resolute drive to raise the national reputation of the university -- a drive that has led him not only to improve the campus, push the St. Louis Billikens basketball team into the NCAA, upgrade faculty salaries and add academic programs, but also to fire a succession of administrators, including nine vice presidents in 10 years.

"They weren't capable," he says flatly when asked about the turnover.

"When I first got to St. Louis, I saw a number of needs as I walked around," he said. For one thing, he noticed that "the campus didn't have any distinctive markings for the general public, let alone the student."

He didn't hesitate for long. He began a program of buying, building, razing and renovating, to the tune of $330 million (from donations and bonds) so far. He has added 39 acres and 30 buildings entrances with wrought iron fencing and archways supported by brick posts. Parking lots and streets that once cut through the campus have been turned into broad pedestrian promenades, anchored at their axis by a tall new clock tower. Tiles decorated with the university logo, a stylized fleur-de-lis, trim brick entrance posts and architectural features across the campus blend old and new.

Anchor restored

Historic old buildings have been beautifully restored, most notably St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, spiritual anchor of the campus, and DuBourg Hall, home of university administration. Both are a century old.

Wherever he could, Biondi has gobbled up surrounding property and replaced asphalt with expanses of lawn sporting fountains, sculptures and lavish plantings (19,060 flowers in 1996, boasts a university brochure). He even got the city to apply the school's color, bright blue, to fire hydrants, traffic light standards and a nearby off-campus overpass.

The overpass runs along two of the five city blocks that separate the medical school campus from the university's main campus -- blocks to the south that Biondi has designs on acquiring to eventually link the two campuses.

Biondi acknowledges that he was able to get off to a running start in 1987 thanks to his predecessor, Jesuit Fr. Thomas Fitzgerals, whose major task was to recoup from some financial problems in the early 1980s. Biondi inherited a school operating in the black, and five years later announced a $200 million fundraising campaign, due to end in December. One controversial major donor is John Connelly, casino owner, who gave $1.5 million for a project and serves on the university board.

Biondi also inherited some turf battles -- intolerable "freedoms," he says, among the university's various programs and schools. Sources say that tug-of-war was a factor in some of the administrative changes. Recent efforts to bolster unity resulted in a plan to build a $12 million home on the university's main campus for Parks College of Engineering and Aviation. The school was formerly (and happily, according to students and faculty who balked at the move) situated on the other side of the Mississippi River, in Cahokia, Ill.

Also in the works is a new $15 million building for the School of Allied Health Professions, a $6.5 million expansion and renovation of the law school, construction of a "student village" of garden-style apartments, and a 14.5-acre public park on newly acquired ground. It will include tennis courts, a softball field, a putting green, a lighted walking path, a picnic area and, as beneficiaries of Biondi's Tuscan tastes have come to expect, water -- in the form of a 1.7-acre lagoon.

A few years ago, part of a former Jesuit seminary was turned into a museum to showcase contemporary religious art. Other galleries have been added. Recently Biondi renovated an existing 81,000-square-foot recreational center, a complex that already was ranked by the National Intramural Sports Association as among the top 20 such facilities.