06.17.24
AKT Studios, St. Louis, MO

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Tony Rocca is the co-founder of precast concrete business AKT Studios, known for public art, infrastructure and restoration work in the St. Louis area, and a member of the neighborhood improvement organization Chain of Rocks Community Association (CORCA). Tony spent time at Cementland during its construction, and worked on the site after Bob Cassilly's passing.

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Daniil:

Can you share a little bit about what you do?

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Tony Rocca:

So we're AKT Studios. And we basically took over the precast concrete business Cassilly & Cassilly after Bob passed away. So we're one of the only precast concrete places around the local area. We do things like tree grades for the city of Clayton that go in the sidewalks around the trees, various types of concrete planters for the City and County. Other than that, we do neighborhood entrance columns and things like that. Kind of all precast stuff, but we also do a lot of different art things. It's not only precast, but we have a woodshop and a steel shop, so we make other stuff as well. 

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Daniil: 

Like public art?

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Tony Rocca: 

Yeah, we do a lot of public art projects. I collaborate with a bunch of different people, some of whom are also ex City Museum employees. So I like to say that at AKT we make everything but money.

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Daniil: 

And there is some restoration work you are involved with too, right? You guys worked on the Chain of Rocks Bridge?

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Tony Rocca: 

Yeah, we do some restoration work. We've restored a Martin Luther King statue in Fountain Park. Sometimes we'll get called in to recreate a terracotta corbel or even like a balustrade, stuff like that. If a tree falls on an old staircase, we can recreate that baluster and balustrade and get it back in there. 

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Daniil: 

I also saw you did some conservation kind of work, working with native plants. Is that something you do through the studio or just on your own? 

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Tony Rocca: 

That's something that's more personal to me that I do. And we do a lot of that up north in the neighborhood. Beautification is one of Chain of Rocks Community Association’s (CORCA) main deals. So I'm just trying to bring our community up through native plants and pollinator friendly things and things that are also beautiful. So it really works out well. 

Then I make concrete planters and median planters for a living. So hopefully, you'll see that kind of stuff pop up in the North Riverfront area soon. We're also working on grants to try and just make a mowed grass corner into at least partially a native prairie. Just to green up the area and help our pollinators.

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Daniil: 

When did you start working with Bob Cassilly?

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Tony Rocca: 

My dad worked at the ground floor of the City Museum. So when I was a very young kid, I was running around the city museum building, when it was an empty building. And so I was always around. You know, you always want to go hang out with dad, especially if it's making cool things and doing crazy stuff. So I've been around since the beginning of the City Museum anyway. I wasn't around in the Cassilly & Cassilly days; that was before I was born. 

But I did end up working at the Lafayette shop throughout high school. So that's where I learned how to do fiberglass molds and pour concrete. It would be summer job kind of stuff. And then on up through college, I would periodically call Bob and say I need a job. And he would always have something for me to do, whether it be at the Museum or Cementland.

But I started, actually, when I bought a boat. I was kind of a dumb kid; I bought this big ass boat, and I had nowhere to put it. And so Bob let me store it at Cementland in one of the big buildings. And that's how I really started hanging out there a lot. It was such a cool place, and these amazing things were happening. And Bob was pretty lenient with me. I would get in trouble with him for having parties and stuff like that, but there was always this kind of... Like I'd get yelled at, but it was also like, "You're doing some cool things, but you're gonna get me in trouble."

He had a barge that was on the river, an old dredge. It had a galley. It was this massive rig that was parked on the caissons there, right across the street from Cementland on that land that he used to own, that now Beelman Trucking also owns. So I grew up hanging out on that. And for a little bit, I don't know, maybe six months or so, I was able to get permission to hang out there in exchange for watching water levels and making sure the boat wasn't going to break off. And I think the insurance to keep the boat there ended up being too much of a risk. Because you're right above the Port of St. Louis, so if it was to break off and float down the river, that would be really bad news. I think the insurance was just too much. I think Dave Jump still has that boat somewhere—that was Bob's partner in a lot of things. 

I was into climbing, so I obviously had to climb that tower. Several times, me and some buddies would climb it and rappel down. And that was another one of those things that Bob, it seemed like, thought was really cool, but also was like, "What the fuck are you doing on my land?" And I have a VHS of rappelling down that 200 foot tower. It's kind of funny. Bob was an adventurer as well, so he liked some of the stuff that I was doing. So we had kind of a fun relationship. What he didn't like was going on to the barge and finding a trashcan full of empty beer cans. He was like, "Someone is gonna fall off or something." And he was totally right. It was dangerous. 

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Daniil: 

What was he doing with the barge? Was it for getting materials down?

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Tony Rocca: 

No, it was just an old dredge that he probably got for next to nothing. And it had a wood burning stove, and this large area that he turned into a living room type of thing. I loved going up there in the winter and getting the fire going and just hanging out on the river. So I think it was just another hangout for Bob.

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Liz:

That's kind of interesting, hearing that he wanted you to be so careful. Because a lot of people we've talked to have said that he was kind of reckless in his building style sometimes. So it's interesting where he would be some way himself and be more careful about other people.

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Tony Rocca: 

Yeah, well, it was one of those things where I did a lot of stuff without permission. And then he would get upset about that. But I think that he also recognized that he did a lot of stuff without permission, and so I think there was just a little bit of a fun relationship between us. So I would get yelled at, but not necessarily really reprimanded.

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Daniil:

What kind of work were you helping out with?

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Tony Rocca: 

A lot of just unskilled labor, because I was in and out. I was never like a full time Cassilly Crew member. I really liked to travel. And so I would go up to Alaska for some summers and just be a dirtbag river guide. And then I'd get done with that and then travel, and then I'd run out of money. And I'd come back home to St. Louis and pick up a job, whatever you needed me to do. Anything from sweeping floors to working on fiberglass molds. I worked a couple summers in the Lafayette shop. And that's where I learned from Bobby Heinemann, Roger Coleman, Steve Alvarez, who's right down the street now. They taught me a lot of that stuff. And that was also starting out doing grunt work. Like, "Put on a Tyvek suit, I know it's 100 degrees. Put a respirator on and grind on this fiberglass for hours," and it was just brutal. But they ended up teaching me a lot. And Bobby Heinemann is next door to me now, and he is still someone that I will call immediately if I have a question on a mold. Those guys, we're all still real close.

One of the first things I started working on was the People Project that my dad was one of the directors of. You know, in Chicago, they had all the fiberglass cows everywhere? This was the People Project: mannequins that would get fiberglassed, and artists would paint them and do different sculptural things with them. So that was my first big job that I worked on at the Lafayette shop and that led into continuing work there. Shortly after that and during, I was working on the massive fiberglass dome on the roof of the City Museum. The guys that knew what they were doing would shoot the fiberglass and resin on, and I would be the guy that goes and rolls it all out. And then when it cured, I'd be the guy that would be grinding on it for days. 

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Daniil:

What was the timeframe on the stuff you were doing at Cementland? Was it since it started up in the 2000s?

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Tony Rocca: 

I did a lot more at Cementland after he passed away. And I tried to work with his widow. We started pouring some concrete; we did some of those big lion benches, did some tree grades. And that's kind of how I started. Enjoying making, pouring these things again, and seeing that St. Louis had a void in it, because Cassilly & Cassilly was no longer going on. And Gary Moellering—who was, I think, Bob's first employee; he still works with me to this day—we started doing stuff. 

As far as what we were doing at Cementland though, I couldn't really tell you what we were doing much other than trying to secure the property. Moving stuff around. She hired a bunch of scrappers to remove a lot of stuff. And I was just basically managing the disaster, the aftermath of Bob's death. So I really didn't do a whole lot, other than just trying to keep the property secure. Try and catch the scrappers coming in, the ones that weren't hired by Giovanna to scrap.

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Daniil:

What were the hired scrappers doing? What was the point of that?

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Tony Rocca: 

I'm not entirely sure, other than that she was getting money. Probably hundreds of thousands of dollars of what I would call usable materials, that Bob would have used, ended up getting scrapped. During that time of probate, I think Giovanna needed money to keep things going. Because all the money was locked up until they figured everything out, I think. So maybe that's what the money was for. I'm not real sure.

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Daniil:

And this was like 2011–2012, right?

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Tony Rocca: 

Yes. So I think I lasted about a year, year and a half, before I was unable to keep going. It didn't work out. Nothing was really happening. And a lot of that time that I was managing Cementland, I was also just taking care of the kids. Taking them to school, just trying to help. 

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Daniil:

So was there a vision that she had for what she wanted Cementland to be after Bob's passing?

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Tony Rocca: 

I think there was a lot of vision. I know that she's into music, and she thought that it would be an amazing music venue. Like an outdoor amphitheater—I think that was one of her ideas. And she was trying to find money. I know she talked to Bob Clark from Clayco and other guys that might be interested in investing in it. And it just didn't pan out.

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Daniil:

And back when Bob was around, did he talk to you about what his vision for Cementland was?

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Tony Rocca: 

No, I never really asked. I actually didn't really hang out with him a lot, because I didn't work for him at Cementland at all, you know. I kind of just used it as my playground. And he would allow that to a certain extent. But that's why I fell in love with the area, just going out there and hanging out and seeing the progress. And yeah, it's a huge bummer.

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Daniil:

Were you living around there at the time, in Chain of Rocks?

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Tony Rocca: 

At that time, after Bob's death, I was actually living at his house that he owned, north of Cementland by about a mile and a half, two miles maybe. It's on the corner at Chambers and Riverview. And it's a really, really unique cool little house up on the hill. I bought a house up on the same bluff line that's not far. I'm a little closer to Cementland actually. But yeah, I was living there. And like I said, I was taking care of the kids and taking them to school and that kind of stuff. A lot. [Laughs.]

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Daniil:

So Giovanna Cassilly was renting it to you?

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Tony Rocca: 

Yeah, it was kind of part of the deal. I was living there. And it also set me up close to Cementland, so I could check on it a lot. And if something went down, or if I got a call or something, I was minutes away. So it worked out good to be living that close. I'm originally from South County, so otherwise it would have been a 25 minute drive. So it was part of our arrangement that we had, which was pretty loose.

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Daniil:

What was the day to day of the work you were doing for Giovanna? 

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Tony Rocca: 

Some of it was weed eating and cutting grass. And anything that you think of just managing that ridiculously huge piece of property. We'd have some crews come out just to palletize bricks that were in piles. Because I think she thought that they should be palletized, and that we would use them at some point. It's kind of hard to say what went through her mind, and what she was thinking all the time. So I was just kind of a "Yes, ma'am," you know. Then we had forklifts and equipment there so we could get stuff organized. I don't know if it ever really got organized. She enjoyed the 963 Caterpillar high lift. So she would go out and move stuff around and push things, and I don't necessarily know what for. It would get stuck, so I guess not a whole lot was really done. There were piles of stuff everywhere. 

But we were pouring some concrete things there too. Repairing fences, that kind of stuff. Trying to keep people out, which is just ridiculously hard. Too cool a place for people not to want to check it out.

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Daniil:

Were you concerned specifically with people coming in to salvage, or were all trespassers generally an issue for you guys?

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Tony Rocca: 

I think the real concern was, if a bunch of college kids were to go in there and then get hurt or even die, that would be an immediate end of the project. Luckily, that never happened that I know of. There's a lot of land out there though. And a lot of holes that go down to wherever. So who knows? [Laughs.]

Have you heard anything? I think maybe five or six years ago, someone got injured. 

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Liz:

The only thing that I heard, and I heard this from multiple people, was that some people had gone in and gotten shot at, but no one got hurt. 

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Tony Rocca: 

Oh wow, gotcha. Well, that wasn't me.

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Daniil:

Were people dumping a bunch of stuff there around then too?

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Tony Rocca: 

Not around there. But yeah, dumping is a huge problem for us in that area. So that's one of the things that also CORCA are working on. It's tough, because Cementland is half in Riverview and half in St. Louis City. And Riverview has a different trash idea than St. Louis. St. Louis, you pay with your water bill. And they provide cans and all of that stuff. And in Riverview, it's on you to pay. And it's a lower income area, so if they can't afford to pay, it's also more expensive, because there's less people that are buying the service. So it's kind of a mess. 

But I don't really think dumping was too much of an issue. We did have a company that was actually keeping the hillside and Scranton mowed. So that made it easier to pick up trash. And that is one of the things that we would constantly be doing, and that Beelman is not doing. So that's one of our things: we'd like to engage with them as a community and see what needs to happen. Broken window policy, you know. If it's nice looking, then it's less likely for people to want to dump there. I don't know how well that works or not, but we can try.

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Daniil:

Patty [Hofer] mentioned you called them.

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Tony Rocca: 

Yeah, I've been in touch with them. Actually, the gate was open one morning, and I pulled in and introduced myself and put them in touch with Bob's original surveyor, because he knows all the secrets. And they were having a really hard time getting the property to drain properly. And they ended up not using him, which I think is a huge mistake. Do you know Ted Lennemann? He'd be a great resource. 

So yeah, the trash thing—I don't know. I mean, I'm sure you've heard the stories of Bob catching some scrappers and smashing their car into nothing and all that kind of fun stuff. I don't know who could best tell that story. But maybe Kurt Knickmeyer, Ricky Fortner—one of those guys.

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Daniil

You've touched on this a little bit, but in your understanding, what are some of the causes that people are dumping stuff?

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Tony Rocca: 

Basically, if you have to provide food for your family, trash is pretty low on the list. So if they're trying to charge $40 a month up in Riverview, and that's not feasible, then what do you do? Well, you find a place to dump your trash. And that's what's going on. And it's sad, and it's a bummer. And it's hopefully going to be rectified here. I think it'll take a couple of years. But Mike Cornell is the new mayor. Riverview used to be a village, and now it is a class four city, which means that some more funding can come in maybe and help some of this stuff. And Mike Cornell is really eager to make improvements and make the city of Riverview better. And I think him and Alderwoman Boyd are working together. It sounds like things are going pretty well. 

But yeah, we gotta figure out what to do with the trash, because it's just going to continue to happen, unless we figure out something better for Riverview. Because otherwise, it's just too easy for them to just dump it. And I'm not even opposed to just putting a dumpster on the corner. And just saying, "Hey, just put it in the dumpster instead of all down the line of Scranton," and then the city takes care of it. I don't know if the city wants to do that or not, but we are a squeaky wheel as CORCA; we want to see something happen. 

Beelman is not very receptive to things. I actually emailed them, and I really wanted to start some kind of... I mean, that hillside—they've mowed it like twice a year or something like that. But I would like to just mow the first 20 feet, and then let's actually just spend a little bit of money, and kind of "scorched earth" that hill and plant natives. And then it just does its own thing. It'll be beautiful, you know, different. There'd be colors; it helps all our pollinators: birds, bees, butterflies. And then you have less to cut, just maintain that. But they're not returning my emails.

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Liz:

In talking to people, some of the solutions that have been brought up for the illegal dumping is basically to up the fines and criminalize illegal dumping more. What do you think about that? And do you think that would do anything?

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Tony Rocca: 

I don't think that would do anything, unfortunately. We're in the Sixth District here, and it also goes all the way up to Cementland, all the way up the bottleneck and in. And we're 300 police officers short right now in the city. And I think that affects the North a little bit more than the South. And I could be wrong, but I think last weekend we had four police cars for the entire District 6—supposed to be eleven. How can you actually be the law? There's not enough people, not enough officers. And I feel like they have bigger fish to fry than these illegal dumpers. And also, does that fix anything? You're going to give massive fines to these people that are probably only dumping the trash because they can't afford a trash pickup? I mean, that just seems like we're digging our hole deeper. 

And I don't know, maybe I'm not looking at it right. But if you can't afford trash service, and you have to dump your trash somewhere, and then you get caught, and then they slap a $1,000 fine on you, which you can't afford to pay—what, are we putting people in jail now? For that? I mean, what's the solution? That doesn't seem like it. Hefty fines are one thing, you know, in Clayton. 

Yeah, I don't see that as being a fix. They'll always find ways to dump in areas. I think Riverview needs to figure it out. They need to say, "Okay, look, we're going to attach an extra $14 to $18 a month to your water bill. And then we're going to provide a service." And I know Riverview has tried to do that. But because so few people are actually paying the guys like Waste Management and Republic, they're not even interested. So they don't want the contract. So if they were to do something like that, where it was attached... 

But we've got a lot of lease corporations that have gone up and bought all these houses, and then they don't do shit. They don't take care of them. They raise the rent to where it's crazily unaffordable. So that's a whole other thing that is probably affecting some of that. So another idea would be to make it mandatory for each house in Riverview, so that then Republic or Waste Management can come in and count houses. And the more pickups you have, the more the price goes down per person. I don't know the solution, but I don't think throwing people in jail for dumping trash is gonna go a long way. 

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Daniil:

So do you know what Beelman is up to right now? It seems like they were moving in and leveling some of the landscape at some point like a year ago or so.

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Tony Rocca: 

Right. 

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Daniil:

Have you been following that? 

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Tony Rocca: 

Yeah. I talked to Earl Boyd, and he is one of the guys that's in charge over there. I don't think they're doing much. I haven't seen much going on at all. It's funny when you go up Scranton, and the right side of the street is well maintained. I think that's MSD property. And Scranton is just an absolute shithole on the south side, on the Cementland side. So somebody is doing the right thing over there, but over here, they're not. And it'd be nice if Beelman could at least properly secure and maintain the outside of Cementland, just so it doesn't look so terrible. 

It's funny: I have an acre of land on the bluff. And it is absolute heaven to me, but my parents and my wife's parents both are like, "Where are you living?" Until you get to my spot—then it's awesome. But these are kinds of things that really bring down the neighborhood. And it's the entrance to our neighborhood that looks so trashy.

So I've pitched Beelman ideas. I'm trying to make it easy for them. We're a nonprofit, CORCA. So it's like, "Hey, throw us a donation, and we'll clean it up." Deaf ears. No response. There's ways to do it, and it wouldn't even cost you; it's a tax write off. Let's figure some good stuff out. There's also stuff in Cementland that I still would be interested in purchasing. There's a mound of cobblestones—I made a roundabout at my house, and it's gravel, and I would just love to use Cementland cobblestones to do that. It would take forever, but it'd be so awesome. But I haven't had any responses from Earl in a while. But when I did talk to him a little over a year ago or so he was like, "Oh, it's just gonna be a truck depot type thing." Kind of the same type of stuff that's going on across the street now. He did tell me at that point that they're not against saving and preserving some of Bob's work. But at the same time, he was like, "I don't know how we're going to do that, or what it's going to end up being," so I have a feeling it's all going to just be leveled and be a parking lot.

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Daniil:

Has there been stuff that you've tried to salvage from the years before the purchase?

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Tony Rocca: 

There's nothing really that I've salvaged from there. I didn't get along with Giovanna when I left. So I kind of just stayed away. And then after it sold, that's another reason I was talking to Earl at Beelman—I think that hiding up there in some of the rafters and one of the buildings are some molds. They're not anything even Cassilly-esque, but there's some stair molds and stuff like that I mentioned I might be interested in, because it's my business. And I just never got back in touch with them. So there could even still be some cool stuff there. But I think it's been pretty much scorched at this point. 

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Daniil:

Do you think cement dust built up from the cement plant is still a factor in the area?

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Tony Rocca: 

I would say, no. I don't think it's an issue environmentally. In my opinion, Beelman Trucking, who also owns that asphalt place that's attached to Cementland, are far more damaging to the community with those fumes. The fallout from that coal fly ash is incredibly, incredibly bad stuff. But the cement that was in the existing containers, Bob was actually using it and making his own concrete with that cement. The moat, all of that concrete actually used cement from the property itself, which is kind of cool.

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Daniil:

You've talked a bit about how you would have liked to replant some of the area with native plants. What kind of plant life do you observe there now, as someone who probably pays attention to that kind of stuff? What's the most prevailing plant life in an abandoned lot like that?

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Tony Rocca: 

That just happens naturally? I haven't been in Cementland in like three plus years. So I can only imagine what's going on in there. I would love to see it.

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Daniil:

Was it overgrown when you were there last?

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Tony Rocca: 

It was, definitely, yeah. There's a lot of the regulars: goldenrods and thistles and stuff like that ends up popping up. Some of it is native, some of it's not. But I always thought it'd be an incredible mountain biking place. I thought that would be so cool. Just to have single track mountain biking and let it get overgrown. This is, I mean, after Bob's death. What can we do with this that would be inexpensive? Just build tracks, get Gateway Off-Road Cyclists to come in here and build. It's 46 acres or something like that. That's a lot of mountain biking. 

But yeah, I'm sure it's completely grown over in the areas that Beelman hasn't made it into parking lots so far. That big building is incredibly dangerous. It actually has concrete ceiling tiles; the roof is concrete. And those have been breaking and falling that 80–90 feet over the years. The big one at the corner of Scranton and Lilac, you know. Scranton comes around, and then you take Lilac up. The monster one, the warehouse one. And that's the one that the police used to target shoot at.

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Daniil:

We've heard about that from Patty. Do you know much about that?

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Tony Rocca: 

Giovanna just allowed that. That was like a favor to the Riverview Police Department. And it was kind of a, "Hey, can you keep an eye on the place?" 

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Daniil:

What kind of plant species would you have introduced to that landscape if you could?

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Tony Rocca: 

I think the Missouri Department of Conservation has these 100 pound bags of wildflower seeds that are mostly native. And it's actually the same stuff that we use at the old Chain of Rocks Bridge, that native prairie at that park. We'd probably start with something like that, because we would be going for native Missouri prairie. So it'd be broadcasting thousands and thousands of seeds first and seeing what happens, seeing what it likes. That's what I would want to do. 

And there are things like cosmos, which is a beautiful white flower that is not native. But that would be a first year thing, so you would get some color. Get some excitement that first year. And then the following years, the coneflowers and black-eyed, brown-eyed Susans, cutleaf coneflower. All of those super awesome drought tolerant perennials. And then, I would want to see a lot of milkweeds. Ironweed, wild bergamot, bee balm—all that stuff that once you get it in there and it becomes established, you can't get rid of it. 

And then it's just managing that. It's actually "editing," we like to say, meaning taking stuff out. And that's the same with the goldenrods and a lot of the asters, which is the New England aster and aromatic aster. Those would be things that I would love to see a ton of, because they're not even summer blooming, but kind of towards the end of the summer and into the fall. It would be a sea of purples and whites and yellows. And goldenrod is beautiful. Not invasive—if it's a species that's native, we call it aggressive, and it just goes everywhere. It would be a lot of work. But I think on that hillside, it'd be amazing to do some plots and see what we could get it to look like.

I've got way too many gardening ideas for up there. The train tracks that have been abandoned since 1993, I want to just put native plants in between the tracks. It's essentially a flowerbed—the tracks are about this high. 

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Daniil:

The tracks behind Cementland?

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Tony Rocca: 

Actually, the tracks that go along Riverview, kind of starting at Cementland and north, all the way to the Chain of Rocks Water Treatment Plant. So this would be more of a North Riverfront Park project. But that would be a great pilot program. All we want to do is fill it with dirt and broadcast a bunch of those seeds. Like I was saying, just see what happens. What the city does is they blast it with chemicals twice a year and kill everything. And it's just these ugly, shitty train tracks. 

And so I've gone after that. And the Water Company controls those tracks. And they said, "Well, we don't know when we're going to have to use those tracks again." Now, the tracks haven't been used since the flood in 1993; it would take $10 million dollars to make those useless tracks usable again. And then they would still be useless. For the most part, everything the Water Company gets is trucked in now. It's not a thing. They're not trying to use it ever. It was just an easy thing for them to tell me to fuck off, essentially. 

There's a lot of native grasses as well that would be beneficial at Cementland. And the corner there is kind of cool with the cattails and that kind of stuff. Obviously, it stays wet there. So I'd probably want to throw a bunch of swamp milkweeds down in that area. And then try and manage it. I think it'd be awesome to just have your beautiful grass, but it's only 10 or 20 feet of beautiful grass, and then let nature do its thing. And we introduce natives back into it and then let it go. And then along those same lines, we could introduce some of the mid story stuff in there too, like elderberry. Hoptree or wafer ash—that is the host tree for the giant swallowtail butterfly. These are just really cool things. That kind of stuff is fun to think about. It'd be an incredible garden if we could just make some big Atlanta type botanical garden, right? You know, with mountain bike trails. I mean, right?! So much cool could be done there! And it's gonna suck. If one of us would have bought the right lottery ticket or something...

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Daniil:

It being a former industrial site, does soil contamination become a factor in planning out a gardening project at all? 

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Tony Rocca: 

We can do some testing, but  a lot of the stuff that I would want to plant there... It's clear that stuff grows there. And I think to a certain degree, we could also add clean fill, and then plant on that if there were any areas that were completely toxic, which I'm sure there are on that property. I know that there's probably barrels of really nasty stuff buried. It was an industrial wasteland for a long time. But I think that'd just be something that we would deal with as we went. My black-eyed Susans prefer my gravel driveway to the garden. I don't know why. But a lot of these plants that are native to Missouri, they love a rocky, sandy, shitty soil. And they thrive in it. So we would put those species in where they need to be and let them go.

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Daniil:

Kind of unrelated, but I think I saw on your Instagram that you maybe adopted a dog from Cementland?

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Tony Rocca: 

I'm a big time dog lover. And there was a beautiful, pretty big pitbull laying down in front of the gate of Cementland. And it's just one of those things: you're going to work, but I can't just leave this freaking dog here. You know, "Here we go." I probably rescue four to five dogs a year, whether it'd be in this area. From here to my house, that is a corridor for dumping dogs, it seems like. So I have a pretty good relationship with CARE STL now. So that was just one of those instances where I pulled over. And that took a little day. 

You never know if the dog is going to be aggressive or not. And this was one of those where he looked up and got up, and I opened my door. And I said, "Let's go," and he said, "Thank you." He hopped in. So I brought him here, and then we had him for a couple of weeks. Actually, I was trying to just get him a home through my network, and have him not have to go into the system. But I couldn't do it. So CARE STL ended up coming and picking him up. And I think he was adopted. He actually was chipped, and it turns out that the owner went to jail, and a buddy of his kept the dog. And this was in Bridgeton or something, so I'm thinking that buddy let him go somewhere around our neighborhood. But yeah, he's a sweetheart. 

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Daniil:

Is there anything that we haven't asked you about Cementland that you think would be important to share?

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Tony Rocca: 

Well, on one of the hills, there is... So my dad, in his infinite wisdom, bought a huge steel boat, another boat. And it was maybe like a 40 or 50 foot boat, and he pulled it there, and it lived at Cementland. Until it became evident that this was way too big of a project, and so he gave it to Bob. And Bob dragged it up and put it up on the hill. And I think it's still there. So next time you're walking around there, if you get permission, keep an eye out for that. It's kind of fun. But that definitely would have just become a deck or something. Who knows? Bob would've done something cool with it there. 

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Daniil:

I've seen the boat, actually. Some high schoolers made a little esoteric temple out of it or something. It was all tagged up inside.

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Tony: 

I didn't mention that, you could also make a satanic ritual scene there, yeah, sure. [Laughs.]

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Liz:

As you've touched on, there's a lot of infrastructural problems in the Riverview area, and a lot of funding problems. If Cementland would have been actualized, do you feel like it would have been overall beneficial to the community? And do you see the community being different today, if Cementland had existed? 

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Tony Rocca:

Man, that's such a huge question. It's a big question mark. I mean, I can't see property values going down by Bob putting in an incredible amusement-park-City-Museum-monstrosity-esque type of place. I think it would have been a huge positive for the community. And I think it would have very quickly gained worldwide recognition. And it would bring people to the area. And interesting people, you know. I can see WashU architectural classes there. It'd be a classroom in art and architecture. And people would come from all around the world to see it, for sure. So I can't imagine it ever being a downside. I think it would have been huge for St. Louis City itself. I think that would have been amazing. Yeah, who knows? Who knows what could have happened?

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