Even this is debateable - while several casinos have clustered at the river, these venues by their nature do not actually participate in the life of the river.
The closest thing to successful commercialization of the river has been the rise of riverboat casinos in the 1990s. Among them have been a floating McDonald's (lost in the 1993 flood), a World War 2 minesweeper ship (also lost in the Great Flood), and various touring boats (diesel barges gussied up as 'steamboats'). An ever-shifting array of tourist concerns has occupied small moored barges and docks at the river's edge as long as I have known St. Louis has never figured out how to properly capitalize on the crowds that flock to the riverfront to visit the Gateway Arch. With the 'long-term and enduring' part out of the way, we turn our attention to the flimsy, short-term and transient. November 2010 - the Casino Queen, removed to a yard south of Alton.
