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ST. LOUIS — Denis Beganovic walks a stretch of Locust Street in downtown and sees potential.

There’s the Jefferson Arms building on the corner of Locust and Tucker Boulevard that is under renovation. The once-grand hotel, which opened in 1904 for the World’s Fair and twice hosted the Democratic National Convention, is being remodeled into a new hotel, along with apartments and retail. The old Shell Building next door now is home to two hotels. Walk west past the stately and historic Central Library and the street starts to teem with hope.

There’s the new , built in the old YMCA building. The basketball gym floor is still there, but now it’s a public art gallery. Then there’s the massive Butler Brothers warehouse, which had been vacant for years but has been beautifully remodeled into apartments and lofts. Head further into Downtown West and you’ll be just north of CityPark, the gem of a soccer stadium that is driving foot traffic and development.

This is the downtown Beganovic sees every day on his walks.

He walks at all times of day and into the evening. A resident of downtown, the 38-year-old walks to Laclede’s Landing, the Arch, Soulard, Union Station and Carr Square. He’s walked more than 16,000 miles in the past four years, sharing his finds — a new restaurant here, a building permit there — with his social media following.

“There is steady progress happening downtown,” Beganovic told me.

He was 9 when his family escaped war-torn Bosnia and, like thousands of other refugees, came to St. Louis to make a new home. Beganovic recently invited me for a walk, as he has other reporters and civic and business leaders — and anybody who will take him up on the offer.

He talks about visitors from out of town — he met a couple from Luxembourg the other day — and says they enjoy St. Louis, from the Arch, to the sports and entertainment venues, to the iconic City Museum. “The idea that it’s unsafe to come downtown and enjoy a restaurant,” he says, pausing for effect. “I can’t comprehend it.”

His walking, and his status as perhaps downtown’s No. 1 cheerleader, started during the pandemic. It was May 2020, and the gym where Beganovic worked out was closed. He started going on long walks to get his exercise. He’d see something new every day.

There was a time, he says, when he “believed all the narratives about downtown.” What he saw started to change his mind.

For his day job, Beganovic is a city planner. He currently works on planning for military installations around the world. Data is important to him, helping him reinforce what he sees with his own eyes.

Take crime. As I’ve written before, crime is down in St. Louis, and it has been significantly falling in the past three years. It’s also decreasing downtown. In fact, crime is down almost 40 percent downtown since its pandemic-era high. Meanwhile, downtown spending and job creation are both up.

When there is a bit of bad news downtown — a business leaving, or a high-profile crime — Beganovic goes to Twitter and other social media outlets and pushes back on the negative talk, adding data to the conversation. Like this nugget: In the first six months of 2024, according to state Department of Revenue statistics, downtown St. louis produced more than $900 million in taxable sales, far more than any other neighborhood or municipality in the St. Louis region.

A world traveler, Beganovic understands why some civic leaders often wring their hands when comparing St. Louis to other cities. A walk in downtown Nashville or Cincinnati, for instance, can make it seem like those cities are more vibrant. But part of that is simply because St. Louis, both its 2-square-mile downtown and the surrounding region, are more spread out than many other areas.

As we stood outside the construction site at the Jefferson Arms building, Beganovic pointed to the expanse of Tucker Boulevard, 10 lanes wide in some places.

“It was built for a different city,” he said of the road.

City leaders plan to give it a “diet” by cutting down the lanes and making it more bike- and pedestrian-friendly. Those sorts of changes are happening slowly, but they will make a big difference to the perceptions of downtown, Beganovic believes.

“The real issue in downtown is connectivity,” he says. “We have all these great things. They just need to be better connected.”

Not everybody is willing or able to walk as long as Beganovic is — from Union Station to Ballpark Village, north to the Convention Center and west on Washington Avenue. Downtown has pockets of success, but they are in silos. Giving pedestrians, bicyclists and drivers a clear path to connect from one place to another has to be a priority, he believes.

In the meantime, he’ll keep walking. He’ll keep challenging civic and business leaders to take as much pride in downtown as he does. This is his home, and he wants others to appreciate it.

“We can take pride in the progress that is being made,” Beganovic says. “You cannot deny that St. Louis is safer this year than it was last year, and the year before that. I don’t feel unsafe. I just don’t.”