What is the effect on a neighborhood when many of its buildings are boarded up with oriented strand board? How can a community feel as though there is potential in the vacant buildings?

“Bringing an outside third party to the table would complicate matters, McKee said.
‘There can’t be two different conversations going on at the same time,” he said. “You have to be respectful of the aldermen and the political process.’”

“April Ford-Griffin, the alderman who represents much of the redevelopment area, said she knew of the CBA effort but hadn’t seen details yet. She was worried, though, about writing too many specifics into a redevelopment plan.
‘There are things the market will determine. You cannot tell a developer that they have to put a grocery store here, that they have to do this or that,’ she said. ‘You can’t legislate every single detail of a development, or it will never happen.’”

And of course: “‘This is a community that was in existence before Paul McKee,’ said (Sheila) Rendon, who has lived in St. Louis Place her entire life. ‘People here don’t feel like this is just streets or a house to live in. This is their home.’”

The CBA and the Listening Project is all about the residents gaining information, feeling empowered and being able to guide any development that occurs in their community. The residents, through their alderpersons or through the CBA, must have a voice in what happens in their own land and community.

Are you a resident of St. Louis Place or JeffVanderLou?
If so come on down to 2314 Mullanphy. Better yet bring some food and some friends and we’ll make this a block party!
We want to know what stories you have from your life in the neighborhood. Who has made a difference in neighborhood life? What are your dreams for the future of your neighborhood? What would you change about your neighborhood if you could?

Some of the Summer of Solutions projects are still developing. The largest initiative, a so-called “listening project,” involves surveying north St. Louis residents (likely in the form of short questionnaires handed out at community events) about their hopes for the neighborhood. The idea, Legge said, is to get an idea of neighborhood demographics and the range of opinions about how to develop wide swaths of the area. The students are hoping to present the information to aldermen and other leaders at public meetings.

The students’ project comes in the wake of developer Paul McKee’s proposal about how to remake the neighborhood. “Our sense is that many people feel that they haven’t had a voice in the design process,” Legge said. “All these green eco-projects are being proposed, and if these things come about in a way that doesn’t involve community members it would be a huge lost opportunity.”

With these projects, students initially expressed concern that they would be seen by residents and politicians as fly-by do-gooders who don’t have a real stake in the city’s future. Legge said longtime community advocates assured them that fresh ideas are welcomed. The students hope that by working with these residents who have years of experience dealing with development plans, their projects will get increased attention and have legs beyond the summer.

Of note: McKee claims that the Clemens Mansion was already in its collapsing state before he bought it. McEagle properties claims to be throughly maintaining and protecting all of the 900+ parcels it owns. He emphasizes that all of the Tax Increment Financing money will be used for infrastructure. As this is taxpayer money, we as taxpayers must demand a sustainable infrastructure with such recent innovations as biofiltration, stormwater capture and filtration, emphasis on walkability and transit, and decentralized energy co-generation.

Interestingly McKee mentions preserving 60% of structures in the redevelopment area.
McKee’s inspiration and contention is that jobs drive the economy and the near north side provides the only available land to rebuild the St. Louis economy and “lead us to greatness”. The types of jobs are not explicitly clarified.

Looking around the country at regions with more positive job growth than St. Louis it seems strange to not emphasize and attract the type of green and emerging technologies that will propel the economy of the future.

On Flag Day we took a 15 mile bike ride around the proposed NorthSide redevelopment area.

We didn’t make it beyond the Central West End before there was a flat tire.


Once that was taken care of we rode through the West End, through Gaslight Square, and up N. Spring to Cass. We rode up Bacon to St. Louis exchanging waves and greetings to families spending their Sunday afternoon on their porches. By this time we had been riding for an hour so we decided to stop at Grand and St. Louis Ave. to get lunch.
Mi Hungry, located at 2812 N. Grand is a Jamaican restaurant and sports bar located near the former home of the Cardinals. If you ever want Jamaican-style chicken or goat this place is fantastic and pretty cheap. Fortunately they also had some non-meat options as well for our vegetarians.

Full and substantially slower than before, we said goodbye to our new friends and wandered back out into the bright sunlight. After a brief delay we got underway again.

We rode through several neighborhoods, entering St. Louis Place Park on Hebert. While there were quite a few boarded buildings we were struck by how many people are working to fix their neighborhood. We stopped briefly by a large mansion where some neighborhood residents were cleaning up trash and re-securing boards on the windows.

It was getting late and we were pretty tired, so we gladly accepted an invitation to stop by a neighborhood barbeque. We rode through an area some people call “the urban prairie” to get there. Interestingly, just like the historical prairie there are many people who in effect are homesteading by choosing to stay and rebuild their houses.

The kids had a playground that made us jealous and motivated others of us to forget how far we had ridden already and join in!


For our route, Click Here!

The beacon has a well researched and nuanced article covering the NorthSide development through the eyes of several experienced local figures and the Authour of Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City. Steve Patterson of UrbanReviewSTL expresses confidence in the outcome of the project, whatever it might be:

“McKee has a good track record of getting the big company headquarters, like MasterCard and Express Scripts,” he noted, “so I think he will end up building something.

This outlook frames the development issue around the responsibility of the developer towards the city at large for job creation and unfortunately neglects any responsibility to the existing residents, or as Richard Ward put it:

You have to be respectful of the people who are still living there, through all the decline that took place over the last 50 years.

Gene Mackey, co-founder of the architecture firm Mackey Mitchell took on the issue of performance and the importance of discrete and objective criteria for the development.

To be successful, because the ambition is so great, there ought to be some milestones that allow it to be achievable, things that can stand on their own. That way, he ultimately might get to where he’s going. A lot of things can happen over 20 years; a lot of things are going to change. So the plan he puts forward for a 20-year ambition is probably going to change. Does that mean we shouldn’t be ambitious? No. But it’s such a long reach to pull it off that I’m a little concerned about the staying power of a development business pulling it off over that period of time.

In the face of a two decade long development cycle, citizen participation is absolutely necessary. While McKee is experienced at developing corporate campuses and institutional projects the bulk of the development area is slated to be residential. The amount of change that could happen in terms of demands on residential markets and in terms of personal values over two decades is considerable. Continued resident participation in the process will help to soften whatever changes will occur and help the developer anticipate changes in demand and build accordingly.

We taxpayers must demand the milestones that Mackey references. If the city is to be on the hook for $205,000,000 up front (or roughly 25% of the annual budget) we, as the funders of that money have a right to hold a stake in that process. With so much public money involved we should be able to hold Mr. McKee to the promises that have been made thus far and to force additional performance criteria to make the area a paradigm of sustainable and inclusive urbanism. A development such as this happens once in a century and we must not waste this opportunity. Finally, exisitng residents must have a say in the criteria for the development. Those that have lived through the stunning decline of the neighborhood can best help prevent a recurrence.

If you were to design the perfect neighborhood what would it be like?

The majority of homes in North Saint Louis, like most vernacular housing in Saint Louis as a whole, are distinguished by their combination of a small decorative roof facing the street and a flat roof behind. Most of the roofscape of the city is made from laminated layers of black tar and roofing felt and is dark in color. This architectural vernacular presents a fantastic and easy opportunity for increased sustainability in the city. Since dark roofing materials absorb 80% of the heat that falls on them during summer days and release it slowly at night they result in higher air conditioning loads, wasted energy, and increased ambient air temperatures for the city as a whole. For a dramatic example of this try walking across a blacktop parking lot into a park in the summer. That difference is what happens to the city on an urban scale.

By funding a program to help homeowners and landlords to paint roofs white the ambient temperature of the city would be reduced and residents could save money on air conditioning. In addition, such a program could provide job-skills training and employment to neighborhood residents.

Professor Steven Chu, a Nobel prize winner and President Obama’s nominee for Energy Secretary recently stated that “if you take all the buildings and make their roofs white and if you make the pavement more of a concrete type of colour rather than a black type of colour, and you do this uniformly . . . it’s the equivalent of reducing the carbon emissions due to all the cars on the road for 11 years.”

Carbon reduction, more affordable utilities and jobs? Sounds like a solution!