Hope for a turnaround
07/01/2007
For three years, developer Paul McKee Jr. quietly has been buying more than 500 forlorn properties scattered across an impoverished area of north St. Louis. His multi-million-dollar investment signals that a long-neglected section of the city is ripe for a turnaround.
Mr. McKee is an accomplished developer with such projects as WingHaven, a 1,100-acre residential and commercial center in St. Charles County, to his credit. He clearly sees economic opportunity in north St. Louis — for himself and for the neighborhoods of the area. Few others have had the vision to recognize such possibilities, particularly on the scale of Mr. McKee's holdings.
Successful urban makeovers have been done before, including some in St. Louis. But Robert Lewis, principal at Development Strategies, a St. Louis consulting firm specializing in real estate and development, said he never has heard of a project spread over such a wide area in a city the size of St. Louis. "He's to be commended for taking some leadership," Mr. Lewis said. "The kinds of things McKee could do would stimulate even more investment."
The area includes the JeffVanderLou, St. Louis Place and Old North St. Louis neighborhoods and parts of some others just north and west of downtown. Some blocks are well-kept. Beautiful old mansions still line St. Louis Avenue. But abandoned buildings are more common. One-third of the housing stock was vacant in 2000, the most recent year for which census numbers for the area are available. So many buildings have been bulldozed and so many lots are overgrown with weeds that some blocks look almost rural.
The area lost about a third of its population between 1990 and 2000, although it has ticked up a little since then. Current population of the three main neighborhoods stands at 11,000. Many of the residents are poor. The population is about 90 percent African-American. Of the families with children recorded by the census, 72 percent were headed by single moms.
But the last few years have seen stirrings of revival. New, mixed-income housing developments have been pushing north from downtown. Builders and rehabbers are busy restoring the 19th-century architecture and street plans of Old North St. Louis.
And Paul McKee has been buying property. Prices tend to rise when word spreads that a developer is buying, so Mr. McKee often acquired his lots through dummy corporations with different names. When some of those properties were allowed to deteriorate, it aroused the anger of neighbors — particularly those who have been trying to combat crime, blight and abandonment and attract stable, financially secure families to set roots in long-fallow soil. They feared that speculators were buying up abandoned property just to let it sit, hoping prices would rise. They traced the purchases back to Mr. McKee and blew the whistle.
Mr. McKee's representatives say he's now stuck owning widely scattered properties with no way to assemble a large tract suitable for development. "He can't go forward. Nobody is going to sell him any property unless they double or triple the price," said his lawyer, Steve Stone. "He has to sit tight."
Perhaps, but as a story by Post-Dispatch reporter Jake Wagman and researcher Jaimi Dowdell recently explained, the city of St. Louis owns much of the land adjacent to Mr. McKee's many holdings, and it could use eminent domain to help him fill in holes. A state law that includes a tax-credit provision that could benefit Mr. McKee's efforts in the area was enacted by the Legislature this spring and is awaiting Gov. Matt Blunt's signature.
Now that Mr. McKee's interest and acquisitions in the area are public knowledge, St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay should work closely with the developer to produce a plan that will benefit the city with quality, mixed-income housing, new businesses and new jobs. Given the time it would take to devise, approve and execute a plan on such a large scale, the sooner the planning begins, the sooner the revival can begin.
Such a development would be a tonic for north St. Louis. It could bring the middle class back to neighborhoods they've abandoned. It could provide decent jobs in an area without enough. It could form a node around which more businesses and housing could expand.
Any such development also must deal fairly with the area's urban pioneers who have been risking their own money and sweat equity to painstakingly recreate decent neighborhoods and with low-income residents whose options for housing already are few and far between.
And it is time to bring the neighbors, the aldermen, the planners and the public into the conversation. The silence from Mr. McKee and Mayor Slay has combined with an absence of hard information to breed suspicion, rumor and mistrust.
Alderman April Ford Griffin, who represents the area, says Mr. McKee owns so many decrepit properties in so many places that he spreads blight and discourages others who have rehabilitation plans. "We're being held up . . . because this individual has come in and wants control," she said. "You can't say you care about people and treat people with disregard."
Mr. McKee must take better care of his vacant properties. Some of the structures on his lots are collapsing. Entire two-story facades have fallen into front yards, exposing interior rooms to the elements. Other buildings are doorless and dark, making them havens for drug sales and use and prostitution.
Some plywood and nails, some mowing and some selective use of bulldozers could go a long way toward easing the concerns of residents of a community that has suffered from decades of decline and that, in the absence of concrete information, is nervous about Mr. McKee's intentions.
It's time to part the curtain and show the public what is in store.
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