42 LRA lots around Clara and St. Edwards. Just south of St. Louis Avenue in the 22nd ward semi-near Wellston. South of the Mark Twain Industrial Complex. It's not a completely vacant neighborhood, just the area where the tree farm is going.
Really like this idea. I haven't had the time yet to read anything about them aside from the article you posted but are they planning on engaging the community? I imagine some jobs will come from it but it would be great to have programs for kids. A lot of kids don't grow up appreciating nature/their environment especially when they grow up in urban areas. Even though we have great resources with our state and nationally renowned Botanical Gardens, our great public parks in the city, our trails, and our state parks.
I'm sure they have to have some people engaged in maintaining the lots or else there's going to be a terrible chip bag filled understory of honeysuckle. It'd be nice if we had more places like the green center anchoring spots like this so that there could be the sort of engagement you're talking about. Just a little place-based non-profit that runs programs in a park. It'd be easier to do that with an urban forestry company backing it up.
I believe the tree farm is within the edge of the northern River des Peres watershed, so it could be put in conversation with Beyond Housing and the Engelholm Creek tributary. There are plenty of narrative elements to work on there.
For $1, it sounds like a garden lease. The video from Flint made it seem like they're operating with land bank systems in those other communities as well. If that gets them out of property taxes, then they're doing something very interesting by tackling the whole rust belt at a million-dollar scale. As far as I know, nobody has ever tried a profit model based on land banks in multiple cities. It's a great triple bottom line sort of strategy.