urbanSTL

As a resident of North St. Louis...I don't know what to think about this project. Part of me feels bad for the people that are still in these areas that will probably be misplaced...and I'm really not a fan of gentrification. It's difficult when you see the people who lived and loved a neighborhood their entire lives and they are shipped out for some tacky cookie-cutter urban development...but part of me would love nothing more than to see large-scale development in the city of St. Louis...more specifically North St. Louis...and if this is potentially hand in hand with the China Hub thing he's got going on then this can be huge for our city.



To be honest, I don't really know what the other options are. I mean, St. Louis City has shown for years that it doesn't have the ability or even the desire to turn this large swath of urban land into anything resembling a working neighborhood. If McKee can't get this NorthSide project off the ground...I don't see anything being done worthwhile in St. Louis Place, and especially not the Jeff Vander Lou neighborhood. The populations of these neighborhoods have been declining for years upon years and will continue to do so...from 1990-2000 the JVL witnessed at 35% population loss, St. Louis Place 26% and I'm pretty sure that trend continued from 2000 to now for both neighborhoods.

NOI divided by cap rate is a common method to value income producing property. However, it is based on projections and can be manipulated. For smaller properties like these, the Gross Income Multiplier is a decent method.



With that said, the only true market price is what a property sells for. However, in these neighborhoods, Comps are not actually a good method of valuing a home because there are not a lot of good comps because all of the properties are so different.

McKee seems to be committed to some serious investment towards his North-St. Louis concept. Granted, in lieu of some significant tax incentives.



We could go all out Don Quixote against him, but do we have an alternative?



(I am not aware of any takers in the last 50 years or so)

My main objection to some of the discourse here is the same as my objections to McKee's plan. It disappears me and my neighbors . It presumes, without question, our removal and the confiscation of our property.



I've read post after post of this profoundly disturbing viewpoint: "I feel like six billion is a good start for a project that is essentially like building on farm land in St. Charles (once you remove the people and confiscate their property)."... "I predict golf courses and mcmansions before cheap prefab housing. The property has too much money making potential (once you remove the people and confiscate their property) to squander it."..."A few isolated blocks of built environment is just that (once you remove the people and confiscate their property), a few isolated blocks of built environment that dot the landscape .".... "to live in these places (once you remove the people and confiscate their property) there needs to be services as well. A grocery store other than Save-A-Lot, gas stations where they won't get harassed by bums (i guess these are the newly homeless folks who fell off the removal wagons)"...



This is not farmland in St Charles, there are thousands of neighbors living here, we matter, and we will be staying. Try writing us back in.

barbara_on_19th wrote:My main objection to some of the discourse here is the same as my objections to McKee's plan. It disappears me and my neighbors . It presumes, without question, our removal and the confiscation of our property.



I've read post after post of this profoundly disturbing viewpoint: "I feel like six billion is a good start for a project that is essentially like building on farm land in St. Charles (once you remove the people and confiscate their property)."... "I predict golf courses and mcmansions before cheap prefab housing. The property has too much money making potential (once you remove the people and confiscate their property) to squander it."..."A few isolated blocks of built environment is just that (once you remove the people and confiscate their property), a few isolated blocks of built environment that dot the landscape .".... "to live in these places (once you remove the people and confiscate their property) there needs to be services as well. A grocery store other than Save-A-Lot, gas stations where they won't get harassed by bums (i guess these are the newly homeless folks who fell off the removal wagons)"...



This is not farmland in St Charles, there are thousands of neighbors living here, we matter, and we will be staying. Try writing us back in.

You totally captured the essence of my prior quote and I just love how you complemented it with own personal feelings. Its almost as if you read my mind.



But in honesty Barbara:



How can you point the finger at me?

Does Goat314 work for Paul McKee?

Am I your corrupt alderman taking under the table cash?

Did I overwhelmingly win the general election last November?

Are you just mad because I don't share your emotional position on this issue?



Since Doug is so in sync with the Black community maybe he can run for alderman next time around and take April Griffin's spot. I'm sure he would win by a landslide, then he can take his millions of dollars, and use your political leverage (because you guys are top notch consensus builders) to rebuild the Northside how you guys want it done.

Grover wrote:"It disappears me and my neighbors . It presumes, without question, our removal and the confiscation of our property."



This isn't true.

Grover, I dearly wish it weren't true, but it is a grammatical fact. Take a step back for a sec. Try to imagine you are one of us. Here is a helpful reader to get you in the mood.



http://curiousfeet.wordpress.com/2009/0 ... -st-louis/



Now go back and read this thread from the POV of someone living in the area, and look for your northside self, as subject or object, in the posts (not counting Doug's). The 3 times we are clearly mentioned it is with the words murderers, drug dealers and criminals. OK, I'll give you a pass on kujay's hyperbole, but actually like the fact that kujay at least imagines some human beings living up here, however felonious.



This discussion isn't about the affected families, it is without them. I did not say that you, Grover, want people to be removed, but that most commenters' posts, including your own, do not even make a reference to the people who live here. Even in the jokey posts, and yeah, I get the jokes, there are no northsiders. Just McKee's people, gov't officials, commenters thinking out loud about what happens next ... once the people in the way are removed and their property is confiscated.



Thanks for the anti-ad-hominem, btw, I appreciate the courtesy.

Reminder: Paul McKee cannot introduce legislation at the Board of Aldermen. All of the fears expressed here pertain to the power that legislation might grant McKee. Of course he wants as much power as he can get -- he's a developer. He can't force the aldermen to give him that power, though. That's their call. They can advance public power or private power. They can forge consensus. They can reject the project. They can support it wholeheartedly.



Legislation grants eminent domain rights, TIFs, private districts, etc. Legislation can also safeguard existing residents, limit eminent domain usage, include historic preservation requirements, etc. We can legislate a wonderful community vision for the area, although for 50 years no one has. Alderman after alderman has let these wards fall prey to exactly the sort of project now on the table.



The 5th Ward Plan never was implemented via legislation. Ditto for the JVL plan. Had they been, McKee's project would have had to fit within established community-based development frameworks.

^ So who is constructively working with the aldermen to influence legislation that meets various stakeholder concerns to include North St. Louis residents and developers? Or are the "leaders" in this community just running around w/ their heads cut off, screaming racism, and throwing f-bombs at McKee?

innov8ion wrote:Or are the "leaders" in this community just running around w/ their heads cut off, screaming racism, and throwing f-bombs at McKee?

No! The f-bomb dropper is not someone who has participated in the process at all yet, and made a rather bad introduction of himself. (However, his antics helped McKee out by giving him a moment of sympathy from the crowd and by quieting those who may have had more articulate things to stand up and say.)

Sorry barbara but your Fox news hysteria tactics will do nothing to keep Old North as it is. If you work with and hold McKee to the same standards you hold yourselves in rehabbing buildings missing walls and roofs and some stability then you will achieve your dreams.



McKee will not bulldoze you, he will make your property values skyrocket and truely make Old North and much of vacant and abandoned North STL a built out community again.



McKee is your access to banks, to state and local economic development help, to federal grants and major infrastructure billions, and to reviving St. Louis. Sure Old North has done a great job but imagine how much more McKee could help North STL in less than half the time it is taking South STL.



You need to realize that as wealthy as he is, McKee is RISKING EVERYTHING he has: his reputation, his life savings, his credibility with banks and governments, and his amassed fortune. He is the only major regional developer taking this risk and by golly you better be thankful and wish does not go away if you really want a revitalized Old North and North STL.



Work with him and hold him to the Old North standards you have held yourselves. This is much bigger than you or your neighborhood. What you do to fight McKee is in the eye of the nation and history. This is St. Louis's chance to re-emerge and it will be your fault for ruining the future of St. Louis for the several hundred thousands of people who will want to move back because of the quality environment McKee can bankroll and attract from governments.

SMSPlanstu wrote:If you work with and hold McKee to the same standards you hold yourselves ... imagine how much more McKee could help North STL ... by golly you better be thankful ... Work with him and hold him to the Old North standards you have held yourselves. ... it will be your fault for ruining the future of St. Louis.

@SMSPlanstu. ROFLMAO



Were you held hostage in a former life by McEagle's smarmy salesguys and developed Stockholm Syndrome? You can't credibly defend this guy by saying the neighbors haven't tried to work with him. Who do you think has dragged this plan into the light and gotten it whipped into at least this much shape? Us hysterical neighbors, that's who. McKee does not engage with the citizenry or our respected community organizations, despite a solid year of polite, hopeful requests that first year.



The only way we have of "holding him to standards" is to spend hours and hours investigating each new move, more hard work to get the word out and raise the issue, get press coverage, get meetings at the Mayor's office, write to all levels of elected officials, drive to Jeff City and lobby, get on forums and blogs, etc. Then, later, we hear that there has been a tweak, a little change in our direction.



For example, the first Arcturis plans that were leaked nearly 3 years ago showed obliteration of the street grid. We heard from many respectable development-insider sources (some of whom contribute here) that McKee's favorite thing to say about his plan was "let's bulldoze the ghetto"; "the price of p**** goes up when they know you are paying for it"; and "lets run the n****rs out of Germantown". Peter Kinder was quoted in the P-D parroting the "bulldoze" line. Jim Shrewsbury put on his website "It is not right to bulldoze entire neighborhoods", and McKee started funding folks to challenge him.



Who do you think flyered the entire 5th ward and got that fight started? We were vilified in the BJ as "Citizens Against Virtually Everything", as I recall. But, after a solid 6 months of fighting on that front, he got rid of Arcturis and hired Civitas Inc, who seem to be actual reputable urban planners. First thing Civitas did was restore the street grid to the plan. You can thank the hysterical neighbors for raising McKee's standards. I can give you more examples if you think the urban form vs suburban form of the plan is unimportant.



All the northsiders that I know would love to have a means of input into McKee's world (not to mention Slay's world) that would not require continual storming of the gates. We are working people, with full-time jobs, families, and it seems like most of us are in the middle of a brutal gut rehab. Give me a monthly 45-minute community meeting that someone else organizes and I will happily shut the ***** up on my own time. And no, that farce at Central Baptist doesn't qualify. When and if McKee opens up a normal, respectful channel for resident input and *acts* on it, sure, people will chill. In the meantime, we will keep doing the only thing we can do, which has had quite a few successes so far to protect our rights, and FLAME ON.

I fully agree that a barrage of expletives is a poor way of expressing oneself, and I looked like a lunatic. Since I was the one shouting them, I'll just say that I intended to sit quietly and see a presenatation, but when McKee started by saying, in essence: "sorry I ruined a huge section of your city, but it saved me a bunch of money", it literally sent me over the edge. The anger was real, and for me just boiled over. So be it. What's happening is undemocratic, irrational, and illegal. People should be angry, but I'm sure some people express their anger in more constructive ways. I guess I commend people for having the patience to try and bend McKee / this project to conform to some kind of standard of decency, but to me, it still looks like a losing battle. At a certain point, no amount of constructive work can compensate for the destruction that has been willfully inflicted on this area. McKee embodies a kind of unfathomable arrogance and cruelty that I could never trust.



While I may not have been part of any formal process, besides attending some other meetings, I've sent dozens of emails over the years to every relevant elected official. I've emailed McEagle and McKee himself. I've almost weekly toured the area by bike and watched with the destruction taking place. I've informed dozens of people who had no prior knowledge about this ongoing massacre at the hands of a single multi-millionaire. And it makes me sad to say, because St. Louis has been my home for 10 years, but I think we are on the verge of yet another spectacular failure of public policy in this city. What I see and hear from the Mayor, Aldermen, and McKee is either a frightening level of incompetence or a frightening level of collusion and fraud. Well, maybe all three. For me, its worth considering whether anything even remotely similar could happen in Minneapolis where I grew up - and I tell you it couldn't. The whole narrative of this project defies comprehension. I'm left with literally no faith in my city government.



Anyway - to those out there who see McKee as the only remaining, or at least best, hope for this area - find me another project of this scale (500+ acres & 5 or 6 billion) that has been successful - especially one that wasn't carefully planned and organized by a robust and cohesive government entity. Find me a successful urban project of this scale that was spearheaded by a single company. In any case, the downside here is staggering - McKee has spent ~ 45 million for a 5.5 billion dollar project, which means he's planning on leveraging his current investment 120 times... I don't think McKee has enough money for even 5% of this project. So regardless of what he comes up with - he's counting on billions of dollars of loans to succeed. In addition to loans - he's looking for 1.1 billion in subsidy. Revenue for all of 2008 was only like 960 million in the city - so he's asking for a subsidy greater than the city's budget for an entire year. Tell me that makes sense. This project is way too big to succeed - and its very size now holds the rest of the city hostage to McKee. We all know that St. Louis, and the rest of the country, already have a sizeable surplus of all kinds of residential and commercial property. Projects in much more desirable areas than this (no offense intended) are at a standstill. Banks have a huge mess on their hands just clearing out the properties they've been forced to take possession of.



And on top of all that business - we're giving away our city to a racist, lying swindler. And for the love of god - this city deserves better.

My church conference did the same manuever to our campus ministry organizations. We put up a fight and ended up losing because we didn't speak for the thousands of future students and the result is still too new and I'm gone.



Either way ask yourselves if you represent the thousands of new residents, business owners, community organizations, churches, and other stakeholders in this crusade. Remember in the end the crusades failed and history longs negatively on them. Working with McKee does not need to be this uphill crusade but partnership. He should have partnered with Old North Restoration from the get go, no doubt about it. Unfortunately most developers are not so savvy.



You are very wise in having a watchdog group but emotions are not a method that works in the political system: peaceful protest or voting are. All of us sympathize with the residents of Old North for the atrocities of the past five years but isn't amazingly hopeful now that it is over and was just a tried and true gimmick to establish a foundation. I hope for the future of Old North that you continue to fight for the neighborhood but value judgments and misrepresenting statements without primary accounts is hysteria in the Fox news form and undermines the cause. Anger is never fruitful and beneficial. The alderwoman get it, talk to them politely and calmly; maybe they will explain why they have shifted course. Our church conference leaders told us why all along but we weren't listening or understanding and too busy fighting and being a watchdog.



Bless you and Old North for so many great efforts: the market is now responding and that market is McKee, may you complement each other to revitalize and re-build North St. Louis cooperatively, comprehensively, and compassionately.

Do we have any evidence that Mckee ever said those things - real evidence? Especially the "n word" comment. That's a pretty serious accusation, and frankly I'm suspicious of it. It has the whiff of urban legend to it. Even if he did think that way he would be an absolute moron to say it out loud. He does not appear to be a moron.



and as for "bulldozing" neighborhoods and "destroying the street grids" - shouldn't we wait for the actual plans before leveling such criticisms? Believe me, if that's what he puts on the table then EVERYONE in this forum will stand up against it. but to attack on that front now seems a bit absurd. we simply don't know what he's proposing yet.



From what I can gather it seems that he definatly let property decay and avoided local authorities etc. but it also seems that he has done quite a few good things for the area as well (see the post article today). Moreover, he seems to be acknowledging his past sins.



All I'm saying as lets cool down here and give the guy a chance to at least make his case. Lets see that actual plans. Lets see what he will do to guarantee that his property will no longer be left to rot. lets see what safeguards can be put in place - and then lets judge.

Again, no relation to the man or the company, just an educated perspective from talking with developers and why they do the things they do.

could you specify exactly which developers you've talked to in forming this "educated" opinion?

Actually Scotto McKee is not doing anything illegal or outside the rights of a property owner.

actually, SMSPlantsu, McKee has been fined for neglecting his properties. so actually he IS doing something illegal. actually. unfortunately it costs him less to pay the fines than to maintain the properties.

My church conference did the same manuever to our campus ministry organizations. We put up a fight and ended up losing because we didn't speak for the thousands of future students and the result is still too new and I'm gone.

i'm sorry, but this is a ridiculously inappropriate comparison. we're not talking about membership in a campus ministry organization. we're talking about people losing their homes.

Maybe the City should require developers to do a sociology impact study to determine who is impacted and to what extent.

wow, how Christian of you.

It's business and business isn't pretty.

wow, how completely UN-Christian of you. (at least i'm assuming that you condone such practices based on your support for McKee's methods.)

Governments are in business and if people want to be savvy then they need to talk turkey and numbers just like McKee.

um... what? that is NOT the intended role of the government. if it were, then people wouldn't be b*tching about the president firing the head of GM, now would they? furthermore, the average citizen doesn't have a business degree, so how in the hell are they going to "talk turkey" with McKee? so since the neighbors can't "talk turkey" then any developer should be able to come into their neighborhood without government supervision or supervision from the residents themselves? it's the job of the city government to ensure such oversight, not make business deals!

I'll rephrase what I meant about leverage. The point is that McKee doesn't have the money to do this on his own - or to even start this project. Maybe it would be better to say that McKee is looking at a debt to equity ratio of about 100 to 1. People go into debt to finance projects all the time - but not this kind of debt. Its the same as someone with 10 or 20 grand borrowing a million dollars to build a million dollar apartment complex. There's no way to get that kind of loan - what McKee is already saying he's going to do is squeeze the city for the money. But the City doesn't have this kind of money either - although we are going to be forced to try to come up with some of it - because no city wants 500 acres of bulldozed ground to lay vacant indefinitely. The point of buying all the land while deceiving the public wasn't to buy the land cheaply - even if prices had been bid up a little (which was probably unlikely, especially given the explicit threat of eminent domain) - the total cost of land for the project wouldn't have even been 2% of the project cost. The point of buying the land on the sly (while lying about it to public, lets not forget) was to amass so much land that McKee now has the city (not to mention the neighborhood) held hostage. We're now in a position where we either bend to his will or potentially get nothing. Its a position no city should be in - and its one that cities with leadership don't find themselves in. THIS PROJECT IS TOO BIG - it too big for either the city or McKee - even working jointly, to fund. So, in a short while - the real people we'll be looking to as either saviors or villans will be banks and venture funds - and guess what - banks are getting a little stingy about lending money these days - so the city will be forced to give anything and everything away, to make the sweetest possible deals to the lenders and McKee - just to keep this moving forward - if we're lucky. So I think 'held hostage' is pretty much the right term.



Also in brief - Cities and Governments are not in business (unless you live in China or Russia) They are in the 'business' of making and enforcing laws, and ensuring the rights of their citizens - thats pretty basic stuff. Even in the "real world" what you might get is cities, 'fostering business' and in our backwards state - sometimes funding it with public money while allowing private interests to take the profits.



Also briefly - McKee is breaking the law, hundreds of times over. Maybe he's doing it with the consent of the Mayor - but the law is still the law - How do your think the city amassed so much LRA property - by taking it from people who do the same things McKee does. Let some kids be sexually assaulted in your house, and then let it fall to the ground, and see if you are treated the same way McKee is. (Or even just paint your house the wrong color in some places, and you'll find out if you've broken the law)



And - he is a liar. This whole ill-fated ordeal started with one big lie, which went, "I don't own any property in North St. Louis - Circa 2005.

"I don't own any property in north St. Louis"



He could be parsing his words here (and being "lawyerly"). He likely was hiding behind the fact that the property was technically owned by LLC's and the like. He would not be "lying" because he would not have owned anything personally.. Big real estate types often play this game when they are trying to hide the fact that they are buying up large swaths of property - which is exactly what he was doing. As has been pointed out before - this subterfuge is considered to be a good business practice because once word gets out that property is being scooped up in bulk - the price of the remaining property skyrockets. I've worked with a few large developers who were buying in bulk - they all did the exact same thing. We were all under strict confidentiality agreements to keep the purchases secret. If anyone let the cat out of the bag - they would have been fired and sued. - secrecy is simply essential with such projects. In fact, if McKee had investors they likely would have sued him for divulging their purchases even if they had no confidentiality agreement- it would be considered malpractice or a breach of fiduciary duty.