Stltoday - New St. Louis community land trust aims to add green space, spur development to fight vacancy

St. Louis is on the cusp of creating a new community land trust, seeded with a $1 million funding pledge from the Missouri Department of Conservation over four years and a $1 million match from private foundations and public sources. It is beginning a search to hire an executive director and will later add more positions, including a land maintenance director and a neighborhood outreach coordinator.

The effort has quietly been underway for several years as the Green City Coalition. Born out of vacant building demolitions to add public green space absorbing rain runoff for a Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District program, the city and state Department of Conservation collaboration evolved to begin managing and improving other spaces. Often, that’s vacant lots owned by the LRA, the city’s land bank and owner of last resort for abandoned properties. But the group also has funding to acquire private land and has built neighborhood coalitions to help manage and plan for the spaces.

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/met ... 9ccb2.html

^ & ^^ Thanks for posting, I got a couple thoughts that come to mind after reading the links 

First, I have read about land trusts by other muni but really geared to buying housing and then selling the house itself as affordable housing but still keep the land ownership under a land trust.  The idea being to find first time buyers who would be outbid or simply can't afford current market.  So in that sense it makes a lot of sense to me.  Build home ownership with first time and or minority buyers instead of seeing more housing stock converted to rentals.

Second, from what I read this is more about a public private partnership to secure or maintained previously private property as green space.  I do like the idea that the city and county should really find a way to return some of the natural creeks that were replaced with sewers and expand the greenways in that respect and therefore address the flooding/sewer backup issues that plague the area as unintended consequence.  In that respect you can consolidated into some more dense neighborhoods the way the city once was.  But I can't quite understand the goal of this program other then take underutilized land for green space.   

Anyone with better idea of intended goal? outcome desired?  I hope it is not a plan that believes more green space, non taxable property as the long term outcome is the best solution.   Otherwise, pay some people to move/or provide a another residence within the city, rip up the infrastructure and go all in with an urban forest with the least amount of maintenance cost that can be determine..  Sorry, but what I read it sounds like the land trust is already hiring three with more people to come which will eat up the $1 million and corresponding matching funds without much to show for it IMO..     

This is actually great. There are a bunch of streams that were buried in favor of building upon that space. This has caused some problems for the homes that were built on and near those watersheds. Any concerns about any lost density should really be secondary in regards to the plans mentioned in the article. By "daylighting" the streams a bunch of areas will become prettier, more livable, more developable areas. 

From the article - 

"For example, the Wells-Goodfellow neighborhood historically had two really large streams come in and converge right in the middle of that neighborhood,” Ginn said. “And as they were turned into sewer systems, the water still flows there. And so we have these ongoing water problem areas. So we’ve got about seven acres in that neighborhood that's being converted to more of a passive recreation space, as its primary function is to absorb water and help alleviate those issues.

“But then, next step, hopefully [it will be] a quality outdoor space to go and interact with nature. Residents have prioritized an orchard in that space. So there’s fruiting trees within and a part of that, but it’s kind of got this larger function behind it. And each neighborhood is different.” 

^As long as the daylighted stream can be kept relatively clean this does sound like a win-win.