ome help, however, is finally on the way. Club Imperial, along with three other north St. Louis historic sites that have seen better days, will get some long overdue care and investment from their owner: the city of St. Louis’ land bank.

In addition to Club Imperial, the Chuck Berry House on Whittier Street and the Sara-Lou Cafe at the corner of St. Louis Avenue and North Sarah Street, both in the Greater Ville, will get stabilization money. The funds will also go toward repairs on the old Wellston Loop streetcar station on Martin Luther King Drive. The board of the Land Reutilization Authority last month set aside $4.5 million in federal pandemic aid for the effort. That money, plus another $1 million from the city’s economic development sales tax fund, will go toward emergency repairs — such as new roofs — for the LRA-owned structures to protect them from the elements and prevent them from deteriorating further.

“This is really about being good stewards of assets this community has valued, and we’re doing our best to bring them back online,” Lance Knuckles, the LRA’s chief, said in an interview Monday. “These sites have consistently come up as, what are we going to do about these community gems?”
The LRA serves as the owner of last resort for thousands of abandoned buildings and vacant lots across the city, most of them in the hollowed-out north side. It’s usually just barely able to make ends meet and keep up with mowing and board-ups on its existing inventory. Except for the occasional grant, it almost never has extra money to put toward major building renovations.

Officials believe the limited pool of commercial building stabilization funds could have the greatest impact by being invested in the historic sites in its inventory, Knuckles said. Hopefully, the initial city investment will make it easier for redevelopers and nonprofits to finish rehabbing the structures and find new uses for them. And it will prevent the elements from rendering them beyond saving, a state they are perilously near.