State Senator Jeff Smith, State Rep. Rodney Hubbard, preservationist and Blairmont watchdogMichael Allen, and representatives of Old North St. Louis Restoration Group, the Carr Square Tenant Management Corporation, and the St. Louis Housing Authority gathered yesterday at the 14th Street Mall (which is currently undergoing a $30 million restoration) to discuss the process by which some important amendments were added to the controversial Distressed Areas Land Assemblage Tax Credit and what they will be looking for from developers and the Board of Aldermen as any projects move forward.
Poisoning the well of good faith negotiations in trying to reach a compromise on the controversial Land Assemblage Tax Credit is the amount of anger and raw emotion people have towards its chief architect, Paul McKee, and the amount of damage he has done to a community already devastated by decades of neglect.
“Paul McKee creates blight,” said 5th Ward Alderman April Ford Griffin last week as she showed legislators and her aldermanic colleagues long-standing brick buildings which now sit with entire walls spilled out onto its once green yard.
She told the other lawmakers about reports from neighbors of mysterious men ramming Bobcats into the sides of buildings, which only months before housed families, causing the walls to fall onto themselves and leaving the building open to the elements, looters and drug dealers.
Some scenes in the video you are about to watch look like they were filmed in the most devastated areas of New Orleans. Mr. McKee and others will point to these images and say this is why he needs this tax credit. What is important for Missouri’s state legislators to understand, say city aldermen, is that just 18-24 months ago, many of these buildings were homes with families living in them. Then Blairmont came.
This is where the anger comes from.
But after all the anger surrounding this one man, what St. Louis’ Legislative delegation must remember is that this problem is larger than one man, even this man who in the short-term has made the situation worse.
There are 100 million dollars in much needed tax credits on the table. The challenge over the next few days is how to make them available to people who do care about these communities, organizations and developers who are respectful of the people of these areas and sensitive to their desires about the future of their community, and not to reward a man who has for so long, so blatantly disregarded the men, women and children forced to live next to his piles of bricks and self-made blight.
At a press conference this morning at the corner of Montgomery Street and N. Garrison Avenue in north St. Louis, 5th Ward Alderman April Ford-Griffin voiced her concerns about the proposed Land Assemblage Tax Credit that is once again being discussed by state legislators.
Griffin echoed concerns that the bill needs to be amended to allow others beside controversial St. Charles developer Paul McKee to benefit. According to Griffin, McKee has intentionally allowed his 500-plus properties in north St. Louis to deteriorate — and in some cases, workers have intentionally knocked down walls and destroyed foundations — in order to drop the property values and buy more land.
Griffin said the state legislature should not reward McKee for his poor stewardship of these properties.
Griffin also accused Mayor Francis Slay’s office someone in city government of sending city workers to McKee’s sites yesterday to clean up his lots ahead of today’s press event.
Several other aldermen, including Charles Troupe, Dionne Flowers, Freeman Bosley, Sr., Marlene Davis, Jeffrey Boyd, Terry Kennedy, Frank Williamson, Bill Waterhouse, and Board President Lewis Reed attended the event. State Reps Jeanette Mott Oxford and Jamilah Nasheed, who both helped organize the event, were joined by colleagues Rodney Hubbard, Cynthia Davis (R-O’Fallon) and Ron Casey (D-Crystal City). License Collector and former 19th Ward alderman Mike McMillan also attended.
As they wait to see if Governor Matt Blunt decides to sign the huge check that is House Bill 327 — which gives millions of dollars to dozens of entities, including developer Paul McKee and his “Blairmont” companies — residents of the north St. Louis neighborhoods most affected by McKee’s secret plan hold their breath and look to the sky for the other shoe to drop.
