Drinks & Mortar will gather this evening, Thursday September 24, at 7pm, at Mandina’s (1319 St. Louis Avenue, 1/2 block east of Crown Candy). Come talk about last night’s “public” TIF hearing, what happens now, city life, etc. All are welcome.
(Drinks & Mortar is a sorta-monthly gathering to talk about the city, civics, buildings, Blairmont, etc.)
And of course, since it’s on the North Side, Mandina’s has reasonable prices!
yours,
Claire Nowak-Boyd
clairelovesthecity {at} gmail.com
Tonight is the big TIF hearing at City Hall. The TIF Commission will have a hearing at 6pm TODAY, Wednesday September 23 at City Hall, 1200 Market Street.
The TIF Commission will decide whether developer Paul McKee, who has spent five years blockbusting in North St. Louis, gets $398,000,000 from our cash-strapped city. He wants the city to back the bonds, meaning we are on the hook if his project fails. In the past, when the city has backed the bonds, we’ve ended up holding the bag.
The City of St. Louis is currently considering firefighter and police furloughs, and has laid off people in the License Collector’s office. My own block currently does not receive trash removal service. The spin is that it’s a “pension crisis,” but yet the city keeps giving out TIFs, to say nothing of this one. We simply do not have the funds to bail out Mr. McKee, who admitted on video Monday that he would not be able to afford to continue the project without this TIF. Well-informed word is that he can’t get any more loans from banks without the TIF. In a city already failing to provide services to many citizens, this is not okay. If I may quote Tom Duda’s twitter, “Really, please tell me what #STL City services you are willing to give up for Paul McKee.”
After four years of experiencing and witnessing and hearing about McKee’s despicable, manipulative treatment of North Siders, I find myself tired and short on words. I don’t know how to construct a rational response to something so impossible. Two days ago, an older black longtime homeowner from St. Louis Place who came to one of our North Side CBA meetings kept repeating and repeating: “I feel like I’ve been dreaming ever since they told me about it. It can’t be real. Would somebody please pinch me?”
Do not be fooled by this hateful man who calls himself a developer. Do not be fooled by his urbanist-washing of the situation, his silly Powerpoint that he will hastily zoom out from and cry “It’s a vision, not a plan” the very second a St. Louis Place resident starts to ask him why their house and street have both been erased. I have seen many smart folks get distracted by the wind turbines and alleged job creation centers McKee shows in his little song-n-dance, but I have seen nothing to convince me he has any intention of ever delivering on these promises. (To the contrary: He wants condemnation rights to a number of operating, healthy local businesses as a part of this TIF app. Places that have jobs that employ people. My own beloved neighborhood hardware store operator recently complained that McKee’s deliberate emptying-out of our ward has “eviscerated my customer base.” The hardware store survived the Great Depression, but they don’t know if they’ll make it through Paul McKee’s garbage.)
McKee’s so-called vision, at meeting after non-public meeting, seems to change based on what he perceives the audience wants to hear. The pretty pretty Powerpoint is to shoo off the urbanists, who were some of his earliest critics. In private, so-called “community meetings,” he’ll say any damn thing, up to and including agreeing to put in a Sports Authority because someone said they would really like one here.
The only thing on McKee’s TIF app that has a timeline on it is Downtown. He wants to start building there right away. He also has stated that he wants to do all the demolition up here in the 5th ward area by the end of 2010. So, he wants to wipe most of our area off the map right away, but has no idea when he will ever build here. This TIF is not about benefiting us or even the ground upon which our homes stand. We are just a pitiable face, a largely minority face, that he can paste on this request for public money so that he can get his money for Downtown.
After years of “No, I am not Blairmont” why do we believe anything this guy says? Why would we entrust him with $398 million of our dollars? Doug Duckworth captured a very uncomfortable McKee on tape at a meeting about his development in Old North St. Louis on Monday. I was there, and I heard so much bullshit out of McKee. (Only 10-15 of his buildings have been wrecked? Yeah, maybe on the 1900 block of Wright alone!) He thinks that our memories are that short, that no one will catch him in his lies (hence his worries about Duckworth’s camera, to the point of physically rushing him).
Rather than buying over 1,000 properties, McKee could have kept his assets to a number he could maintain and successfully develop. But no, my impression is that he intentionally structured things this way because he was counting on the bailout of the TIF (and the subsequent DALATC bailout from the state, if he gets the TIF and the steps are set in motion).
We can do better than this. Don’t let anybody tell you that bailing out Paul McKee is the only way development will ever happen again in North St. Louis. We need a process that builds on our strengths, not one that obliterates them. The North Side needs help, but giving $398,000,000 to its longtime abuser to continue the destruction is not the first step of the healing process.
Things you can do to help North St. Louis tonight:
1. Come out.
2. Consider saying a few words. Or just standing up and saying that you support us.
3. Wear white to show your solidarity.
4. Bear witness. Bring a camera, bring a recording device, bring your Twitter-enabled cell and don’t let anybody you’re not allowed to record. It’s a public hearing.
“The plight of the person is being lost in the definition of who people think this affects.”
–Annice Moses, on social struggles and limited resources facing Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood
I want to spotlight these two comments left on my previous post by neighbors, to make sure they get read. They are important.
“On September 22, 2009 at 12:11 pm ribkaw Said:
A local realtor called me last night about one of her clients who is a victim of Land Baron Paul McKee’s, land banking scheme. Evidently McKee entered into a purchase agreement w/this gent on a 6-plex located in the condemnation zone. McKee gave the gentleman a few thousand $$$$ upfront and was supposed to finalize the deal in 12 mos. The condition of the sale was that the property, that was fully occupied, had to vacated. The gentleman cleared his building of all tenants. Well, Mr. McKee ran out of money and couldn’t complete the sale. The gentlemen has a mortgage on the property, it is now stripped and in foreclosure. As soon as the building was emptied within weeks the scrap bandits had stripped the properties. The property owner is now in financial ruin and pissed to high heaven at McKee who will answer none of his calls. The property owner will be at the Save Our Communities Rally this evening; and, TIF Hearing. I’m sure there are many more McKee property owner victims out here. Hopefully once this gentleman comes forth others will follow suit.”
“On September 22, 2009 at 2:01 pm barbara_on_19th Said: |Edit This
Doing door-to-door outreach in the community to make sure everyone knows this is happening, I have run into several people holding open contracts, at least one of which did the same. Evicted their own tenants on the promise of a contract that then did not close. Roberta de Fiore, Bridget Calcaterra, Harvey Noble and khaki pants lady from last night — I predict they are all going to burn in some dusty old circle of hell reserved for the lackeys and toadies without whom fascism would fail.
On the finance side, McKee did admit to his dire straits last night. Graham Lane from the ONSLRG board asked him about selling his ONSL properties. He said “as soon as I get my tax credits I can maybe sell these off in the spring” (paraphrase). Graham said, what if you don’t get the tax credits? McKee said “well someone else will be here talking to you, not me” (paraphrase). I think that is as clear an admission that he is hanging by a thread that I have heard so far. The $14M he owes the FDIC for the failed Corn Belt Bank & Trust loans is going to bring him down if he does not get the loans brought up to “saleable loan” condition, if you know what I mean. FDIC can’t sell them, has been holding them since February, how much longer are we taxpayers going to wait on McKee’s aspirational DALATC money with the FDIC taking a beating every Bank Failure Friday.”
I took some photos of scuzzy developer Paul McKee tonight, at his meeting at Ames School in Old North St. Louis. I wasn’t planning to post them here. I just wanted to take some photos of the man who has spent years intentionally decimating my community.
They’re not even very good photos. Most of them are blurry, and in many the light’s all wrong. I know my dinky camera doesn’t do that well capturing a subject in motion from that far away, and I had no desire whatsoever to get as close to Mr. McKee as I would’ve had to in order to get good photos of him.
But when I got my wee camera out and started taking photos, from my seat over on the side of the room, Paul McKee freaked out. He told me to stop taking photos. I told him calmly that it was a public meeting, in a public building. He told me again to stop. I repeated myself. He said that he doesn’t like it when his photo is taken, because it ends up “on the blogs.”
One of his employees then came over and tried to get me to stop. She asked me in a stern tone to stop. She was all up in my personal space.
I told her it was a public meeting, in a public building. Still she persisted, trying to intimidate me into stopping.
Only when my attorney intervened did she stop haranguing me verbally. She did however stand next to me for a while after that, in a quiet attempt to frighten me out of taking more photos.
Eventually, McKee’s tech savvy crew realized that Doug Duckworth was filming the meeting. They then set upon him (illustrated below).
The same McKee staffer gave Duckworth trouble. When that didn’t work, Alderwoman Marlene Davis went over and leaned over his chair and started trying to make him stop taking photos, acting as if she was McKee’s personal bouncer (illustrated below). After years of fighting this project, I’ve learned not to expect even rudimentary decency from McKee, but seeing this behavior from one of our elected officials who claimed aloud that she was acting on behalf of the community was still a shock. It was inappropriate and disgusting, to be blunt.
Duckworth moved to the back of the room to film. McKee kept complaining about the filming, ultimately coming back to do a weird sort of action where he stood in front of Duckworth and then backed into him. McKee finally refused to say anything else unless Duckworth stopped taping, and started packing up his things as if he were a defeated third grader taking all his toys and going home.
Duckworth thankfully got it all on tape. You can watch McKee’s confrontation and read Doug’s summary of it here, and I recommend doing so. It’s pretty entertaining.
The question, of course, is why try so very hard to squash even the slightest documentation of the meeting? What could really come of a coupla blurry photos and some video? It seems that Paul McKee fears any media that he does not control.
Neighbors I’ve spoken with who attended McKee’s previous “community meetings” have been shocked at his willingness to throw out any claim, his seeming desire to want to tell neighbors whatever they wanted to hear. I know tonight McKee threw out a lot of claims he has been consistently unwilling to back up in any sort of legally binding writing. He referenced an “agreement,” but wouldn’t name what it was. He also said a lot of things that made me want to stand up and pull a Joe Wilson. This is a man who told my neighbors, who told the media, who told many people that he was not Blairmont until very recently. His record on truthfulness ain’t exactly sterling.
Paul McKee’s previous “community meetings” have been at churches, so that they weren’t technically public meetings. His behavior has been even worse in these instances. Notably, one of my neighbors was made to leave the meeting at St. Stanislaus Kostka and was even followed after leaving. Not okay. If I may quote another neighbor’s tweet about this evening’s meeting, “If this is McEagle’s community engagement style, I actually want LESS.”
I also want to note that tonight Alderwoman April Ford Griffin answered many of McKee’s questions for him, in a defensive manner (illustrated below). Like Alderwoman Davis’s behavior, I found it highly inappropriate. Alderwoman Ford Griffin took her usual You don’t know how hard it is to be us! rambling tone. Alderwoman Ford Griffin, you are not my representative.
My impression at this point is that due to McKee’s well-documented fiscal troubles (including foreclosure proceedings on a warehouse in Hazelwood that McKee built two years ago), he desperately needs public money in order to continue. I’m told he can’t get more loans until he gets this TIF. So, he’s slapped a North Side face on it, but his own TIF app sets no timetable whatsoever for rebuilding the North Side. He does, however, want to demolish everything he possibly can (except for about 60 buildings) by the end of 2010. So, we may not get development for years, if ever, but he wants to wipe our community off the face of the earth ASAP. Disgusting.
I honestly did not originally pick up my camera tonight with any intention of publishing photos here, but I do not appreciate being shushed or intimidated, especially in my own community.
A closing thought: If you put hundreds of people out of their homes, you hide your identity, and you want to wipe out whole neighborhoods, yeah we might want to take your picture.
Reposting this joyous news. As a four year resident of Old North St. Louis and as a caffeine addict, I am SO glad we finally have a cafe in the neighborhood!
(P.S. Wonderful photos here.)
Announcement follows:
Join us for the Grand Opening of the Urban Studio Cafe!
Thursday, September 17th
8 a.m. to 10 a.m.
Stop by for a complimentary cup of coffee and learn more about our mission to foster a sense of strong community, creativity, knowledge and enrichment while providing a quality cup of joe.
The Urban Studio Cafe
2815 N. 14th St.
St. Louis, MO 63107
Announcement follows:
We’re located just an ice cream cone’s throw away from Crown Candy Kitchen in Old North St. Louis.
We’re now open daily from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. We feature quality Kaldi’s coffee and delicious baked goods from Angel Baked Cookies. We have free wi-fi. You can even book the Cafe for group meetings and events. For more information visit our website at www.urbanstudiocafe.org or follow our blog at www.theurbanstudio.org.
The Urban Studio Cafe is a non-profit venture through Grace Hill. Proceeds from coffee shop sales support after-school and summer arts programming. Urban Studio Cafe is a Skandalaris Center Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition award recipient which led to a start-up grant from the Incarnate Word Foundation. We appreciate their support – and welcome yours too!
Dewey Decimal Drinks is this Thursday, September 17th. We will gather starting at 7pm. (Dewey Decimal Drinks is a monthly happy hour for librarians and sympathetic types in St. Louis, MO.)
We’ll be in the upstairs Game Room of the always yummy Sandrina’s, located at 5098 Arsenal (Arsenal and Brannon). Their menu is up at www.sandrinasstl.com. They have pizza and other delicious goodies, not to mention $1.50 PBR. They’re open til 3AM, should you feel the need to alphabetize late into the night.
Hope to see you there.
yours,
Claire-ian the Librarian
clairelovesthecity {at} gmail.com
Edited to add: Looking for MetroLink Prom 2009 event information? Find it here.
Join us for a fairytale journey of dancing and finery aboard MetroLink, METROLINK PROM 2009! Because you don’t need a fairy godmother to help you get home safe when you’re transit savvy!
We will be dancing and riding on the evening of October 23, 2009 in St. Louis, Missouri. Formal wear strongly encouraged. At MetroLink Prom last year, we crowned prom king and queen, had a slow dance, distributed Metro themed corsages, and paraded in our finery through Laclede’s Landing. Over 80 people attended. Please join us this year for our Enchanted Ride. More info coming soon!
Watch this blog or holler at clairelovesthecity {at} gmail.com for updates.
BRING YOUR FRIENDS!
Much luv,
Miss MetroLink & Claire-ian the Librarian
Imagine, if you will, a rainbow street. St. Louisans, you’re probably familiar with the City Museum. Imagine if the Museum’s colorful, trash-to-treasure, wild aesthetic were applied to two city blocks as an amazing public art project and a guerilla community revitalization effort. Imagine old doors and appliances transformed into vinbrant-hued sculptures rising from vacant lots, car hoods painted with portraits, old houses painted with a celebratory crowd of polka-dots.
This is real, and it’s been around for 23 years. It’s called the Heidelberg Project, and it’s in Detroit. Artist Tyree Guyton and Executive Director Jenenne Whitfield use the rainbow polka-dotted campus of Heidelberg Street as a way to bring art into the lives of children in this extremely challenged, resource-poor part of East Detroit. They are literally out on the street and in the neighborhood school, personally placing paintbrushes in kids’ hands. In one instance, they attended a parent teacher conference in lieu of a child’s parents. They are doing the good work.
Earlier this year, I got the opportunity to intern with the Heidelberg Project. I have been involved with many, many community and arts organizations over the years, and I don’t know that I’ve ever met anyone so completely devoted to their work as the people behind the Heidelberg Project. They eat, sleep, and breathe it. The office is a hive of intense people who can carry on three different conversational threads at breakneck speed all while multitasking projects twice as fast as you can blink.
The Heidelberg Project wants to rehab one of the houses on Heidelberg Street and transform it into a community space where they can take their work with the neighborhood’s children to a whole new level. It’d be a place for the nuturing of young creative minds, and perhaps most importantly, it’d be a safe and welcoming physical space for these kids. This is no pipe dream–not only do they have an architect, but an entirely new kind of siding made out of pennies has been invented for this house. It’s going to be great.
So, why a blog post about this, and why right now? HP has been operating on a you-wouldn’t-even-believe-it shoestring budget for a very long time. In order to make the next step of their vision a reality, they’ll need help.
Starting at 9AM CST today, August 18th, The Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan will be matching 50% of donations to the Heidelberg Project. The funds are limited, and HP is competing with a number of other organizations for the match money. Please, please, PLEASE consider donating a few dollars (or more than a few dollars) to the Heidelberg Project. A 50 dollar donation would get half-matched and become a 75 dollar one, 100 would become 150, and so on…. Point being, this is an organization doing really good work with very little resources, and even ten (turned into 15!) bucks would make a serious, tangible difference to them. Their ability to work with the resources at hand would make MacGyver blush, they’re that good.
Let’s help them build that classroom space on the block, and let’s get more paintbrushes into more young hands. Learn how to donate here.
Thank you,
Claire
ONCE AGAIN it’s time for Dewey Decimal Drinks, the monthly happy hour for librarians and library-o-philes.
For the month of August, we’ll gather starting at 7pm on Thursday, August 13th, at Chava’s, located at 925 Geyer in Soulard. Chava’s has good Mexican food, but more importantly they have mind-blowingly, debit-card-forgettingly good frozen fruit margaritas! Mango, blueberry, orange cream….
Bring your appetizing, alphabetizing self and come on down!
always reading between the lines,
Claire-ian the Librarian
