The City I Can’t Let Go of
A Guest Editorial by Dan Icolari
Recently, when I listened to jazz/blues vocalist Norah Jones sing Joni Mitchell regret-tinged words, “I couldn’t let go of L.A., city of the fallen angels,” it wasn’t the West Coast I thought of. It was St. Louis. And it wasn’t the mention of angels that prompted the thought. It was the sound of regret.
It’s been three years since my wife Ellen and I concluded we couldn’t afford to relocate to St. Louis–a move we had begun to prepare for, both here in New York and there, with help from Steve Patterson and, over time, many other StLers we got to meet in person, online, or both.
The decision came as a kind of relief; there was no way it could have worked. And yet we didn’t fold our tents or turn our backs. With Steve Patterson’s help, we had begun to see the contours of our new St. Louis life. It was a vision we were too invested in to abandon; we still are, it seems.
- I’m still a member of KDHX, a community radio station I hope will still be there when and if we ever make the move.
- I miss the newsprint ARCH CITY CHRONICLE and, though the cast of local political characters isn’t always familiar, I still read it online.
- Ellen followed the Democratic Party primary results in St. Louis as though we had voted in them ourselves.
- Not long ago, I ordered a book Steve Patterson recommended from Left Bank Books in the Central West End. The idea was to support a local bookstore I hope will still be there when we arrive. I buy the occasional gift from UMA for the same reason.
St. Louis is a promise we have made to ourselves. It’s a promise I still hope we’ll be able to keep.
If you could move here, what neighborhoods would be on your list? And since when can someone not afford to move to St. Louis from New York? Usually it’s the other way around. Surely you could afford parts of our northside.
As someone who’s made the move here, I couldn’t move until I found a job here or sold the house there . . . Yes, housing is affordable here, especially compared to NYC. The other half of the equation, however, is what employers (need to) pay to attract qualified employees – our lower cost of living means lower wages. It becomes a tradeoff, one largely driven by one’s industry . . .
True, the cost of living is lower here and salaries are lower as well, but I would have to make 5 times my salary to have a comparable quality of life in NYC. While finding a job paying twice my salary could be expected, I highly doubt I could find one paying 5 times what I make here. I think we have a bargain here, even taking into account the lower salaries. There are other mid-sized cities in the US that average even less than what St. Louis companies pay, and the cost of living is higher and there are fewer cultural amenities.
I think that more than higher salaries what we need are simply more and better job opportunities. Creative and smart people don’t always chase after dollars. We want opportunities to be creative and innovative. I think the perceived lack of opportunities here is one thing that holds us back. What is the solution? I think one step would be for the creatives out there to remain here, build their businesses here, not feel they have to go to Chicago or NYC to achieve their dreams.
I live 150 feet from KDHX. Can’t afford to move from New York to STL, say what ?
I am having trouble with the math, must be missing something.
Are you stuck with a home that is not selling in NY(C?)
I made the move from New York to St. Louis about a year ago. I’m from St. Louis though, had a few connections but I still banged my head against a wall for four months looking for a good job. Now, however, I’m able to to the three things I would have never been able to afford in St. Louis: buy a house, start a business and have a kid (the jury is still out on how affordable that will be.). I have to say though, I was making a hell of a lot more in New York, as was my wife, and I rode my bicycle everywhere or took the subway so my transportation cost per month never went over $50 dollars, which included metrocards, bike tubes and a cab ride or two back from the bar. Dunno if the people in the post are in the city or upstate, but it can be pricy as heck to move your entire world to St. Louis without a good amount of scratch and a job all lined up.
CAN’T AFFORD ST. LOUIS? SAY WHAT?
I should have anticipated the expressions of disbelief from STLers when I wrote that the primary reason my wife and I had been unable to relocate to St. Louis was affordability. And this from a New Yorker, yet.
So let me, as someone famous once said, explain:
We’ve stopped working for wages, yet our lives seem busier than ever. At the center of my wife’s and my economic and civic lives is a 5200-square-foot, 22-room, ca. 1885 Queen Anne Victorian in brick, clapboard and shingle that we’ve been restoring since 1987. As you’d expect, it’s the proverbial money pit, but it’s also the proverbial golden egg-laying goose.
GIVING UP THE GOOSE
The house grosses just under $50K/annum from rents and generates some lovely deductions. It allows us to live cost-free (but not work-free) in a 2300-square-foot triplex (fireplaces, stained glass, moldings, the whole shmear). It supplies a modest personal income for the managing agent, chief trash hauler and snow-shoveler–me. And it’s only a short walk to the FREE ferry to Battery Park, Manhattan–a pretty civilized 20-minute ride, with all manner of public transit connections on the Manhattan side.
Picture-perfect, right? Sure, if you don’t mind having responsibility 24/7/365 for the personal safety, comfort and convenience of four sets of tenants while attending to the constants of ongoing maintenance and restoration. Even in 2005, when we thought we were St. Louis-bound, the demands of the house were consuming too much of my time, thought and energy. Three years later, it hasn’t gotten any better.
We have significant equity in the house and, following a sale, would realize a decent but not extraordinary closing settlement (‘profit’ in this situation is sort of beside the point). Our quandary is this: How to live cost-free (or close to it) AND replace the modest personal income I have now. It can probably be done with a little ingenuity, but we have to solve that one –conceptually, at least–before, rather than after, we make the move.
ANYWHERE NEAR HARTFORD COFFEE CO. WILL BE FINE
Another of our mistakes last time was in trying to buy a new house in St. Louis before we’d sold the old one in New York. Not only because of long-distance logistics, but because we really needed to experience St. Louis as residents before making long-term decisions.
We’d assumed we’d buy on St Louis’s north side because of its extraordinary housing stock and extraordinarily low prices. But hanging out around Tower Grove Park and environs felt much like hanging out in one of a number of outer-borough New York neighborhoods. We already felt completely at home, before we’d even relocated.
We felt particular affection for Hartford Coffee Co. and the feeling of community it generates. We knew that we wanted to be part of a neighborhood, loosely defined, where such an enterprise could establish, survive and thrive.
RENT? MOI?
Steve Patterson, our personal sage, realtor and guide to all things St. Louis, kept bringing up the affordability factor, gently, but did I listen? Of course not. I was too entranced by Forest Park, the Central West End, the Soulard Market and the Botanical Garden and Bellefontaine Cemetery and on and on and on to hear a word of it.
Reality hit once we got back to New York and sat down with calculators, tax records, and bills. We thought at first that we’d have to give up on this particular dream, or dream another one. The sense of loss wasn’t overpowering; it was just sort of there. And it’s never gone away.
The questions remain as well, but instead of buying, we’ve decided we might rent for a while and park the sale proceeds somewhere safe, at least until we know the city better and can make more, ahem, informed decisions.
BETWEEN NEW YORK AND DENVER
Interestingly, a St. Louis location would put us sort of equidistant from our two sons and their families–one in New York, the other in Denver (Jim Zavist will no doubt be familiar with my son’s gentrifying Highland Square–32nd and Lowell–neighborhood).
Thanks for your interest and your comments and questions.
Yes, the Highlands are gentrifying . . . it creates a different set of challenges for long-term residents than the challenges many residents face in declining neighborhoods around St. Louis. As for living wage-free here, I’m guessing that investing in one or more “classic” apartment buildings may the answer you’re searching for – not the same ambiance as your “5200-square-foot, 22-room, ca. 1885 Queen Anne Victorian in brick, clapboard and shingle . . . proverbial money pit”, but with a significant downpayment, the cashflow should be more than enough cover both maintenance and to spin off enough to live on comfortably. But remember, as with everythingin real estate, it’s location, location, location!
Steve Patterson and I made a brief visit to New York a few years ago, and Dan & Ellen were wonderful and generous hosts. It was a joy staying in that large, lovely home of theirs on St. Marks Place. Dan’s neighborhood in Staten Island has more in common with St. Louis than you can imagine. He and Ellen perservered for decades while the neighborhood around them became boarded up, abandoned and left for dead. Dan & Ellen and a handful of people never gave up, and focused on preserving the neighborhood and finding others who were interested in moving there to do the same. Their efforts paid off and their neighborhood is once again a restored, safe and beautiful place to live. Seeing it now, its hard to believe that their street was ever blighted. Every time I’m in St. Louis, I’m absolutely stunned by the scale of the same battle: so many gorgeous homes and buildings in what were once truly lovely neighborhoods, which are now in a daily struggle for survival (and mostly losing the fight if they’re too far north). Dan, you already “did your time” in gritty hardcore urban preservation, so don’t feel bad that you’re interested in Soulard, Central West End or other neighborhoods where you wouldn’t be required to fight that battle again.