A Quick Look at the Walnut Park East & Mark Twain Neighborhoods
A reader from Brooklyn NY emailed me recently asking about the Walnut Park neighborhood.  She grew up in Walnut Park and was curious about the current condition. I knew the name but not the location of the neighborhood.
The city has two Walnut Park neighborhoods – an east and a west. These are between I-70 and West Florissant from Union to the city limits.  Riverview is the line between the east & west Walnut Park neighborhoods.  The park known as Walnut Park is in Walnut Park East. With the  exception of the large San Francisco Assembly, Walnut Park East didn’t stand out in my mind.  The streets are lined with tidy brick bungalows like you’d see in much of south St. Louis.
Two did stand out by being more tidy than the rest. Cross Kingshighway into the Mark Twain neighborhood, however, and the felling is different.
The houses are smaller, originally less expensive than those in Walnut Park. Some are well maintained but others are vacant.
Unlike Walnut Park East, Mark Twain has many vacant lots and more than enough burned out shells.
Like the rest of the city, things can change quickly in just a matter of blocks. North St. Louis is not uniform. There are good blocks, great blocks and yes, bad blocks.
– Steve Patterson
Walnut Park is a unique and close knit community. Curtis Royston, a lifetime resident and community advocate, is actively engaged in the community as a whole and especially active with Wallbridge Elementary, a community anchor. It is definitely a community of promise given the residents are provided w/equitable resources to reclaim their neighborhoods, something the City of St. Louis has failed to do for many years.
Walnut Park is a unique and close knit community. Curtis Royston, a lifetime resident and community advocate, is actively engaged in the community as a whole and especially active with Wallbridge Elementary, a community anchor. It is definitely a community of promise given the residents are provided w/equitable resources to reclaim their neighborhoods, something the City of St. Louis has failed to do for many years.
“equitable resources to reclaim their neighborhoods” sure sounds like PC code words to me. Overgrown lots and vacant shells have little to do with the distribution of city resources and whole lot to do with individual property owners and pride of ownership.Â
“equitable resources to reclaim their neighborhoods” sure sounds like PC code words to me. Overgrown lots and vacant shells have little to do with the distribution of city resources and whole lot to do with individual property owners and pride of ownership.
A vacant shell is possibly an abandoned building dating back to the days of white flight. Nothing PC about that and what does it say about pride of ownership?
If it’s abandoned, it says the owner no longer has any pride of ownership. It doesn’t matter if they’re white, black, brown, yellow or green. There are plenty of African-Americans, Hispanics, Bosnians, Asians and Caucasians, even those of very modest means, who do take care of their property, just like there are a minority in every race that don’t. I get tired of the race card being played on every discussion about quality of life issues. I expect the city government to sweep my steet once a month, keep it patched and the streetlights on. I expect the city to pick up my trash on a regular basis, and they do. And I see the city doing this pretty consistently across the city. Where I see huge disparities is on private property. What do you expect the city to do? Cut everyone’s grass every week? Repair our roofs and wash our windows?
Again, more Tea Party rhetoric. Why don’t you do some research before shouting off the latest libertarian ‘boot strap’ slogan? City service responses are not the same among city neighborhoods based upon their racial composition. Combining that with the inability to access capital for the purpose of maintaining a home and we have a situation where both the private and public sectors property owners within these neighborhoods. Why don’t you sell your house then move to Walnut Park to see how city government and the banks are standing by to help you out?
Chicken or egg rhetoric, Doug. If you can’t afford to maintain real estate, you shouldn’t be owning or renting it – sell it or give it to someone who will! And yes, “City service responses are not the same among city neighborhoods”, but no, they’re not “based upon their racial composition”, they’re based upon calls for service. I don’t know the last time I’ve seen the crime lab or yellow tape in my neighborhood, nor do I remember the last time I saw the city boarding up or demolishing any vacant structures. So, yes, banks are probably more willing to lend me money, aka “access capital”, along with the fact that both my wife and I are working. Philly has turned around some pretty dire neighborhoods by selling vacant properties for $1. We should be doing the same thing here.
Property values are higher in Philadelphia than they are in St. Louis, so your money goes farther when rehabbing a “dollar house” there than here. Rehab costs are comparable, but after rehab values are higher in Philly. That’s why lots of vacant buildings sit without reinvestment here. It’s hard to make the numbers work. Gut incentives, and the odds stack up further against struggling communities.
JZ, you fail to factor in the cost of white flight in your comments about abandoned buildings in north city. When they say that St. Louis has lost 1/2 of its population, a huge amount of that was out of North St. Louis. It’s apples and oranges to compare your neighborhood and its property values with a blighted area in North City.
To talk as if all other things are equal is really silly.
Were there costs associated with white flight? Absolutely, and not much different from what’s happening to the larger real estate market today – values have dropped, substantially in some areas, making it great if you’re a buyer and making it really suck if you want to sell. But that has little to do with “the residents [not being] provided w/equitable resources to reclaim their neighborhoods, something the City of St. Louis has failed to do for many years” and a whole lot to do with transaction prices expected by a large number of individual property owners! The city continues to deliver basic services across the city, but the city has little ability to prop up rapidly-declining property values, in any specific neighborhood. The city can’t force anyone to sell for a price less than they think is “fair”, and they apparently have limited resources and/or will to mandate basic property maintenance standards. The combination that results (vacant and boarded-up buildings and yards returning to nature), on both privately-owned and LRA-acquired properties, creates continuing downward pressure on property values. The question then becomes whether population loss has been exacrebated by these policies and/or if moving more LRA properties into private hands more rapidly would help change this dynamic?
A vacant shell is possibly an abandoned building dating back to the days of white flight. Nothing PC about that and what does it say about pride of ownership?
Again, more Tea Party rhetoric. Â Why don’t you do some research before shouting off the latest libertarian ‘boot strap’ slogan? Â City service responses are not the same among city neighborhoods based upon their racial composition. Â Combining that with the inability to access capital for the purpose of maintaining a home and we have a situation where both the private and public sectors property owners within these neighborhoods. Â Why don’t you sell your house then move to Walnut Park to see how city government and the banks are standing by to help you out? Â
If it’s abandoned, it says the owner no longer has any pride of ownership. It doesn’t matter if they’re white, black, brown, yellow or green. There are plenty of African-Americans, Hispanics, Bosnians, Asians and Caucasians, even those of very modest means, who do take care of their property, just like there are a minority in every race that don’t. I get tired of the race card being played on every discussion about quality of life issues. I expect the city government to sweep my steet once a month, keep it patched and the streetlights on. I expect the city to pick up my trash on a regular basis, and they do. And I see the city doing this pretty consistently across the city. Where I see huge disparities is on private property. What do you expect the city to do? Cut everyone’s grass every week? Repair our roofs and wash our windows?
Chicken or egg rhetoric, Doug. If you can’t afford to maintain real estate, you shouldn’t be owning or renting it – sell it or give it to someone who will! And yes, “City service responses are not the same among city neighborhoods”, but no, they’re not “based upon their racial composition”, they’re based upon calls for service. I don’t know the last time I’ve seen the crime lab or yellow tape in my neighborhood, nor do I remember the last time I saw the city boarding up or demolishing any vacant structures. So, yes, banks are probably more willing to lend me money, aka “access capital”, along with the fact that both my wife and I are working. Philly has turned around some pretty dire neighborhoods by selling vacant properties for $1. We should be doing the same thing here.
Property values are higher in Philadelphia than they are in St. Louis, so your money goes farther when rehabbing a “dollar house” there than here.  Rehab costs are comparable, but after rehab values are higher in Philly. That’s why lots of vacant buildings sit without reinvestment here. It’s hard to make the numbers work. Gut incentives, and the odds stack up further against struggling communities.
JZ, you fail to factor in the cost of white flight in your comments about abandoned buildings in north city. When they say that St. Louis has lost 1/2 of its population, a huge amount of that was out of North St. Louis. It’s apples and oranges to compare your neighborhood and its property values with a blighted area in North City.Â
To talk as if all other things are equal is really silly. Â
Were there costs associated with white flight? Absolutely, and not much different from what’s happening to the larger real estate market today – values have dropped, substantially in some areas, making it great if you’re a buyer and making it really suck if you want to sell. But that has little to do with “the residents [not being] provided w/equitable resources to reclaim their neighborhoods, something the City of St. Louis has failed to do for many years” and a whole lot to do with transaction prices expected by a large number of individual property owners! The city continues to deliver basic services across the city, but the city has little ability to prop up rapidly-declining property values, in any specific neighborhood. The city can’t force anyone to sell for a price less than they think is “fair”, and they apparently have limited resources and/or will to mandate basic property maintenance standards. The combination that results (vacant and boarded-up buildings and yards returning to nature), on both privately-owned and LRA-acquired properties, creates continuing downward pressure on property values. The question then becomes whether population loss has been exacrebated by these policies and/or if moving more LRA properties into private hands more rapidly would help change this dynamic?