Rehabbed Corner Storefront Now A Bright Spot In Fox Park Neighborhood

In November 2011 I posted about a Saturday in Fox Park, the city park in the neighborhood of the same name. At that time a storefront building just across California Ave from the park (map) was vacant, boarded up, and for sale. Neighborhood resident and blogger Mark Groth and I discussed that cold morning how nice it would be to have a restaurant across from the park.

I know what you’re thinking, two bloggers dreaming again.  Show me the money, right? The demographics aren’t right, or some other negative viewpoint. To the rest of us, we look at the above and see potential. We may not have the ability to rehab the building but there are rehabbers that share our vision. One such rehabber bought the building and renovated it. Michelle Veremakis, originally from upstate New York, came to St. Louis in 2008 after five years in California.  I asked Veremakis how she decided to buy and restore this building:

It was listed on the MLS. I had looked at it and was a worried that it would be more work than it was worth, considering the condition of the building and the immediate neighborhood. Instead, I put an offer in on a ‘safer’ building in McKinley Heights… But I just couldn’t shake the feeling I got standing inside 2800 Shenandoah. So, I followed my gut, ended the contract on the other building and began negotiations with DeSales.

For many who buy & rehab buildings it is about that “gut” feeling they get. Veremakis rehabs property in the city and county, preferring the “worst of the worst.” She closed on the property in December 2011 and completed the rehab by October 2012.

Long-time Fox Park resident Brooke Roseberry had been thinking about opening a neighborhood restaurant. Brooke and her husband Tony considered the former Tanner B’s space, but in 2013 decided to lease the newly-renovated storefront space at California & Shenandoah. After a delayed build out of the interior, The Purple Martin opened a few months ago.

My last question to Michelle Veremakis, the owner of the building: When you first looked at the building did you have a vision for what would go into the first floor?

Everything in reference to that building was motivated by vision.  Having purchased one of the most prominent buildings in Fox Park, we felt that we were in the unique position to benefit and inspire the neighborhood; first by revitalizing the neglected building and secondly by choosing a business (and business owners) that had the energy, intention, and vision to create something great.  After completing construction we advertised the space to the public, specifically targeting eating establishments, feeling that food creates community, and that community could bring this corner to greatness.  But money talks, right?  Unfortunately, it does which made deciding to turn away paying commercial tenants because their business type failed to meet our vision, particularly painful.   However, my genetically inherited stubbornness paid off, and V2 properties could not be more proud or excited to have The Purple Martin at 2800 Shenandoah.   Brooke and Tony are exactly what this neighborhood needs and deserves… they share in the vision, but more importantly, they are all heart.

I think Fox Park and St. Louis are lucky to have these two businesswomen! Here’s information on The Purple Martin:

• Website: ThePurpleMartin.com
• Twitter: @PurpleMartinSTL
• Facebook: /PurpleMartinFox

Try the lablabi!

— Steve Patterson

Guest Post: Why It Takes More Than Changing Beliefs To End Racial Inequality

The following is a guest post by Clarissa Hayward:

“In Missouri, Race Complicates a Transfer to Better Schools.” That’s how the headline read last summer when the New York Times ran an article on the Missouri school transfer law that’s been in the news again these past few weeks.

State legislators have tried to amend the law, which allows students in disaccredited districts—this past year, Normandy, Riverview Gardens, and Kansas City—to transfer to public schools in accredited districts. Sending districts must pay tuition costs for the transfer, an expenditure that severely taxes these already-struggling systems. Last month the state Board of Education voted to lapse the Normandy District, which after a year of financing transfers, was near bankruptcy.

Of course, as the Times headline suggests, racial inequalities play an important role in the controversy. All three sending districts are majority African-American, as is St. Louis, which was at the center of the Turner v. Clayton case that first brought the transfer law to the State Supreme Court. Receiving districts are (as is Clayton) majority white.

Hence news coverage of the school transfer issues typically features comments from angry and anxious parents, white and black alike. Are white parents racists, one common worry is, who want to exclude transfer students because they’re African-American? In short, these stories suggest that race “complicates” the law because of what people believe, think, and say about race.

In a city with a long and storied history of racial segregation and racial inequality, the suggestion is that misguided ideas are the root of the problem. If only people would change their beliefs and their attitudes about race, the hope seems to be, racial justice will follow.

But it isn’t that easy. New beliefs alone cannot overcome practices that are deeply embedded in the institutions and the physical spaces in which St. Louisans live their daily lives.

I came to this conclusion while conducting research for my most recent book, How Americans Make Race. Let me explain with an example that is not from the last few weeks, but from the early part of the last century.

In the 1940s, dominant beliefs about race in this country changed radically. This was partly because scientists at the time came to reject the nineteenth century understanding of race as a biological fact. It was also because racial hierarchy came to seem repugnant to many white Americans, as they began to associate racism with Naziism.

But these new racial attitudes and beliefs didn’t obliterate racial inequality. They didn’t radically alter how we practice and live race in the United States. Why not?

Because when people construct identities—including racial identities—they don’t just use language and ideas. They also use institutions, like laws and rules and policies. And they use material forms, like the urban and suburban spaces that were built in and around St. Louis and other American metropolitan areas over the course of the twentieth century.

Here’s a concrete example of an institution that helped to construct race in St. Louis and other American cities: the underwriting guidelines created by the Federal Housing Administration starting in the 1930s. As many readers will recall, the FHA was established during the New Deal era—so in other words before mid-century changes in dominant racial beliefs—in order to help homebuyers by providing government-backed mortgages.

These underwriting standards were supposed to help the government identify which buyers and which properties would make good investments. But in fact, they did much more. They institutionalized pre-1940 racial beliefs by defining African-American buyers as an investment risk, and by identifying the exclusion of blacks from a neighborhood as a sign of its economic health and stability.

The historian Kenneth Jackson illustrates with an example from St. Louis. Government studies conducted by the Homeowners Loan Corporation in 1937 and 1940 gave the very highest ratings in the metro area to Ladue. Appraisers emphasized that Ladue was “highly restricted”—in other words, that racial deed restrictions prevented African-Americans and other minority groups from buying or owning houses there. They emphasized, in their words, that Ladue was not home to “a single foreigner or negro.”

The very few parts of St. Louis County that received the lowest ratings—signaling the highest investment risk, and prompting the FHA to avoid backing mortgages—were African-American.

In St. Louis city, the same racial patterns prevailed. Colin Gordon, in his masterful Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City, notes that the only two areas in St. Louis to receive the highest rating in 1940 were “a few blocks on the County border west of Forest Park and a horseshoe of homes in the City’s still lightly and recently developed… southwest corner—both of which enjoyed the protection of restrictive deed covenants far removed from the contested neighborhoods of north St. Louis.”

Between 1934 and 1960 the federal government pumped more than $550 million in state-backed mortgages into homes in St. Louis County, investing almost $800 per capita. It spent just $94 million, or about $125 per capita, in St. Louis city.

The example makes clear why a change in beliefs is never enough. Imagine a white St. Louisan in the 1950s. Imagine that this particular individual is persuaded by the moral and scientific critiques of old racial ideas, but that she also wants to buy a house and needs an FHA mortgage to do so.

This would-be home buyer has to act as if she believes the old racial stories if she wants to qualify for an FHA mortgage. If she wants a government-backed loan, in other words, she needs to buy in a racially exclusive white neighborhood. She needs to do so even if she does not prefer or endorse racial residential segregation.

Of course, after the civil rights victories of the late 1960s, the U.S. government no longer participates in or condones racial residential segregation. So what does this example have to do with St. Louis today?

The larger point is that real racial justice, today like in 1950,  requires more than new racial attitudes and new racial beliefs. It requires new institutions, and it requires new ways of organizing urban and suburban space.

Think of the many local jurisdictions that are at the heart of the school transfer case. These are institutions that have a tremendous power to shape racial inequality. They do at least as much work in maintaining racial hierarchy in metropolitan St. Louis as do racist ideas and racist attitudes.

That’s why many political experts recommend centralizing important aspects of urban governance, such as schooling, to the metropolitan or even to the regional level. Others emphasize changing tax policies or the way we organize local elections.

Some recommend changing the physical spaces of our cities and suburbs, for example by encouraging the construction of affordable housing alongside market-rate units.

These are hotly contested proposals, which may or may not work for St. Louis and the St. Louis suburbs. But they have the virtue of raising important questions about how best to organize our urban institutions and spaces.

These are the kinds of questions we must grapple with, since changing racial beliefs and attitudes, by itself, won’t change racial injustice.

—

Clarissa Hayward is a political scientist on the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis. Her most recent book, How Americans Make Race, is in stock at Subterranean Books on the Delmar Loop and can be purchased from the publisher, Left Bank Books, Powell’s, and other online booksellers. You can follow her on Twitter @ClarissaHayward.

Melvin Price Locks & Dam Dedicated Twenty Years Ago Today

Two decades ago, on Saturday June 18, 1994, the Melvin Price Locks & Dam was officially dedicated, replacing Lock & Dam 26.

Some facts about the Melvin Price Locks & Dam:

• Also known as #26, the number of the old lock & dam it replaced
• Named for the Illinois congressman that championed the project, Charles Melvin Price (January 1905 – April 1988)
• Construction began in 1979, the main lock opened in 1990, and the full structure was completed in 1994.

And here’s an image of the old lock & dam 26:

And finally, another metro east facility was dedicated on June 18th. Nine years ago (2005) the Malcolm Martin Memorial Park, where I got married recently, was dedicated.

— Steve Patterson

Readers: Same-Sex Marriage To Be Recognized In All 50 States In The Year…; I’m Now Legally Married

Over the last 10+ years public opinion on same-sex marriage has shifted from majority opposed to majority support. It’s no longer if, but when. Last week’s unscientific poll looked at the timing:

Q: When do you think Same-Sex Marriage will be recognized in all 50 states?

1. 2019-2024: 30 [26.55%]
2. 2016: 18 [15.93%]
3. 2025 or later: 17 [15.04%]
4. Never: 17 [15.04%]
5. 2017: 12 [10.62%]
6. 2015: 10 [8.85%]
7. 2018: 7 [6.19%]
8. 2014: 2 [1.77%]

There’s no right or wrong here, we’re all just placing bets. However, the 15% who picked “never” will be in for a shock when the SCOTUS issues a ruling, making same-sex marriages legal in all 50 states.

The Supreme Court’s term runs from October to June. With the high likelihood that at least one circuit will decide against state limits by summer or fall, observers say, the Supreme Court should have ample time to hear a case for a decision by June 2015, though unexpected delays could push it to 2016 at the latest. (NY Times)

On June 12, 1967 the SCOTUS ruled on Loving v. Virginia, “ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.” The same will happen for same-sex marriage, though not unanimous as was Loving v. Virginia. My prediction is the SCOTUS will decide the issue in June 2016.

And on a personal note…

The morning I posted this poll, Sunday June 8, 2014, was my own same-sex marriage in East St. Louis, at the beautiful Malcolm W. Martin Memorial Park.

We couldn’t get married in Missouri, but we did borrow the St. Louis skyline as a backdrop. We plan to honeymoon in Denver later this year (fund).

Thanks to so many people, including Bryan Werner of the Metro East Park & Recreation District.

— Steve Patterson

Crossing Gravois Ave At McNair Ave

I believe the design of our physical environment plays a role in our decisions, just as other factors, like time & money, might. When the route between point A and B is a pleasant walk, many will opt to walk. But those same people who’ll opt to walk in ideal conditions will decide not to walk if the route isn’t pleasant. I also think the design of our pedestrian network is lagging, motorists would never accept equivalent conditions. For example, crossing Gravois at McNair.

The design says you should cross only on the west side of McNair. Those traveling on the east side of McNair need to use the west side to cross Gravois, per the roadway design. Because of how Gravois cuts through the orthogonal street grid, setting up the proper crossing on the east side would be complicated. With only one side of McNair available as a crossing point you’d think it would be correct.

The button and ramp are supposed to be on the same side…basic common sense.  It’s also common sense to stripe a crosswalk to guide pedestrians crossing 8 lanes (6 traffic, 2 parking).

Just don’t blame the City of St. Louis for this, Gravois is a state road maintained by the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT). I accept that crosswalks can’t/shouldn’t be striped at every street that intersects with Gravois, but if pedestrian signals are in place so should a visible crosswalk.

Can you imagine roads designed with so little thought for the users? I can’t. I’ll send a link to this post to MoDOT & city officials to alert them of the problems at this intersection.

— Steve Patterson