CLAYTON — St. Louis County has tried for years to jump-start development in Wellston, one of the poorest cities in the region.
It has invested millions cleaning up and demolishing shuttered factories and abandoned homes. It rehabbed an old industrial building as a job training center. It helped start a new affordable housing development.
But Wellston officials are refusing to sign off on the county’s next move.
Officials want to start finding developers and new owners for some of the more than 100 Wellston properties owned by a county development arm.
But Wellston’s mayor, Nate Griffin, said his city hasn’t seen much progress in the 20-plus years since its last agreement with the county development office.
The county, Griffin said, used the now expired agreement to “dominate our community and dominate our land.â€
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Rodney Crim, CEO of the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership, which leads the county’s efforts in Wellston, disagrees.
“We are totally invested in Wellston, and we want to see that investment continue,†Crim said in an interview Friday.
But the St. Louis County Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority, which Crim’s office manages, can’t do anything with the real estate it owns in the inner ring suburb.
A sale of some of its land, to the Normandy School District for a new school bus depot as part of a renovation of the Normandy High campus, has been held up for almost two years.
State statute requires a redevelopment plan for the LCRA to operate in Wellston. The old agreement expired in 2017.
After waiting more than a year for Wellston to sign off on the new agreement, the LCRA in June approved the new Empower Wellston community plan, completed by firm PGAV nearly two years ago.
“LCRA is not the holdup,†Crim said during an LCRA board meeting Thursday. “We are truly waiting for Wellston to take action.â€
Wellston, however, wants the LCRA to donate more of its properties to the city, particularly two large redevelopment sites along Page Avenue potentially worth millions.
“What can you release to the city of Wellston to truly empower them, as the name of the plan suggests?†Griffin said in an interview Thursday.
Wellston wants 45 acres
The holdup illustrates the difficulty of economic development in a fragmented county of nearly 100 municipalities, with the smallest and poorest governing the area bordering north St. Louis that has suffered most from disinvestment.
“The problem of small governments, especially in North County, is that collective action is more difficult because you have many more actors at the table in a given geography,†said Todd Swanstrom, a professor of public policy at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
He pointed to Baltimore County, which faces similar issues but where the county government performs all municipal functions within its jurisdiction.
“It makes a difference in terms of what they’ve done in their version of inner-ring suburbs,†he said. “They have the same problems: You have these older inner-ring suburbs that have experienced deindustrialization, loss of employment, demographic transition, etc.
“But they have much more ability for the county there to act in the name of economic development.â€
Most of LCRA’s Wellston properties are vacant lots where houses were long ago abandoned and taken by the county for unpaid taxes. The LCRA plans to grant 29 of them to the city when it signs off on the new agreement.
But it’s the two large redevelopment sites on either side of Page Avenue — nearly 45 acres in all — that Wellston officials want before approving a new agreement with the LCRA.
“Everybody knows the position that Wellston is in,†said Griffin, the mayor. “We are the poorest municipality in St. Louis County. What other way are you talking about empowering these people and this community ... if it’s not through the land?â€
The former factory sites, which the county spent tens of millions cleaning and preparing for redevelopment, have been the subject of controversy before.
In 2017, the LCRA sold them to investors who tried to flip them for potentially millions of dollars. Those investors were major donors to former St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger, and federal prosecutors referenced the transaction when they indicted Stenger and one of the buyers after an investigation into pay-to-play corruption.
After the political dust settled, the LCRA reacquired the sites and is ready to find private developers for them. While the LCRA is willing to grant Wellston many of its smaller properties, the two large industrial parks are assets Crim believes could attract “significant employment†benefiting both the city and the region.
“We have a significant amount of money invested in those, and those provide opportunities that the small sites do not provide,†Crim said.
‘We legally cannot’
Crim said the Empower Wellston plan solicited community feedback and incorporated elected officials’ concerns to “make sure something has not been done to them — it’s done with them.â€
Griffin, who leads a city with just a handful of staff, said the LCRA has told Wellston it doesn’t “want to put us in a position to fail.†But he said the LCRA is barely keeping up with mowing and maintenance of its Wellston real estate now.
Wellston City Councilman Sam Shannon, who is also on the LCRA board, said Thursday that Wellston “was told there was no more negotiation on this or that and that’s the way it is.â€
The impasse, meanwhile, has stalled a transfer of land to Normandy schools contemplated two years ago as part of a high school campus renovation project. Shannon said he thought the two issues should be separated so Normandy could proceed.
But the LCRA’s lawyer, Howl Bean II, said it couldn’t until Wellston approves the redevelopment agreement.
“The LCRA is not like any other property owner. It’s not like any other business,†Bean said. “As much as we support and would love to move forward with the Normandy project, we legally cannot.â€
“We can ask the Missouri Legislature (to change the law), but I don’t think they’re going to take our call on this,†he added.
Griffin emphasized that he wasn’t knocking the administration of St. Louis County Executive Sam Page, who he backed in last year’s election and who he said helped broker a big affordable housing investment and other projects in Wellston. While they talk frequently, Griffin said he hadn’t brought it up yet. But he plans to now.
“Me and him will definitely be talking about this to try and come up with a solution,†Griffin said.
Page spokesman Doug Moore said the county executive plans to meet with Griffin on Oct. 12.
“Dr. Page meets on a regular basis with Mayor Griffin to continue discussing this matter and other issues important to Wellston,†Moore said.