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ST. LOUIS — Two months after announcing the winners of grants in a $37 million program for north St. Louis businesses and nonprofits, the city’s economic development arm is refusing to release records explaining what some of the largest awardees plan to do with the money.

The secrecy comes as at least three grants worth nearly $1.3 million are poised to go to organizations with ties to the family of Alderwoman Shameem Clark Hubbard, who sits on the board of the St. Louis Development Corporation. She also sponsored the legislation expanding eligibility for the grants.

The winners tied to the Hubbard family would not have been eligible for the grants under the former program guidelines, which originally directed the money to major commercial corridors.

Questions about transparency and the political connections of some of the grant winners are the latest controversies to dog a program that was billed three years ago as a way to direct some of the city’s pandemic aid windfall to small businesses in its beleaguered north side.

Businesses at first complained that the SLDC, tasked with administering the program, was taking too long. Now, those that didn’t win or received less than they expected are complaining about the scoring process and questioning how the agency decided to divvy up the money.

“The whole process has just been problematic from day one,” said Tameka Stigers, who applied unsuccessfully for a grant to expand her hair salon, Locs of Glory, on Delmar Boulevard and has been rallying other disgruntled business owners to lobby SLDC for reconsideration. “It’s a genuine money grab from the city to give the money to their friends.”

City officials insist they used an objective scoring rubric and averaged scores from several reviewers before picking the winners of the largest grants. In all, out of roughly 700 applicants requesting a combined $400 million. And SLDC Director Neal Richardson last month said his office will put the nearly $4 million set aside from the $37 million to administer the program back into grant awards for businesses who didn’t make the initial cut.

“With only $33 million in grant funds available, we had to make some tough decisions to ensure these funds had the most significant impact,” Richardson said during a July webinar on the program.

Mayor Tishaura O. Jones’ spokesman, Conner Kerrigan, said sorting through applicants and determining eligibility was a “complicated process which required a high level of scrutiny and time.”

“The Mayor’s Office appreciates the time and effort that SLDC put into working with these applicants and selecting the best applications for grants,” he said in a statement.

In an interview, Richardson emphasized that the larger winners have not yet received the money while SLDC verifies all the information in their applications. His staff is visiting the site of each business and nonprofit and confirming they will be able to use the money by September 2026, the spending deadline for the federal aid money. Some of the announced winners may not ultimately be awarded any money, he said, and those that did win large grants will need to submit invoices to access their award from an escrow account.

“It’s not like we just wrote them a check for $2 million,” Richardson told the Post-Dispatch.

Still, it’s not clear what the bulk of the awards, particularly the pot of $21 million in large grants that have been allocated to 22 organizations, would even be used for.

The Post-Dispatch submitted open record requests for several of the applications after SLDC’s board approved the awards in late June. But the city opted to keep them secret because it says the contracts are not final, citing a provision of the Missouri Sunshine Law that allows records to remain closed if they relate to “a negotiated contract until a contract is executed.”

Mark Pedroli, a Clayton attorney who specializes in open records laws, was skeptical. A grant award, he said, “doesn’t sound like a contract to me.” And the Sunshine Law, he added, does not mandate the closure of records.

“That prevents any oversight until the money is actually given,” he said. “You could still make the executive decision to release these for the sake of transparency.”

Dave Roland, an attorney with the nonprofit Freedom Center of Missouri who specializes in the Sunshine Law, said the exception cited by the city is generally used for procurement, but the applications could “conceivably” be considered a closed “negotiated contract” if “there is give-and-take. If the presumed grantee is able to impose terms of its own on the city.”

“The question is whether negotiations are taking place,” Roland said.

City officials say they will release the records when all the legal documents are signed. Releasing them now, Richardson said, could give new applicants a competitive advantage should some of the money not be awarded and SLDC reopens the program for applications.

Roland scoffed at that rationale.

“Wouldn’t it be to the city’s advantage to have the applicants understand how it works?” he said.

Hubbard family in line for grants

Among the successful applications for millions of dollars in grant money the Post-Dispatch requested were three whose leaders are tied to Clark Hubbard, the alderwoman who sponsored legislation changing the program rules and who sits on SLDC’s board.

Carr Square Tenant Organization, led by Rodney Hubbard Sr., is set to be awarded a $500,000 grant. A short description of the intended use of the money on SLDC’s website says the tenant organization plans “extensive renovation” of the Carr Square community center, at 1607 Biddle St. Hubbard’s wife, Penny Hubbard, and his son, Rodney Hubbard Jr., are former state representatives. His daughter, Tammika Hubbard, is a former alderwoman. Clark Hubbard is married to Rodney Hubbard Jr.

The elder Hubbard did not return requests for comment.

Carr Square, which owns and operates apartment units north of downtown, has worked closely over the years with NorthSide Regeneration developer Paul McKee. Hubbard Jr. — now a lobbyist — was fined by the Missouri Ethics Commission in 2010 for, among other things, withdrawing campaign cash at a Las Vegas casino.

The family began losing some of its political clout in 2016, when a judge ordered a redo election for former Rep. Penny Hubbard’s seat following allegations that absentee ballots had been obtained illegally or tampered with. And Rodney Hubbard Sr. lost his election for 5th Ward committeeman that year after a judge ordered a do-over election following similar allegations.

Ebony Washington, who is Rodney Hubbard Sr.’s granddaughter, is in line to receive a $739,000 grant from the SLDC program for her nonprofit, “The People Project Corporation.” The nonprofit is also slated to be awarded a separate $25,000 grant for business expansion. Washington ran for alderwoman a year ago but lost to Rasheen Aldridge.

She formed the nonprofit in August 2023, just a month after the mayor signed Clark Hubbard’s legislation making any north St. Louis business or nonprofit eligible for grants. The People Project Corporation has no website and lists a residential address on 22nd Street in Hyde Park. The house is owned by a Maxine Johnson, who ran for alderman there years ago.

Washington, a real estate agent, agreed to an interview last week but then did not return calls and a text that day.

“I will call you when I’m ready to do an interview,” she said when reached a few days later and hung up when asked what her nonprofit did.

said the People Project Corporation will provide homeless services at a new “state of the yard (sic) facility.”

Another grant winner was Todd Irons-El, who is close to the Hubbards. He served as a spokesman for Carr Square in 2021, and in early 2022, he was one of several people, mostly Hubbard family members, who received Carr Square property along Jonas Hubbard Drive between Carr and Biddle streets. Tammika Hubbard, the former alderman, and Penny Hubbard, the former state representative, also received property from Carr Square on that date. So did Rodney Hubbard, though real estate records aren’t clear about whether it is Rodney Hubbard Sr. or Rodney Hubbard Jr.

Irons-El initially received $15,000 from SLDC for “The Boomerang Store.” SLDC later upped the amount to $25,000 at a special meeting in August. Richardson clarified that Irons-El is no longer getting the $15,000 grant, which came from a pot of money reserved for small businesses. Those who received the $15,000 grants were not allowed to apply for competitive grants from the larger pots of money.

In a brief phone conversation, Irons-El said the money, which he hasn’t gotten yet, was for his convenience store. He said it was located at 2917 North Sarah. That is the site of the Moorish Science Temple of America, not a convenience store. Irons-El, who is listed as a sheik there, declined to comment on the grant process.

Clark Hubbard did not return requests for comment.

�Sort of scary’

When they presented the winners to the SLDC board during a special meeting on June 27, Richardson and his staff were adamant that they needed the authority to award the grants to the proposed winners before more thoroughly vetting them. A selection committee board that includes a representative from the mayor’s office, Aldermanic President Megan Green and Comptroller Darlene Green had already signed off on the large awards earlier that week.

But some SLDC board members were hesitant. They had only received the list the day before. And they weren’t sure who some of the winners of the large grants were, or what the money would be used for.

“I think it would be prudent for us to at least have some understanding as to how these monies will be used in some of these much larger projects,” said board member Matt McBride.

Loura Gilbert, a board member who worked in community development during much of her 40-year banking career, said she didn’t recognize some of the nonprofits or the people connected to them “at all.”

“It’s very frustrating to do this, to authorize this without knowing more information about the projects,” she said. “This is sort of scary to me.”

But SLDC staff, under pressure to allocate the federal pandemic aid that funds the program before the end of the year, pushed for a vote. Lance Knuckles, SLDC’s director of strategic development and growth, said the staff needed the board’s authorization to execute the awards before doing further investigation into the feasibility of the projects.

“To conduct that due diligence in advance of this conversation would also be a little inappropriate for us to do that level of engagement prior to coming to this body,” Knuckles said during the meeting.

Clark Hubbard, who serves on the SLDC board because she chairs the Board of Aldermen’s housing committee, recused herself from the vote on the large grants, citing her father-in-law’s application. She also did not vote on smaller grants, including the $25,000 to Washington, but did not specify a reason for her recusal.

Even so, she strongly urged the board to approve the grants.

“I wasn’t voting on this anyway, but if I could vote I would vote because these people and these businesses, once they have passed every step of the continued steps deserve it and they have been deserving it for decades,” Clark Hubbard said during the meeting.

Despite a “hesitant aye” from Gilbert and a “present” from McBride, SLDC got the four affirmative votes it needed, then posted a list of the winners and the amounts on its website.

The next day, SLDC officials and Mayor Jones hosted a grant awards ceremony at the city’s business assistance center on Sumner High School’s campus.

And that weekend, the mayor was on Martin Luther King Drive, posing for pictures on stage at the Black Wall Street Festival with an oversized check announcing the $1.525 million the program was awarding to a mixed-use development planned by nonprofit Young Voices With Action.

SLDC declined to release the Young Voices With Action application. The award, it said, is not yet final.

Post-Dispatch reporter Austin Huguelet contributed to this report.