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ST. LOUIS • It is six days before Easter and business is good at Little Tot's Shop on Martin Luther King Drive.

Parents are shopping for frilly dresses, matching shoes and hair bows for their girls and three-piece suits with clip-on ties for the boys.

This time of year is traditionally the busiest for Bessie Halbert. During the rest of the year, however, business has slowed to a level where a week can go by without a single sale.

This summer, Halbert will close her shop after 37 years.

"Final Days," says the sign next to the register, where Halbert was crafting bows out of lace and ribbon. "Store Closing Summer 2018. Deep Discounts Starting April 7."

Halbert can't compete with online shopping. Fewer people are dressing up, especially for Sunday worship. And the street that bears the civil rights leader's name has not sprung back to life, despite a $4 million infusion 10 years ago to provide new street lamps and sidewalks.

"Everybody left. Everybody left me," Halbert said.

To the east, a vacant lot. To the west, a boarded-up building. On the corner, a worker places bricks on pallets, a salvage job after a building was destroyed by fire. Across the street, more blight including the shuttered Premier Lounge and Steak House.

While other businesses fled, Halbert stayed. But at 72, it's time to retire.

"I love my customers. I have to love my customers if I'm going to sit here all day and not sell anything," Halbert said.

She said the sign by the register is met with tears from some of the store's regulars. But crying is not going to change Halbert's mind.

A younger sister died last year and as Halbert looked down at her sibling in the casket, she realized: There are no guarantees for a long life. Halbert's husband is 77 and retired a decade ago. It's time for the couple to spend more time together at their Florissant home, and see more of their grandchildren.

"All I do is work and go to funerals," Halbert said.

hoping the street could enjoy a second life and match the success of the Delmar Loop or Washington Avenue, Halbert told the Post-Dispatch that watching the decline of the neighborhood was tough. A street named after King should show off a city, not highlight what once was.

And even though the transformation has not happened, Halbert has not given up.

"I think it's going to get better. It's got to."

It's an almost identical comment to the one she made a decade ago.

'Worthy of the man'?

The street has been named for King since 1972, ever since the Board of Aldermen voted overwhelmingly to rename busy east-west Easton Avenue and downtown Franklin Avenue to honor the civil rights leader. From the city's border with Wellston to Tucker Boulevard, Martin Luther King Drive stretches about six miles. East of Tucker, King Drive exists in fragments, broken by later construction, including the Dome. 

It is one of at least 1,000 streets throughout the U.S. honoring the civil rights icon, killed 50 years ago in Memphis, Tenn., by an assassin's bullet.

Like elsewhere, the street renaming here was not without controversy. Why are all streets named after King in rundown parts of town and not a centerpiece of the city? That was the central argument across the country.

"We traversed this stretch as far west as Kingshighway the other day, and we are not sure whether the memory of Dr. King is honored or not," the Post-Dispatch Editorial Board wrote shortly after the aldermen voted.

The newspaper board said it would have preferred a park or new boulevard created in the central part of the city instead of renaming a street that runs through mainly poor, crumbling neighborhoods in the north part of town.

"But if not, then the city should make sure that the memorial boulevard is worthy of the man it honors."

Derek Alderman, a geography professor at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, has spent more than 20 years researching streets named after King. Typically, the discussion begins with renaming a prominent road in a community, is met with resistance and ultimately ends with a street chosen in a black part of town, he said.

"It drips with irony that we remember a man who battled segregation by segregating his memory," Alderman said.

Jeffrey Boyd ran for alderman 15 years ago on a campaign promise to make King Drive a crown jewel of the city.

"I haven't let up on that," said Boyd, 53, who remains on the city board.

It's a street with fond memories. Boyd was reared in the neighborhoods along King Drive — before and after it was King Drive — and remembers shopping at J.C. Penney, Thom McAn and a Woolworth store, all long gone.

Retail is here, but not in the form of department stores, supermarkets or the popular chains found in shopping centers in more prosperous parts of town. Barbershops, storefront churches, bars and auto repair garages are common.

There is Dr. King Chop Suey, with its pink and blue storefront; Beulah's Red Velvet Lounge, where "dreams" are sold, according to a lottery sign outside; and G-Zus Complete Automotive Service, its red awning standing out in a block of vacant lots.

A full-throttle revival remains at bay, but Boyd said improvements over the past decade are obvious. He points to the ornamental street lights that run from Kingshighway west to Wellston.

"They kind of transform the street. It has that wow factor because people don't expect that on this side of town," Boyd said. "When developers are looking to do projects, how your infrastructure fits into that is important."

Boyd also names and includes a main sanctuary seating 2,500 and a community center featuring 10 classrooms and a gymnasium. The church partnered with affordable housing developer McCormack Baron Salazar to add 112 residential units and restore the historic Arlington School into apartments nearby.

"Of course, I'm very proud of rehabilitating The Best Place," Boyd says, referring to the event space he and his wife, Patrice, have been renovating since 2014. The earlier lives of the old warehouse included a moving and storage business and a furniture store.

"We wanted to create a space where people can come and have a good time," said Boyd as he gave a tour. "There are not a lot of places around here that people can rent out and have parties."

He envisions it as the place to hold weddings, repasses, movie nights and birthday parties. 

"I stay because I love this community and I see a better future," said Boyd. "But make no mistake about it. My wife and my girls, they're tired of seeing the prostitution and drugs around the community. It's frustrating to them."

The persistent crime hit home in July 2015, when just a few blocks north of King Drive, near Goodfellow Boulevard. Today, that intersection is one of five along King Drive that has security cameras mounted, for real-time footage and with license plate readers. In the past few months, 12 cameras have been put up in Boyd's ward, at a cost about about $500,000, paid for out of the alderman's capital improvement fund.

Boyd said it took decades for this part of town to get into the shape it is. It's going to take just as long to get it to a level those living and working here can be proud of again, he said.

"Let's be clear. I'm not doing this to be benevolent," Boyd said of opening his business in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood. "It's a lot of risk but without risk is minimal reward. I want to make money and help my community."

Dreams deferred

At Dorothy's Resale, customers shop for mattresses, washers and dryers. Dorothy Tripp and Chester Davis have run the store for 40 years, watching the neighborhood ebb and flow. Davis, 72, said the streetlights have given those who stayed a sense that their part of town has not been forgotten.

"It does look better at night," Davis said. "It looks like a destination." (Last week, a few blocks of the lights, including those in front of Dorothy's, were not working.)

The lights and other improvements have not really created a bump in business, Davis said. It's more steady as she goes, he said. And even though there has been an , crime is still very much present, Davis said.

He points out the front door toward a nearby intersection. It was there, he said, where a middle-of-the-day shootout occurred just a few weeks ago.

"It was like one of those Westerns," he said. "Nothing you can do but stay inside."

Four decades in, Tripp and Davis said they have no plans to close. Or move.

"We can't go nowhere. We bought the building. We've got to be here."

At Jaden's Diner, on the corner of King and Annie Malone drives, customers jockey for a parking place and run in for Friday catfish. The Sunday after-church crowd is also a busy time, when beef short ribs and oxtail are the specials.

"Everyday is a good day," owner Linda Hayden, 58, said, laughing while stressing her gratitude. Her parents started the soul food restaurant in 1979 and now Hayden runs it with other family members including her son, Christopher Ellis.

Like many business owners along this strip, Hayden lives in north St. Louis County. But she believes in King Drive, and the diner has become a destination place, with customers from as far away as Chicago and Kansas City stopping by when in town to visit family or attend a conference.

"I've never had any problems. Never been robbed," she said. If the city keeps tearing down the derelict buildings to shoo away those up to no good, the neighborhood will be fine.

"I think it's coming back up," Hayden said.

Melvin White is not so sure.

Until last year, he ran Beloved Streets of America, a nine-year-old nonprofit, out of a storefront in the 5900 block of King Drive. The goal of the organization is an ambitious one: To transform every street named after King into a destination, beginning in St. Louis and adding 16 other cities over a five-year period.

"Martin Luther King, Jr. envisioned a society based on love, equality, and nonviolence, called the Beloved Community. Beloved Streets of America takes its name from this vision," the nonprofit states on its website. "We want to ensure Dr. King’s dream is made real on every street named for the civil rights leader."

But vandals swiped the green awning, most likely for scrap metal. Windows were broken and computers stolen. White's business partner, based in Florida, owned the building but got behind on taxes and the crumbling structure is now in possession of the city. White, a retired postal worker, said he put $50,000 into the nonprofit efforts.

"I can't really drive by there right now," White, 50, said. "To see it like it is … I feel like I gambled enough."

As a young boy, White lived at Semple and Wabada avenues, and his family shopped on nearby King Drive before moving to north St. Louis County. Beginning the transformation of King streets in St. Louis and basing the nonprofit here made the most sense, White said.

His efforts received widespread attention, with stories by CNN and The Guardian. In 2015, a group of Harvard graduate students studying urban planning and architectural design came to St. Louis to interview residents and business owners about redevelopment ideas along King Drive. Part of White's plan included building Legacy Park. The renderings show a stage and lighted sculpture of King. Promotional materials seeking donations described the park as "an attraction for the city and the region where people can learn about Dr. King’s dream. This park will inspire the community of St. Louis to spur on additional improvements to the city."

Prospective donors came and went. The site of the proposed park remains a vacant lot, next to a building that looks like a tank was driven through its side. The future of the nonprofit is bleak. White blames its failure, in part, on city leaders including Boyd.

"There wasn't any kind of love from the city of St. Louis. I don't know what it is," said White, who now lives in Black Jack. "This is a reflection on how the political system is set up — to keep you right where you're at. Jeffrey Boyd never supported me. Every time I approached him for money, he acted like he didn't have anything. All we needed was a little something to keep going. We don't have anything right now."

Boyd called White "nothing more than a con artist" who always had his hand out but offered no proof he had the ability to do the work.

"This guy is talking about how he is going to redevelop MLK streets across America and he was operating out of a condemned building," Boyd said.

Alderman Sam Moore, 69, also represents neighborhoods along King Drive. He said White wanted to swoop in with a "harebrained idea" and save the community without working with those who have been in the trenches for years.

"I've been living in the neighborhood since 1956, and seen it go from grandeur to the ground," Moore said. He said he has not spoken recently to White, after previous discussions grew heated on how King Drive should be developed.

"I don't know where the guy is but I don't want to bring him back," Moore said. 

Moore said he would have preferred the city rename Forest Park Boulevard, Lindell Boulevard or some other prominent street in the city's central corridor in honor of King.

"But I guess they put it through here because it ran through the black neighborhoods," he said. "Since it runs through my community, we have to make sure the name of such a prestigious character is respected and honored."

But that will take time, he said. His 4th Ward has 1,242 empty buildings and 1,700 vacant lots — more undeveloped land than any 10 wards combined, he said. Commercial property goes for 65 cents a square foot. Go a few miles, to properties south of Delmar Boulevard and that price jumps to $65 a square foot, he said.

"It took 50 years to put in this disparity," Moore said. It's going to take about that long, he said, to bring it back.