ST. LOUIS — As hundreds of additional workers prepare to move to Square’s new offices in one of the most significant corporate additions downtown St. Louis has seen in years, City Hall is dealing with another influx of people next door to the company’s building on Tucker Boulevard.
A homeless encampment, complete with about 20 tents, has popped up on Interco Plaza, between Square’s building and the St. Patrick Center.
On Tuesday, a spokesman for Mayor Tishaura O. Jones said City Hall will work to remove the encampment within 60 days. Meanwhile, workers on Tuesday began installing a canvas-covered fence along Tucker to screen off the view of the encampment, where dozens of people mingled amid tents and piles of personal possessions.
“This is not by any means permanent,†Nick Dunne, a spokesman for the mayor, said of the encampment in an interview outside St. Patrick Center. “This is a temporary placeholder effort to get services for our unhoused.â€
People are also reading…
The city plans to finish fencing in the plaza that sits just north of St. Patrick Center, which provides a range of services for the unhoused. Many unhoused people make their way to the center for afternoon meals and spend time on the plaza during the day, but the number of tents and size of the group that has gathered there in recent weeks is unusual.
San Francisco payment company will lease former Post-Dispatch building, giving it room to grow St. Louis office to 1,400 people.Â
The encampment’s emergence comes just as Square prepares to move employees into its new offices in the rehabbed 900 North Tucker Boulevard building, the former headquarters of the Post-Dispatch. StarWood Group, a real estate development company led by Square co-founder Jim McKelvey and John Berglund, purchased the building two years ago and has been rehabbing it since.
Square, the San Francisco payment processing giant founded by McKelvey and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, has said it would move hundreds of employees from the Cortex District in the Central West End and potentially hundreds more as it grows its presence in St. Louis.
Berglund, of StarWood Group, said in a statement Tuesday that the company is working with the St. Patrick Center to find “an improved solution for the unhoused.†StarWood owns a small piece of the plaza, at its northeast corner. The rest is owned by the city.
“We are also working closely with the mayor’s office on the encampments in Interco (Plaza) and how best to find a solution,†Berglund said.
Though Jones’ administration has floated the idea of city-monitored “intentional encampments†for homeless people who can’t or won’t tap nonprofit and city housing services, Dunne stressed that the encampment on the plaza is not one of them. City homeless program providers as well as St. Patrick Center staff and other providers will work with the people there to help them access homeless services or find other permanent encampment space, and the Interco Plaza encampment should “sundown†in 30 to 60 days, Dunne said.
‘A natural place,’ for homeless
Some people on the plaza said they’ve already been told the encampment would be closed within days. A man who identified himself as “MJ†said that the same group that erected the fence on Tuesday also removed a water fountain that was attached to a fire hydrant. He said it was the only water source at the tent camp, and was also used as a station to wash their faces. “We can survive on anything, but not without water,†he said.
Money for camps for people who won't go to traditional shelters is a small part of a plan to spend federal pandemic aid proposed by the mayor.
An encampment “pops up every now and again in this location,†said Amy Bickford, the city’s homeless services program manager. She said the heat, full shelters, even the rising Mississippi River have probably led to this convergence of unhoused people next to St. Patrick Center.
“This ends up being a natural place where people congregate and then sleep because they can also link to all sorts of services through St. Patrick’s Center,†she said.
The city is providing food and water, portable toilets and performing trash pickup on the site, she said. Earlier this year, it also awarded about $280,000 in federal stimulus dollars through a grant to the St. Patrick Center to provide additional outreach and service coordination among the unhoused population, Bickford said.
Anthony D’Agostino, CEO of St. Patrick Center, confirmed the nonprofit has been in contact with the city and StarWood in recent days to discuss the issue.
Dunne, the mayor’s spokesman, said the city wanted to install the fence â€to give a sense of privacy to the folks in the encampment.†Asked whether the fence was at the request of Square or its landlord, he said â€I can’t speak as to whether that was part of the agreement.†But the city has been working with them on the issue, he added.
“We’re engaging as many stakeholders as we can,†Dunne said, â€to make sure we go about this in an intentional way that’s mindful of the neighbors but also mindful of the needs of the unhoused who will be in this area.â€
Robert Cohen of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.