Paul McKee Jr. leads a development team that brought MasterCard and Citigroup to a cornfield in St. Charles County. That alone should guarantee he gets a fair hearing from elected officials representing an area where he has been investing in real estate, such as North St. Louis.
We doubt the motives and effectiveness of the St. Louis Mayor’s Office, especially when the interests of the black community are involved, but it is only rational – in a city starved for jobs and tax revenue – for a sitting mayor to work cooperatively with a local developer who has a proven ability to attract corporate tenants and the jobs they have to offer, although McKee’s work was done in an ex-urban rather than urban location.
In our view, the North City alderwomen who have been meeting with McKee – April Ford-Griffin and Marlene Davis – are acting in the best interests of their constituents in engaging with McKee, despite the negative media frenzy that has surrounded his project in North City.
McKee brought some of his early problems upon himself, by not seeking the right advice for operating in the delicate political terrain of North St. Louis and by leaving himself open to accusations of being a bad neighbor for initial poor property upkeep. However, he soon became a lightning rod for every kind of misgiving or fear the public harbors about development – much of this criticism being unfounded or simply true of any developer that invests in land on a large scale.
Tonight (Thursday, May 21) McKee’s team will unfold details of its North City project 7-9 p.m. at Central Baptist Church, 2845 Washington Blvd. The public will see a daring and imaginative proposal to remake the near North Side almost in its entirety. McKee proposes a mixed use development, with corporate parks, retail and residential units. The proposed housing would be in an economic range, from affordable workforce housing to executive homes. As McKee was saying long before he began to invest in North St. Louis, economic diversity is the basis of all diversity. Any attempt to paint him as simply an agent of gentrification whose goal is “to drive all of the black people out of North St. Louis” is ignorant of his development philosophy and practice.
McKee faces many problems in making a reality of his daring vision, including the frozen credit markets. We will remind him that he will only make his work in North St. Louis much more difficult, if not impossible, if he allows Mayor Francis G. Slay to claim it as a political prize or as evidence that the mayor is ready to embrace the black community he has spurned and disrespected. McKee needs Slay’s cooperation, but not as badly as the City needs investment, the jobs a project of this scale will bring and a concerted effort to turn around the area’s deep decline.
We have many questions and concerns for McKee’s project in its present form that we will unfold over the coming weeks. We already feel that his senior team needs to be a more racially diverse group that has earned credibility in this largely African-American community and includes members who understand the many nuances of developing large-scale urban projects. For now, however, we urge the community to attend the public forum tonight and pay close attention to what McKee has in mind. We would not have predicted, nor perhaps chosen, for the revitalization of North St. Louis to begin with a Republican from St. Charles County. But if McKee can negotiate the political landmines, access credit and convince the community that he is acting in good faith, this could be the beginning of a radical transformation of some of the most blighted neighborhoods in a city whose future success sits at a crossroads.