“We ain’t afraid of tension. We can handle it. You just can’t be stupid about it.” —Paul McKee
“I think strongly this is a faith-based thing. In the early years of LifeWorks, you will not see the word ‘pray.’ I'd say it if I had to speak on it, but I never wrote it down. Finally we said, ‘Screw it. It’s who we are.’” —McKee
“I come away from these public meetings completely exhausted, but energized. I can’t sleep when I go home. Man, this is going to sound weird. But they have been lied to and screwed and taken advantage of for generations… I think my whole career has led me to this.” —McKee
“If you have people all the same kind, that’s not community, it’s a cult.” —McKee
“One, the General Assembly kind of bent over backwards to help McKee out. It is fundamentally un-American for a government group to try to help out one citizen. Two, eminent domain disproportionately is used against people who lack the resources, authority, or influence to fight back. I’d like to see McKee take eminent domain off the table.” —Dave Roland, policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute
“You can’t undo 80 years in 20 or 30 years; if you try, you are going to end up with a mediocre development.” —Michael Allen, historic preservationist
“He doesn’t know yet what he’ll need, and I’d rather he just say that. He builds to suit, and he doesn’t have anyone to suit yet.” —Allen
“I think he’s going to take the typical St. Louis route and look at a few buildings and say, ‘That’s a landmark, so we’ll save the landmarks,’ and everything else is expendable.” —Steve Patterson, blogger, urbanreviewstl.com
“I’ve seen nothing as a parallel. We have cities like Flint, Mich., preparing to shrink; that’s the alternative. Either we redevelop and reuse this land, or we shrink and give it up.” —Patterson
“I had a grudging respect for his ability to completely ignore all the pesky ‘concerned citizens’ and ‘neighbors’ while he bought up his North Side property. It seems he realized that piles of citations and complaints of citizens were mere dirt to be brushed off his shoulder, that deteriorating Victorian buildings are remnants of a past that no longer warrants much regard, let alone historical or aesthetic appreciation. It seemed to me that he’s but one in a long line of visionary St. Louisians who have seen the folly of such quaint but dated remnants, things like streetcars, brick, and public discourse.” —Randall Roberts, former RFT writer
“I give that guy a lot of credit, and I’d do anything short of guaranteeing his bonds to help him. But he hasn’t even begun to see how difficult this process is.” —Alderman Steve Conway
“I always wanted development but I couldn’t have development at a cost. I couldn’t have development that was gonna take away control from the city and the elected officials, and I couldn’t have development with eminent domain on a level that I would never be able to support, not ever, ever, ever.” —Alderwoman Marlene Davis
“Does he have enough money to do all this? No, he doesn't. And I don’t know another human being on earth who does. Even Warren Buffett doesn’t have that much money.” —Davis
“There’s no common sense to say, ‘We’re mad at him, and we think we need to bar him out because he didn’t maintain his property.’ Well, who do you and I know who has $47 million—and it's probably more—to buy that land, and then has the will, power, influence, and stamina to make that project happen? So we have to bring some common sense back to it. We made him apologize to the public, and we’ll continue to have him apologize to the pubic, because he’s supposed to do that.” —Davis
“The way it was set up at first it was completely vertical. It was just like somebody handing you a cornstalk. Now it’s easier to swallow. It’s more tasty.” —Alderman Quincy Troupe
“When the North Side people started complaining, it would come to me. We treat ’em [McKee's properties] like everybody else. We cite ’em, we condemn ’em, in some cases we had to tear them down. When the city goes out and takes care of a property, we bill the owner. So yes, there were a lot of services being performed, but here was the catch: They would get a bill and pay it. The collection rate was, like, 98 percent. Now, we’d probably rather not take care of any property, and we communicated that to the Blairmont companies—but at the time, they were busy acquiring more.” —Matt Moak, associate city counselor in charge of the problem property unit
“What’s the point of having a TIF application that says, ‘I must have these in order for my project to go well,’ and then for him to go to those property owners and say, ‘Oh no, just kidding.’ What is this process?” —Barbara Manzara, vice president of the North Side Community Benefits Alliance
“If a lot of media show up, then he’s not gonna show up. Whatever was planned in that meeting certainly isn’t gonna be addressed. They always have a Plan B. They can shift the agenda. They’ve been doing this for at least three years that we know of, coming right outside the footprint and explaining how nice it will be once those pesky neighbors of yours are removed. But they haven’t come to us and told us how nice it will be when we’re removed.” —Manzara
“Twelve years ago, I lived on the South Side, and I didn’t even know who my alderperson was. I moved up here, and it took about six weeks to get radicalized.” —Manzara
“I’m not saying it’s some sort of ebony-and-ivory nirvana up here—we’ve got our divisions—but the hatred from Paul McKee’s childhood is gone, and I don’t think he realizes that.” —Manzara
“You ask for grass roots or organic change, that’s just code for ‘Nobody asked me.’” —A civic observer
“People deserve to stay in this neighborhood because they fought off the stigma that was put on by Pruitt-Igoe, they fought off all the disinvestment of the neighborhood, they fought off the thought that all we need to do is tear everything down and put a golf course in, and they’re still fighting. What world is this? We already own this house, but we’ve gotta go appeal to some other guy to another guy to another guy for the city to go, ‘Yeah, they’re worth it.’” —Sheila Rendon, president of the North Side Community Benefits Alliance
“Anybody who's willing to spend that much money in an area that's far blighted and decayed, I mean it's incredible. I just don’t understand anybody who would criticize him for that. I'm sorry, they're stupid.” —Missouri Sen. John Griesheimer (R–Wash.)
“He's certainly enthusiastic about using somebody else’s money. I don’t see him staking out a place for his own residence there, do you?” —Steve Marx, owner of Marx Hardware
“I think it is probably new to him, coming from a historic preservation aspect. I think this may not have been something he’s dealt with in previous developments. He’s almost had a clean slate. And here, he’s trying to create something in an existing historic fabric.” —Jeff Mansell, executive director, Landmarks Association of St. Louis
“He calls it the NorthSide redevelopment plan, but you notice where he’s going to start? It really should be called the West Downtown/NorthSide plan. It makes sense for him to go for the commercial to start paying off his obligations and cause it to radiate outward. And from a marketing viewpoint, he's brilliant, because what he’s saying is, 'I’m going to save North St. Louis.” —Robert Denlow, eminent domain lawyer
“Do I really believe he wants to leave a legacy behind? I do. Does he want to maximize his investment? Absolutely. He wants to have as much flexibility as possible, and he doesn’t want to be told how much he has to pay. He’d say, if he follows the law, that should be enough, And my statement is, it's not enough.” —Denlow
“What the homeowners should say is that McKee has accelerated the decline. Which he has. Not that it already wasn’t past the tipping point. They want to blame McKee for everything.” —Denlow
“We haven’t gotten the reputation of the fifth most dangerous city in the nation because of Paul McKee.” —Sal Martinez, chairman of the St. Louis Housing Authority board
“I'm hearing a sense of excitement but also a sense of mistrust. There have been a lot of pretty plans put together and a lot of pretty promises. I think if he pulls off even a portion of it, it’s going to be a huge step ahead for North City. Success? It’ll hinge on the ability to put together the alphabet soup of assistance he's going to require.” —Kimberly McKinney, CEO, Habitat for Humanity
“Paul is very well intentioned. But he’s very, very inexperienced about working in an urban environment. I don't think he understands it at all. And a lot of what he's going through is a reaction to naivete.” —An observer who works in development
“I don’t doubt his noble intentions. On the other hand, his expectations of public money are ridiculous. I think it was just naivete—even on his consultants’ part.” —An observer who works in government
“There’s no question in my mind that he's a true believer, but he’s a believer as someone who's never lived in the community. In the mayor’s office, they have lived with these problems, they understand them, and he’s coming in and lecturing them on the problems with the city.” —An observer who works in government
“People think there is a secret plan. There is no secret plan! One thing he learned during the O’Fallon process is, the more you tell people, the more they change it, and he’s the kind of guy who wants it to be his way.” —A civic observer
“If you are in the middle of an opaque and corrupt system, Paul McKee looks opaque and corrupt.” —A media observer
