Ron Hughey was born and raised in North St. Louis, and he still has vivid memories of what the city’s Near North Riverfront was like before NAFTA helped to hollow out American industry. In high school in the 1960s, he worked for an industrial coatings factory and remembers how the neighborhood hummed with industry.
“There were thousands of people that worked around here,” he says of the area tucked between I-70 and the Mississippi River north of downtown. “There was Mississippi Glass Company, Walsh Refractory, East Texas Motor Freight, Lovelace Trucking Company, HH Coleman Company. The Northwestern Cooperage Co. was down on the riverfront. There were just hundreds and hundreds of people who worked in the area at all the factories.”
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Today, many of those businesses are gone. The Near North Riverfront remains an economic engine for the city—Proctor & Gamble has a 17-acre plant here, where they make Swiffer and Febreze, among other products, and a host of smaller companies continue to ply the seemingly unglamorous trades that keep America outfitted with everything from cardboard boxes to screws. But the hum is gone. And many of the business owners that remain are fed up.
They say basic services have eroded. The streets are filled with potholes and illegally dumped trash; crime is a constant concern. And yet the police only seem to show up to pull over and ticket the very trucks that serve their businesses—part of the state’s robust commercial vehicle inspection program. (The city alone expects $981,400.83 in grant funds from the Missouri Department of Transportation in 2026 to administer it.)
Meanwhile, the neighborhood seems to be deteriorating around them. “It’s going to hell in a handbasket,” says Hughey.
Hughey moved out of the city in 1979, but he still owns several buildings in the neighborhood. He says he and others tried (and failed) to get their alderman and the Citizen’s Service Bureau to pay attention to conditions around them. When that didn’t work, he consulted a business associate. “They all said, ‘Well, nobody’s going to listen to you because you don’t have any political power, OK?’ And they’re absolutely right,” he says. “I can’t even vote there because I don’t live there. So I thought, Well, what we really need is strength in numbers.”
Finding the numbers, as it turns out, has been the one easy part. Years ago, the North St. Louis Businessman’s Association was a force in the city, but it fell apart decades ago, and a brief attempt to revive it was thwarted by the pandemic. Yet, when Hughey put out word that he wanted to get business owners together to speak out about neighborhood conditions, people responded. Their most recent meeting last month drew more than 30 people—all found by going door to door with printed flyers in a neighborhood where foot traffic is virtually nonexistent.
Rob Wunderlich Jr. owns Wunderlich Fibre Box Co. and proudly touts its bonafides as the “second oldest continuously family owned and operated manufacturing firm in this entire city.” The company, which started making wooden barrels and now makes corrugated boxes, has been on the Near North Riverfront since its founding in 1860. Wunderlich’s grandfather served as the businessman association’s president back in the 1960s; Wunderlich still has the book that was printed for its 100th anniversary gala in 1975—”this beautiful embossed book that looks like an old high school yearbook,” in his words.
Wunderlich dates the escalation of the neighborhood’s struggles to the years following Michael Brown’s 2014 death in Ferguson, which seemed to precipitate general lawlessness. “Drag racing, street racing, drive-by shootings, just random people shooting into buildings, all kinds of criminal behavior, prostitution, and zero police presence,” he says. He has a collection on his window sill of a half-dozen bullets he’s dug out of the roof or found in the parking lot.
Wunderlich says the family has had “innumerable” discussions about pulling out of the city since a drive-by shooting five years ago sent bullets into the office area of the factory during an evening shift. “If they had been sitting at their desks when this happened, their brains would have been blown out all over their computers because their computer monitors were actually shot through,” he says. “I’m amazed anybody finished their shift.”
Wunderlich has stayed in part because the highway access can’t be beat. While he doesn’t blame Mayor Cara Spencer for the conditions in the neighborhood, and acknowledges that the tornado was far more destructive than many people who never visit North City realize, he does feel that change is urgently needed. He hopes that by speaking with one voice, the business owners can overcome the fact that few of them are city voters and actually get the attention of people in power. “There are countless small businesses here employing 25, 35, 50 people, and we deserve a little bit of love,” he says.
Spencer says she’s listening. “The Near North Riverfront group is a dedicated group of business owners who have invested a lot in our city,” she says. “They want to see improvements on the riverfront just as much as I do. The work they are doing to coordinate voices in this area will make our ability to address their concerns and issues so much more effective.
“One of the keys to having a good business climate is to really listen,” Spencer adds. “I agree this area could use some increased attention and I know our team is ready to roll up our sleeves and work alongside any business owner who believes in the future of the City of St. Louis.”
After first convening in September, the business owners are getting serious. At their most recent meeting they elected officers, established dues, and committed to trying to get nonprofit status with the IRS.
Tony Rocca, an artist whose precast concrete company AKT Studios is in the Near North Riverfront, helped kickstart the effort by taking flyers around the neighborhood.
The meetings, Rocca says, have made clear that people are fed up—and ready to take action. “I have been blown away with the interest and the enthusiasm behind this effort,” he says.
And after years of neglect, they’re determined to claim a seat at the table.
“We contribute a lot to the City of St. Louis,” Rocca says. “And I think the gist coming from people is that we don’t think that we are getting anything from them in return.”
