Photograph by Chris Naffziger
Adrienne Harris' adult daycare business in St. Louis Place.
It’s springtime in St. Louis Place, the north-side neighborhood in the footprint of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency’s future home, and the volunteer corn is starting to grow above waist height. Planted in 2013 without the knowledge or consent of residents, the corn makes this neighborhood look more like a farm than a city. Officials dismissed or ignored neighbors' concerns about the seven-foot tall corn stalks erasing their homes' familiar surroundings.
Meanwhile, Paul McKee-owned properties don’t get mowed very often up here. When they do, it is often right before a news conference, and sometimes, thanks to political connections, it’s even on the taxpayers’ dime.
For the rest of the people affected by the spy agency's chosen new location, political connections are not materializing to help them out. The owners of these houses, some of which have been in the family for generations, are now facing the bleak outcome of recent eminent domain hearings. On Saturday, I sat down with residents Sheila and Gustavo Rendon, who have long been vocal opponents against the NGA (and the Northside Regeneration development before that). I also spoke with Adrienne Harris on Wednesday, whose home business, an adult daycare, is threatened unless she moves it.
SEE ALSO:
North Side Story: A Brief History of the Near North Side
Special Report: North Side Story
St. Louis Place: A Neighborhood You May Not Know—But Should
The Human Stories Behind the Abstract Phrase "Eminent Domain"
A Picnic in Honor of the History—and People—of St. Louis Place
While the City of St. Louis has agreed to purchase McKee’s land for around $17 million, including the land that it sold him several years ago, other property owners get no such deal. The Rendons and Harris were shocked to receive a letter in the mail from the City informing them that St. Louis would be appealing the eminent domain commission’s recommendation for financial compensation. (I probably wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t held the letter in my own hands myself in the Rendons’ living room.)
The City has offered several properties for the Rendons to purchase in exchange for their property in the nearby Old North St. Louis neighborhood, but Sheila is not satisfied. Sheila’s grandparents bought the house, a well-maintained, proud home surrounded by a garden and stately trees, after they had been run out of neighborhoods to the south for the construction of Pruitt-Igoe. History repeats itself: failed government policy pushes innocent families out of the way yet again.
Several blocks to the north, across from the scrubby, overgrown cornfields, Adrienne Harris, who grew up in Pruitt-Igoe, faces a monumental challenge. Like the Rendons, Harris inherited her house from her mother; like many other residents, that house represents her life savings. A decade ago, when Harris began her daycare, the drug dealers were out of control on her block. She called the police daily, and she was forced to shutter her business after a break-in. But Harris refused to give up, choosing to invest in and fight for her family’s neighborhood. An appeal to Mayor Slay seemed to have worked, as the drug dealers were finally run out.
Harris took a leap of faith. She took her savings and invested them in her family’s house after her mother died, modifying the house to create an adult daycare business. The process for state certification is arduous and actually mandates the owner of the daycare to reach full operation before inspection, requiring large capital expenditures in the tens of thousands of dollars. The Building Division’s online record of permits verifies that Harris made a huge investment in her property to bring the house up to code. Among the expensive modifications required: larger windows and doors for egress, a security and fire alarm, sprinklers and a concrete bunker around the new furnace in the basement, a ramp for wheelchairs, multiple phone lines for the alarms, and a new kitchen, just to name a few. On top of that, Harris purchased the fire-ravaged shell next door, paid to have it demolished, and installed a yard for her clients.
I have visited numerous nursing homes in my life, and the first thing you notice in facilities managed by a listless or overworked staff is a strong, unpleasant smell. At Harris’s daycare, the house smelled friendly, homey, and fresh; I was allowed to inspect the entire house and it was spotlessly clean. In fact, checking state and city records, I confirmed that the daycare has never been cited by the city and maintains an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau. The house is tastefully decorated with fruit tiles and African art. It feels like a home.
Harris and director Paula Hutson, a registered nurse, take care of five clients full-time and another two days a week. On Wednesday morning, there were just two people staying at the daycare as the others had gone on a field trip. During my visit, Hutson and Harris gently fed spoonfuls of food to a speech-impaired client in an electric wheelchair while another client played with a dog in the side yard. They like listening to Harris read the Bible the most, she says.
Harris and Hutson explained the process of eminent domain and how the price offered and issued by the commissioners has risen and fallen like a roller coaster. I found myself getting confused, and I don’t even have the added stress of worrying about losing my home while trying to decipher the legal proceedings. First it was $65,000, then it $139,000, and then it was $195,000. Perhaps a casual observer would think that is good deal, until one remembers one critical fact: It is not a simple task to find a comparable building that is “move-in ready” with all of the required modifications. Realistically, even if Harris closed on a house tomorrow (and she hasn’t gotten a dime from the government yet), it will still take at least six months to a year to get all of the permits at the new address—of which I saw at least a half dozen in her files for the current house—and get the doors open. In the meantime, Harris will earn no income to pay her own bills. To those who say Harris and other residents facing eminent domain should have prepared years in advance, one must remember that the official decision to choose the St. Louis site only came a week ago. Plans and rumors for St. Louis Place have circulated many, many times. It was not unreasonable for residents to suspect City’s latest scheme would have failed to come to fruition, too.
Harris needs a new house now, ready to function as a daycare, or her business will be forced to close.
The other tragedy is the clients who would lose their high-quality daycare experience. The six men and women who call Harris’s house home 40 hours a week do not have the benefit of just moving on with their lives. For them, the joy of being able to sit in the backyard and play with a pet dog will vanish. It will take at least three to four months for them to gain admission to a new adult daycare, probably one that will have little of the personal attention Harris and Hutson can provide. They will be in limbo at home, isolated and alone. Many of them will run out of food before the end of the month and rely on Harris for meals at those critical times.
Harris and Hutson say their work is not just a job, but a calling. “You do it because you care,” Hutson explains. Harris recalls her mother’s plea to never put her in a nursing home, so for the next decade she cared for her at home. Harris is convinced that her mother would otherwise have died much sooner, as the doctors had predicted. Harris further explained her reasons for her continued work: “I do it to show I care.” The two spoke of the pride of seeing their clients rise out of depression or get excited about their next field trip.
For the rest of the evening, I couldn’t stop thinking about Harris and Hutson’s dedication to their work. I also couldn’t stop thinking about their client in the electric wheelchair, his joyful response to the classical music playing on the stereo, and how his life will be disrupted after the city has forced Harris’s daycare to close.
Just before I had met with Harris and Hutson on Wednesday, I attended another Board of Aldermen committee hearing. Several younger aldermen and women are trying to reform our government and make the city a better place, yet I witness at hearing after hearing contempt from older colleagues, including snide comments, eye-rolling, and sighs. It makes me wonder if they will be there when the Rendons watch their family home crashing down, toppled by a bulldozer. Or if they will have the courage to look Harris in the eye after her business is destroyed by their decisions. Or what they would say to Harris' client, five or six months from now, as he sits at home, isolated and deprived not just of small pleasures like listening to symphonies but of the caretakers he had come to befriend and trust.
Chris Naffziger writes about architecture at St. Louis Patina. Contact him via email at naffziger@gmail.com.
