Michael Thomas
Here’s a story that Dellwood Mayor Reggie Jones tells about the morning of November 25, 2014: He’s standing in front of City Hall. The commercial heart of his square-mile municipality is smoldering around him. Rioters have smashed, looted, or torched at least 14 Dellwood businesses overnight; eight buildings are charred shells. As Jones finishes an interview with KMOV, he sees a car pull up. Young men inside call out to him to say they’re sorry.
“Sorry for what?” the mayor asks.
For burning everything down, they say: “We thought it was Ferguson.”
Situated just north of Ferguson, the city of Dellwood is an overlooked victim of the 2014 unrest. It had nothing to do with Michael Brown’s death, Jones points out. It wasn’t plagued by the underlying tensions of its neighbor, and after the smoke cleared, it never gained as much name recognition—or outside investment. But it still sustained heavy collateral damage in 2014. Seemingly its only offense was one of proximity.
Dellwood’s population, which hovers around 5,000, is about 85 percent African-American—a reality well reflected in the local government. Residents live almost exclusively in single-story single-family homes on quiet streets shaded by oaks. From 2012 through 2017, crime was relatively flat. The year before the unrest, in fact, crime had dipped noticeably with the St. Louis County Police Department patrolling the streets. (Dellwood dissolved its own force in 2012.) The municipal court served a quarter as many residents as Ferguson’s in 2014 yet collected only about a tenth of the revenue in fines.
The problem for Dellwood during the unrest was that its main traffic artery, West Florissant Avenue, connected it directly to the protests. Therefore that corridor was where Dellwood got hit the hardest. It’s also where Jones and others see the most potential for renewal.
The Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, for example, has a plan for the empty lots at 9844 and 9846 West Florissant—where Juanita’s Fashions R Boutique and Advance Auto Parts once stood before falling prey to fire. With the help of a $500,000 grant from Emerson, the Urban League bought the lots. Now its leadership is hoping to cobble together another $8 million to construct a complex to include a bank, restaurant, retail space, and conference center. Jones hopes soul food restaurant Sweetie Pie’s—Dellwood’s most famous business—will move into the complex from its current location across the street.
“We want to be a part of that rebirth,” says Urban League president Michael P. McMillan.
The Urban League plan isn’t the only large-scale project on Dellwood’s drawing board. One mile to the north sits a mostly vacant plaza called Springwood. Ken Jenkins, pastor of the Refuge & Restoration Church, wants to move his congregation into the space, along with an early childhood center, a bank, a job-training center, and a coworking center associated with Cortex. Jenkins says he’s received a loan and been in negotiations with the owner for two years. “We’ve made some headway,” Jenkins says.
At the same time, a smaller-scale rebirth is underway. Taxable sales figures citywide are back up to pre-unrest levels. At the primary intersection, West Florissant and Chambers, all four corners bustle once again with commerce: fashion and cellphone shops, a beauty supply store, a barbecue joint, a gas station. Public property is getting some love, too. The city has won grants to improve the roof, HVAC system, parking lot, and pool at its recreation center, Jones says. City Hall itself recently underwent a makeover, thanks to a pair of bond issues totaling $7 million. Dellwoodians will pay it back over two decades.
“I told the residents, ‘You got to put skin in the game if you want to see things change,’” says Jones, who won a third term in 2017. “I think Mike Brown made us closer. It was, like, us against the world.”
Last year, the city switched its police contract over to the North County Police Cooperative. Not only did the resulting savings allow Dellwood to hire a new public works employee and code enforcer, but the change also had no apparent effect on crime, according to Ward IV Alderman Mike Heil, who chairs the police board. The board used to meet every other month; right now, he doesn’t see the need. “There’s not any residents coming to me saying, ‘Heil, I have an issue,’” he says. “I’m not being inundated with phone calls, knock on wood.”
Indeed, on a humid spring Saturday afternoon, Dellwood’s residential streets are the picture of suburban calm, broken only by bird chatter and the whine of a distant lawnmower. Josephine Hill admires her newly paved street and new street signs, both products of the bond issue. She agrees with the conclusions drawn by many residents: The mayor and Board of Aldermen seem to be moving in sync, and the city has rebounded since 2014.
“It’s better,” she says. “If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have voted for ’em.”
