Photography by Virginia Lee Hunter
Four years ago, staff writer Jeannette Cooperman and I set out to tell a complex tale, one we dubbed "North Side Story." The feature's dek said it all: "Mysterious companies…rancorous meetings…heavyweight politics…billions of dollars…an in-depth report on the front lines of Paul McKee’s battle to reshape St. Louis." That battle centered around the developer's ambitious, much-debated plan to transform the near North Side.
It was an idea that McKee envisioned years earlier, shortly after he'd convinced MasterCard to open an office near WingHaven, his planned community in O'Fallon, Mo. “If our city is ever going to be great again, it takes job growth,” he told SLM in 2009, “and it takes land to grow jobs. Well, where in hell is there land in the city? On the North Side. In 2003, I drew a circle around an area and asked a real-estate broker I respected to take a look. Did they think we could get 50 percent of the land without eminent domain? The answer was yes.”
And so he set out, quietly buying up properties—until historic preservationist Michael Allen revealed McKee's identity on his blog, Ecology of Absence. The story gained citywide attention in January 2007, when the Riverfront Times named McKee as the mystery buyer.
Several months later, the Post-Dispatch ran a front-page story with the headline "A tax-credit bill for one man?" The article described the Distressed Areas Land Assemblage Tax Credit Act, a bill that would reimburse any qualifying developer with transferable tax credits of as much as $10 million a year—one that seemed tailored for McKee's project. When then-Gov. Matt Blunt vetoed the bill in July 2007, a similar bill quickly emerged that passed in special session. McKee also sought financing elsewhere, filing an application for $410 million in tax increment financing.
In the meantime, he worked to bridge divides. He was among the biggest advocates of the "China Hub," with his NorthPark development near Lambert International Airport and the future Mississippi River bridge at the east side of his proposed development. He also listened to the concerns of longtime North Side residents and historic preservations, eventually realizing that he needed to take a different approach than he had in St. Charles County. “Here you’ve got small parcels of land you’ve got to deal with,” McKee said in 2009, as he drove us through the proposed development’s footprint. “Out at WingHaven it was cornfield, so you didn’t have this all around you that you’ve got to respect.”
In mid-May 2009, the Post-Dispatch ran another front-page story, this time detailing a "transformative" $5.4 billion plan to shape more than 500 acres of St. Louis—an area larger than downtown Clayton. The plan outlined 4.5 million square feet of office buildings and stores, 22,000 permanent jobs, 10,000 new homes for all income levels... In the TIF application submitted a week later (a revised application would later be for $390 million), those numbers were $8.1 billion and more than 1,500 acres.
It was the single most ambitious project in the city’s history.
“Everywhere else on the North Side where they piss-anted a solution, 10 years later, it’s ghetto again,” he told SLM in 2009. “Think of this like a huge lake—people have been throwing pebbles around the edges for 100 years, and the ripples have never hit the other side.”
The NorthSide project proposed seven goals: economic development, education, energy, transit, environment, health, and heritage. To that first point—job creation—McKee proposed four "job centers": 1) an office tower on 22nd Street, 2) a site near the new bridge’s landing, 3) a cluster around Sensient Technologies, and 4) one that would center around agriculture, processed food, plant science, and life science.
In September 2009, city aldermen would vote unanimously in favor of a TIF to fund the project—before Circuit Judge Robert Dierker threw out the decision in July 2010. "Specifically, Dierker wrote, declaring 1,100 acres of the city blighted 'in one fell swoop' on behalf of what, at this point, is such a speculative project, violates the statutes that govern TIF," the Post-Dispatch reported. "While NorthSide is often described as a 'plan,' it is not yet, Dierker wrote, a specific 'project,' and thus is too vague to justify blighting, incentives and the potential use of eminent domain."
Over the next several years—while buildings on the North Side (including the Clemens House Mansion on Cass Avenue) continued to deteriorate; news broke about McKee owing "nearly $2 million in taxes, interest, and penalties" on his Hazelwood Commerce Center project; and the Mississippi River bridge began to rise—the NorthSide project remained largely in "legal limbo."
Then, on Tuesday, everything changed: The Missouri Supreme Court set the stage for the state's largest-ever TIF to move forward, tossing out Dierker's earlier ruling. At the same time, McKee is working to secure additional funding by extending the Distressed Area Land Assemblage tax-credit program (one that might also apply to the site of Kansas City's Bannister Mall).
For now, residents are waiting to see if McKee can deliver. As the Post-Dispatch reports, later this year, he "hopes to start street and sewer work across the two-square mile project, build several dozen new homes, and start attracting companies to open up shop in north city." Those employers remain to be seen, though, at a time when growth for metro St. Louis' job market has slowed and unemployment has risen to 7.3 percent. And other aspects of the NorthSide project—notably, education and historic preservation—will also play a vital role in the months and years to come.
More than a decade after McKee first envisioned his plan for the near north side—and after nearly a decade of the developer buying up properties, attempting to overcome political hurdles, and attending heated community meetings—his battle to reshape St. Louis seems to have just begun.
