A massive former church building in North City will soon be home to two of St. Louis’ most prominent activist organizations.
Action St. Louis and ArchCity Defenders announced this morning that they have jointly purchased a 36,000-square-foot building on Goodfellow Boulevard in the city’s North Pointe neighborhood to anchor their services and be closer to the clients they serve. The new building is dubbed the Northside Movement Center.
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The two organizations have a long history of working together, with Action organizing people on the ground around issues including criminal justice reform and housing. ArchCity is an activist law firm with many of the same end goals, though they pursue those ends primarily in the courtroom. “The arc of our work is that one person comes in as a client for ArchCity, and they’re getting the services that they need. Then they’re also being organized into community meetings,” says Action St. Louis executive director Kayla Reed. “So someone facing eviction becomes a leader in the We the Tenants campaign, or someone impacted by the Workhouse becomes a leader in the Close the Workhouse campaign.”
That “Close the Workhouse” effort is a prime example of the organizations’ complementary approaches, with Action waging a public pressure campaign against the city to close the notorious North City jail as ArchCity filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of those who had been locked up there. Then-Mayor Tishaura Jones shuttered the Workhouse in 2021.
That same year, as both organizations began to think about physical gathering following the pandemic, they struck on the idea to co-locate in the same space.
“When we started having this conversation, the tagline that we kept using is, ‘We’re bringing movement home,’” says Reed. “That physical infrastructure is so important.” She says that just this week, Action is hosting several events and meetings which involve hundreds of people—each at a different location. This will bring them all under the same roof, making the logistics of their activism much easier.
Once the space is fully up and running, the roughly 65 people employed by both organizations will work out of the building, whose two halves have been dubbed “the North Side” and “the South Side.” In addition to office space, there are conference rooms for community meetings and a gym that can house large gatherings. “The dream is that both of those sides are active at all times,” says Reed. She anticipates every morning someone from ArchCity will turn on the lights at 8 a.m. and the building will be humming at least until 8 p.m., when someone from Action closes the building down.
ArchCity purchased the Goodfellow building for $2.2 million in April 2024. A year later, a new organization called Northside Center for Power and Transformation, whose board is made up of members of ArchCity and Action, took ownership of the property.
Significant work has been done to the interior. “The office wing of the building, the northern half, we really did have to completely clear out, do an interior gut, to then organize it for office space,” says Blake Strode, ArchCity’s executive director. Previously, the building had been home to the family center associated with the New Northside Missionary Baptist Church for more than two decades.
Reed, whose Action St. Louis led the People’s Response to the May 16 tornado, says that virtually every day after the tornado hit, she wished out loud that the space was already up and running. “I said it once a day, every day. It was the hardest thing in the world to know that we owned a building that was not yet ready,” she says.
The hope is that by January it will be and they can move in that same month.
The two organizations have already raised $9 million for construction costs and to set up an operating endowment. They are hoping to raise $6 million more through a Northside Movement Center capital campaign.
Why It Matters: Since its founding in 2016, Action St. Louis has made its power felt in local politics. The group’s endorsement and organizing support are a boon to any candidate seeking an aldermanic or citywide seat. ArchCity has meanwhile pushed a progressive agenda via the courts, taking the city to task for everything from its treatment of a jail oversight board member to its policies around homeless shelters. (Other local municipalities have taken their lumps as well, and ArchCity has the settlements to prove it.) The theory is that both organizations will be better able to work towards those shared goals once they share a physical space.
What’s Next: After the organizations move in this January, Reed and Strode expect the building to be fully open not long after. “Before you have guests over, you got to get the boxes off the floor,” jokes Reed.
“We’re looking ahead to a grand opening event in early 2026,” says Strode. “We sort of have the back half of February pinned as the ideal time to pull together a lot of our partners and supporters and community members and really warm up the space.”
