Maxine Clark’s latest venture got started with a wrong turn. While driving around the West End neighborhood, where the Build-A-Bear Workshop founder opened up a KIPP school, she took a right turn instead of a left. She drove past the building that once housed a St. Luke’s Hospital and then a Connect Care, on Delmar. It closed in 2014. There was a for sale sign.
“I thought, What is going to happen to this area?” says Clark, who left Build-A-Bear in 2013 to focus on her work in improving public education. (She also runs the Clark-Fox Family Foundation with her husband, Bob Fox.) “Here we just [opened] our school, and we have a lot of kids here. What are they going to do with this building? It’ll be like a lot of buildings in St. Louis—it’ll just stay empty for a while.”
She encouraged her friend Dennis Lower, then the CEO of Cortex, to buy it and turn it into the innovation community's west campus. Cortex had too much going on for a project of that size, and Lower suggested that she do something with it. “I thought it would be pretty easy to do this because it had not been empty very long, and it’s such a great location,” Clark says.
“This” is Delmar Divine, a Cortex-like $100 million mixed-use project. Delmar Divine will house both space and shared resources for nonprofits as well as 150 apartments. It's Clark's brainchild, and she hopes the project will encourage community development and social improvement, and will act as a meeting place for talented social innovators and local organizations. The name is a take on the Delmar Divide; Delmar Boulevard divides the city by race, income, and perspective.
Courtesy of Delmar Divine
A rendering of Delmar Divine
Clark makes the distinction between improving the neighborhood and gentrifying it. The difference is complicated, she says, but at the heart of it is making sure developers include affordable housing and economic diversity. When a neighborhood sees an uptick in development, rent typically increases, and those who were already living in the area are priced out. However, Clark’s studio apartments will start at $700–$800 per month and are aimed at people who are making $35,000–$55,000. She points out that she’s also not kicking anyone out of the building—it was already vacant. “We’re bringing in new people, reenergizing the community, and bringing people for economic development.”
The project has taken five years so far, with an opening slated for fall of 2021. But Clark says she’s glad it has taken this long—the extra time has afforded her the opportunity to get to know the neighborhood and its residents.
Typically, developers don’t solicit neighborhood involvement, Clark says. “The people who have the money to do the project have their own vision. They don't necessarily ask the people who it's going to impact the most. But that’s what I got to do because our school was there, so I met a lot of parents and neighbors who got me really interested and encouraged me all along the way. They said, ‘It's not going to be easy. This is going to take a long time, so please don't give up.'
“But because I've spent so much time with children and families because of my work, and because I support African American entrepreneurs, I know how much talent exists in this community. And I know that we have a great future ahead of us if we just unlock that talent and let it mingle with the rest of us instead of thinking that there's no talent there or it needs to stay north of Delmar.”
