An alderman and a first-time developer have big plans for an area of North City that’s best known as home to a controversial homeless encampment.
A bill introduced by Alderman Rasheen Aldridge on Friday would use tax abatements to tee up redevelopment at Cass Avenue and 10th Street in Old North. A developer has proposed turning the blocks currently home to a smattering of tents into what’s being called The Northern Light Land Development Project.
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That project would be anchored by a multi-story event center and include townhomes, a small amphitheater, a greenhouse to host weddings, and a bed and breakfast. Aldridge’s bill would provide a 25-year tax abatement for the property, with it being abated at 90 percent for the first decade and then at 50 percent for the following 15 years.
“The Northside, for so long, has continued to be left out,” Aldridge tells SLM. “We deserve great, bold development like we see downtown and in the central corridor.”
The developer behind the project is Jeanetta Hawkins, and Northern Lights represents her first attempt at a development of this scale. “She’s shooting big,” says Aldridge.
Hawkins is a veteran of the events industry who for 16 years has operated her Personal Touches by Jeanetta business out of a building on Cass just a block east of the proposed redevelopment site. In paperwork associated with the proposed development, she writes that her mission is to transform the nearly 10-acre parcel “into a high-tech, multi-venue ‘Oasis’ that anchors the Downtown North Corridor.” She estimates the total cost of the project to be around $400 million, including land acquisition.
Right now, some of that land is owned by Northside Regeneration, the development arm of infamously derelict developer Paul McKee. The city is currently taking action to wrest control of hundreds of vacant properties away from McKee. The proposed redevelopment site wasn’t among the 87 properties that the city began the process of acquiring from McKee last March. St. Louis Development Corporation has approved a plan for the parcel to be blighted. “SLDC is on board,” Aldridge says. Hawkins would have to purchase the land from McKee.
The plot of land at 10th and Cass has had an unusually high-profile year thus far, largely thanks to Facebook journalist Elliott Davis, who has frequently streamed live from the tent encampment there. Ahead of last month’s snow storm, Davis’ dispatches spurred local community activist Erion “Prop-Man” Johnson to erect a plywood warming structure on the site. The city warned that it was a fire hazard, and it did eventually catch fire. (No one was injured.) Prop-Man himself said he wanted it torn down because of unspecified “illicit” things occurring inside. The city demolished his creation last week.
While tax abatements for development have become increasingly unpopular in the city, Aldridge is confident he can get his fellow aldermen on board with this one. A common chorus against abatements is that they deprive city schools of tax dollars. But Aldridge notes right now what’s going on at 10th and Cass isn’t generating any tax revenue at all. “The numbers are a little different,” he says of doing development in North City. “But if we can do more abatements in the Northside to bring development—hell, yeah.”
