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Multicultural Crowd of People. Group of different men and women. Young, adult and older peole. European, Asian, African and Arabian People. Empty faces. Vector illustration.
For West End resident Treena Thompson, the best part of her neighborhood is the people. Thompson, who has lived in the neighborhood, located north of Forest Park, for 11 years, dreamed of owning a historic home there. Her husband, an architect, was drawn to the housing stock as well. Now, neighbors stop by the urban garden near the alley next to their home to ask questions and chat. Thompson says the neighborhood offers more than racial and economic diversity—she appreciates the professors, architects, artists, community organizers, and political officials who call the area home. She likes that there are grandchildren living in homes that belonged to their grandparents. “My husband and I are not from St. Louis,” Thompson says, “but it feels like home to us, and probably more so than any other place that we’ve lived.”
Thompson is also an adviser to the steering committee for the WeCollab West End Planning process, an in-the-works, resident-led community plan that’s meant to guide the neighborhood through its next stages of growth and development. In recent years, the West End has seen an influx of people moving to the neighborhood and renovating properties.
“The word ‘gentrification’ means so many different things to different people—it’s a tense word for folks,” Thompson says. “Mainly, that’s not because gentrification is bad, but because often what is produced through gentrification is the displacement of people. We are grappling with, ‘How do we plan for the future of our neighborhood and its economic prosperity, and its continued call for diversity and racial equity?’ At the same time as we’re doing this, how do we prevent things like displacement from happening?”
Helpful to this planning has been community development group Invest STL, which has championed a resident-led process. Traditionally, the way that community plans come together, Thompson describes, is that an organization that may or may not be in the neighborhood will collect data and survey residents about their desires. That information is then used to make the plan. Thompson says Invest STL and its executive director, Dara Eskridge, have put residents in the driver’s seat from the outset—West End residents are selecting which planning partners are working on the vision for the neighborhood.
“I would say that for St. Louis, this is a fairly new way of doing it, where the residents are at the table from the start, and the residents are actually the decision makers,” Thompson says. “If there’s a question or concern regarding the planning process, Invest STL is quick to ask, ‘What are the residents saying? What do the residents think? Is this a concern shared by the residents? Can we bring residents to the table to have these conversations?’ I think for many people, particularly those who live in the city, it has historically been a situation where there may be plans for a neighborhood, but residents feel like their neighborhood has been planned for them but not with them. This is a very intentional process. This planning is being led by residents, so it’s automatically done with them as opposed to for them.”
Invest STL recently went through its own planning process, eight months of strategic planning that crystallized the organization’s theory of change and focus. Invest STL was founded in 2012 by a group of residents, academics, bankers, and community development professionals who led small fundraising efforts. It evolved to become a community investment fund, housed at the St. Louis Community Foundation. Eskridge came aboard in 2019.
Now, Invest STL has struck out on its own as an independent entity. The organization decided that it will be putting a focus on predominately African American neighborhoods that are “enduring the harms of systemic anti-Black racism,” Eskridge says. Those areas where the organization will focus include North St. Louis City, North St. Louis County, and East St. Louis. It’s also emphasizing a people-led approach to work—an evolution from where it began. “It started off as supporting some CDCs [community development corporations], helping them build capacity, and doing some neighborhood plans,” Eskridge says. Now, “our work revolves around the power of people within their place to really drive the trajectory of that place… Our work is to give space and time and resources for residents to come together, be able to think together and dream together, and then gather the knowledge set and partners that they need to activate on that agenda together.” That work will include neighborhood-level investing, supporting CDCs, helping with resident-led planning, boosting hyperlocal economies, investing in catalytic real estate development, working with the local government to support equitable development, and piloting new policies.
Policy work is new to Invest STL. Michelle Witthaus is a policy designer and activation partner for the organization. “We know that a lot of the issues facing the communities that we work with are because of bad policy or policy that had unintentional consequences,” she says. “The projects that I will be running in the policy space are really looking at ‘How do we influence additional policy changes?’ To do that, it’s really almost working backward. It’s testing it and then pushing through the policy change, instead of pushing for policy change, and seeing if it works or if there are unintentional consequences and then having to course correct.”
One of the final big decisions that came out of Invest STL’s strategic planning process: It will be sunsetting in 20 years. Simply put, Invest STL employees are trying to work themselves out of a job. In the world they want to live in, their positions would be taken up by the community.
“The idea is not that we’re promising that disparity gaps will be gone,” Eskridge says. “We’re saying that by working this way, we’re able to support building up a more capable system of actors, policies, and practices that can produce better outcomes in these neighborhoods.”
Close to the problem, close to the solution
Invest STL also partners with the Dutchtown South Community Corporation, which works in the St. Louis neighborhoods of Dutchtown, Marine Villa, Mount Pleasant, and Gravois Park. Invest STL began working with Dutchtown South when it was helping put together the Gravois-Jefferson Historic Neighborhoods Plan, which outlines a vision for properties within the Gravois-Jefferson footprint. It includes goals such as preserving housing affordability and neighborhood diversity, fostering affordable medical care for residents, and increasing ridership for public transit. That plan was adopted by the city in 2018, and other neighborhoods are now looking to it in designing their own.
Annissa McCaskill, executive director of the Dutchtown South Community Corporation, says Invest STL’s involvement has allowed them to move into the realm of environmental justice without having to be concerned with finances. Dutchtown South Community Corporation is tackling such challenges as illegal dumping, as well as lead pipes and a lack of green space in area schools. These are often unpopular topics to discuss with funders, says McCaskill, because they relate to socioeconomic and racial privilege. “They touch on how decisions are made that impact people who don’t have a place at the table,” she says. “And we also do empowerment work. So we teach people how to get to the table. That’s not necessarily a thing that everyone is interested in because it’s not necessarily within their best interests.
“I’m not sure that could happen if we didn’t have partners like Invest STL,” McCaskill continues. “Typically, you’re concerned about losing funding. You’re concerned about people not aligning with how you feel about things, as opposed to having a funder who says, ‘Go for it. That’s great. Do it.’”
Similarly, Invest STL is helping the WeCollab West End Planning group think about how policy might be able to curb displacement, perhaps by proposing to state legislators a policy that would freeze property taxes for seniors. Thompson has worked in the philanthropic space and feels that the way that Invest STL operates could be a model for multiple sectors in St. Louis.
“They are truly walking with people,” Thompson says. “There’s a phrase: ‘Those closest to the problem are closest to the solution.’ And I feel like that’s how Invest STL leads… That’s not to say that all foundations or grant makers should operate in this way because we all have different priorities and functions. But it is a way that, I think, can be incredibly transformative for St. Louis.”
