Photography by Curt Dennison Photography
Seventy years ago, the University of Missouri received a nice gift from the federal government.
Here’s how the Moberly Monitor-Index reported the story in 1948:
The University of Missouri will acquire about 7,900 acres of the Weldon Springs ordnance plant near St. Louis for experimental purposes. Dr. Frederick A. Middlebush, university president, said yesterday the Board of Curators had approved the transfer of the tract from the War Assets Administration to the university at a 100 percent discount.
The college of agriculture will use the land for experiments in water management, soil conservation, pasture management, crops, forestry projects and a beef cattle program. Four hundred acres of the tract is bottom land to be used for crops, and 1,000 acres will be used for pasture, with the rest devoted to forestry projects.
I know what you’re thinking: Gosh, this guy really knows his Moberly Monitor-Index. But that’s not the important point here. Seven decades after my alma mater received free federal land—or purchased it at “a 100 percent discount,” as they used to say—the story du jour is that the university is about to cash it in for untold millions to a real estate developer, with the blessing of local officials.
On June 25, the St. Charles County Council voted 5–1 to approve a plan by Homes by Whittaker to build 339 homes, presumably after purchasing the land from the university. As is generally the case in such matters, the vote came after (a) angry objections by some local residents, (b) assurances from the developer that nature will be undisturbed or even enhanced by the project, and (c) closed-door deliberations by officials elected to serve the public.
If you’ve seen or enjoyed the natural beauty of the area—say, by riding the Katy Trail or hiking the greenway or one of the nearby paths overlooking the river—you might well have the visceral reaction that this is not a wonderful idea.
That’s my reaction, without apology. I don’t vilify the developer for wanting to make money. That’s what developers are supposed to do. But whether you’re a neighbor, a nature-lover, or (God forbid) an “environmentalist,” it’s reasonable to just say no to yet another real estate development in one of our region’s vanishing patches of natural beauty. The withholding of financial details in the name of privacy until the negotiation’s a done deal makes it even easier for me to take that position.
In our business, we call this is a NIMBY story, as in “not in my back yard.” I won’t bore you with the all of the back-and-forth pros-and-cons details about this particular NIMBY story.
But it does have one unusual characteristic: After months of hearing angry objections and at least five or six plans, the St. Charles County Planning & Zoning committee voted 8–1 to reject the plan on March 21. That’s a pretty good margin.
So when the County Council cast the aforementioned 5–1 vote in the opposite direction, albeit with a hundred or so fewer houses in the project, it did make one wonder what’s going on here.
I suppose you have to know the players in St. Charles County government to know the real scoop, and I don’t, but as one who has always argued that people living in St. Charles County are as much a part of St. Louis as people who live in the city and county, I think the broader issues here affect all of us.
The big one—the environmental elephant in the room—is that we do not have a plan. We’re a metropolitan area of 2.8 million people governed by something like 83,000 government entities, including city and county governments, school boards, zoning commissions, and knitting clubs that annually consider 282,000 NIMBY proposals, none of which is resolved by consensus.
Furthermore, as a region, we have no rules when it comes to preserving what’s left of our environment. Every bluff, every tree, every blade of grass represents a financial opportunity for someone. I say that with no malice toward real estate developers: Theirs is an honorable industry, and there’s nothing wrong with building new houses, office buildings, and roads.
But there’s zero regionalism, there are zero standards, and there is zero public policy when it comes to the broader questions: What is our strategy when it comes to what and where to develop? And how can we factor in the preservation of historic structures and the protection of natural beauty?
I fought my way off the streets of a suburban area just outside Creve Coeur to which people had moved in pursuit of an American dream that included nice little comfortable new homes graced with fresh air and stars at night.
Now, places like my precious childhood home are still nice little homes, but they’ve been engulfed by a sea of strip malls and commercialism. As a kid, we played in the woods near my house. Today, you have to look hard to find a tree. You don’t see many stars at night.
I’m sure Homes by Whittaker is a fine company and would do its best to build wonderful homes that do as little damage to the environment as possible. But with all of the land in the region—with the abundance of abandoned spaces and untapped potential—do we really need to build new houses on one of the metro region’s few unspoiled areas?
I’m a graduate of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism myself, but I’m not privy to the university’s real estate holdings. I have no idea how many millions of acres are held for some purpose other than, say, higher education. Who knows how many weapons factories—a.k.a. “ordnance plants”—have been gifted to us by the War Assets Administration or its successors?
I also had no idea that the university abounded with leases to commercial interests (such as Whittaker) to operate businesses on its land. I didn’t even know that the university owned land that had nothing to do with higher education.
At this point, I’m assuming that the decision to relinquish this land, which was given to the state university for research purposes, is a horse out of the proverbial barn. I’m also guessing that the home of the world’s first journalism school is not a place where it would be easy to uncover the extent and details of such arrangements.
But I do know this: As a proud alum, I have an uneasy feeling that the university is having a statewide yard sale.
Everyone knows that the state legislature continues, to a scandalous degree, to abdicate its responsibility to fund higher education. But should we really be reduced to renting out dorms for football games and the like? And now the university wants to sell off some of the most beautiful land in our region to a real estate developer?
Are we really that broke?
Presumably the initial purpose of the university’s research mission was completed decades ago. I’m guessing they figured out whatever they needed to know about crops and forestry and cattle. The water and pastures are surely well managed by now. As for soil conservation? Well, the soil seems to be there. Apparently, though, conservation isn’t a thing to the university anymore.
I didn’t learn much science in my four years at the university, but I’m willing to bet there are some unanswered questions worth addressing about the possibly horrific consequences of whatever radioactive toxins might remain at or around Weldon Spring and the site of the former ordnance plant.
And even if the university has run out of things to study on the land gifted to it by the federal government, why not just leave it alone? Is there no curriculum about conservation taught in some classroom at one or more of the university’s four branches? We have acclaimed schools of agriculture, veterinary medicine, engineering, and the like. Why not have them dig around in the bluffs, the way they apparently did when Missouri’s Harry S. Truman was president?
I’m sure it’s too late for any of that.
Seventy years later, the Moberly Monitor-Index is still going strong. Too bad the university’s commitment to conservation research isn’t.
SLM publisher Ray Hartmann is a panelist on KETC Channel 9’s Donnybrook, which airs at 7 p.m. Thursdays.
