Some Details...

I wish i would have started this thing when I first started my inquiry into thesis sites, but hey better late than never. A short time line of the events to this point...

I saw pictures like this...These two images are from a neighborhood that is located less than a mile from downtown St. Louis.


From there this is what I did/ am doing.

7/9- First identify St. Louis as my probable site

7/10- Make contact with a neighborhood development company, which I thought operated in the entire highlighted area, only to find that this development company strictly limits itself to one part of the neighborhood.

7/?- Began reading American Apartheid, a book dealing with real estate techniques used to basically form ghettos (I smell an upcoming post...)

7/28- Met with Professor Kathleen Pepple to talk about the site.

The interesting thing that cae out of this meeting was actually that I realized although I knew my site was valid, I left the meeting with the epiphany that I didn't actually know what I wanted to do with it yet. I still don't know to be honest, and I think that is fine because I want to at least visit the site before I become married to some concept and try to force it to work on the site.

7/30- Met with Professor Catherine Wiley to discuss my site.

Catherine encouraged me to look for patterns in the housing stock. I took an aerial image and mapped over what I thought was good housing density (green), mediocre housing (yellow), and poor housing (red). I am still investigating the significance of any patterns that were produced.

8/7- Planning a trip to St. Louis Aug. 20-23 with a few buddies.

8/7- In my effort to contact people to meet with me when I am in St. Louis I looked to try to find a person in the following areas:

City Government-

I thought maybe a city council person would be a good start. Turns out they are called Alderman/woman down there. My Alderwoman for this particular Ward (which covers most of the site area) is April Ford-Griffin. I have to admit after watching this video, I am both excited to meet and terrified of this woman all at once. She seems to have a great passion for the neighborhood.

The man she speaks of in the video...the one she is pissed off at for buying up over 500 properties in the North Saint Louis Area and basically letting them go to blight to affect adjacent real estate prices is named Paul McKee (he sees it otherwise of course).


Real Estate/ Development-

So going off of that video I did some research on this Paul McKee, which I discovered if you read the St. Louis media he is either the savior or the devil, depending on the day really. He formed a bunch of holding companies to "quietly" buy up over 550 acres of land in the north St. Louis neighborhood alone. Finally when residents found out what was going on they were (and remain) apprehensive as to his plans.

I have made a contact with the public face of all his holding companies, here is their website. Apparently there is going to be an announcement of his plans on the 23rd of September. I am obviously watching this with anticipation. Perhaps this plan offers me an opportunity to mediate between the big bad investor and the residents.

Planning Department-

Meh, I made contact with a member of the planning department. If their website is any indication of how the office is ran...yikes...its like altavista went bad.


So that's what I have for now, more substance based posts to come, focusing on housing and social structure, infrastructure development in blighted sites, etc.

Cheers.