St. Ann - My Home and what is left of it...

I had an opportunity to fly back to my hometown of St. Louis this past April after a six-year stint in Phoenix, AZ. I was only going to be in town for a full day, at best, since I'd be helping my sister-in-law make the move back to my adopted Arizona. I'll be honest, it's hard to put into words what I saw and felt in a 24-hour snapshot of the 'Lou'.

I've tried to keep my finger on the pulse of home since I've been gone, with varying degrees of success. Social media has afforded me access to groups that are populated by current residents of my municipality, St. Ann. Within those groups, I've been able to keep abreast of developments at the old Northwest Plaza site, some local politics, and the social clamor the followed Ferguson. But one really has to see a thing to understand it.

I flew in to Lambert with an unusual sense of trepidation, which I admit was predicated on recent revelations about Cold Water Creek. Disembarking in what I will always call the East Terminal, even the airport struck me as visibly outdated and poorly kept compared to some of the places I've visited in the past year. This turned out to be the first in a long list of observations that pervaded my time at home, and contributed to an overwhelming and undeniable theme.

Vacancy.

It's an unfortunate reality of economic depression. Businesses close, jobs dry up, and the people who are left behind often stop having the sense of pride that goes along with the bright, shiny, and profitable. Tax revenues go down and city budgets become the next victim of creative budgeting. The roads fall into disrepair, common areas become overgrown, and even power lines look cobbled together and questionably safe. The entire face of the community starts to show signs of neglect. It's the pallor that falls over a town when the money has gone away. Businesses are empty. Homes are empty. Churches are empty. Lots where memories were forged are empty.


My dad once took me to an hardware store, and as we walked out, he told me that the business was going under. I asked how he knew. "The life has gone out of it," he said. "The shelves are half-empty, the store is in disarray, and there are hardly any customers."

He was right. Within six months, that store was shuttered. I felt similarly about St. Ann.

Later, on the night of my arrival from Phoenix, I sat in a restaurant with my wife and friends, pensively eating my toasted ravs. I didn't have much to say, not that much of it would have been good. Up until this point, I'd been to the East Terminal, a moving truck rental facility in Earth City, and my childhood home. In every single place, there was just more vacancy.

The news in St. Ann hasn't been good lately. I mentioned Cold Water Creek earlier. That was particularly hard to swallow. I had friends that grew up down on that end of town, and from the reports I've read, they are friends I likely won't see at future High School Reunions. I was luckier to have grown up a few miles farther south, but I still wonder what I will face in the years to come.

St. Ann municipal courts are also under fire for laws that disfavor the poor. Well, given the economic state of the city, there are more of those to go around. One local resident pragmatically suggested that people 'stop breaking the law'. It's hard to deny the causality of that, but it's also realistic to say that law enforcement reaches a tipping point where fines become a hole from which the declining median income provides no escape.

There was also a pipeline for removing toxic leachate from the Bridgeton landfill that was supposedly going in with little public disclosure. That story seems to have died with very little reporting being done. And what can be done? Two dozen people showed up to a public meeting in which company representatives were questioned. Two dozen, out of nearly thirteen-thousand, that showed up to ask what could be done.

Still more vacancy. Vacancy of public involvement. Vacancy of legislative disclosure. Vacancy of legislative action. Vacancy of vested interest.

All I can really do from Phoenix is to cry 'shenanigans' and watch as my home town is slowly swallowed by apathy and band-aid solutions. But maybe that's the legacy of St. Louis county. The frog is slowly being brought to a boil. There really is no denying it.

So I challenge you to see St. Ann through the eyes of a returning son. Go stand on any street corner of the Rock Road corridor between Wismer Road and Lindbergh Boulevard. Ask yourself honestly how much time you want to spend there. Ask yourself how long you'd expect any visitor to stay. What would they stay for? Empty businesses, potholed streets, litter and weeds?

Me either.

There are some who may criticize my treatment of this issue as unnecessarily harsh. There are a number who still have pride in the city and think it's a great place to live. They are the ones who show up at city council meetings, write to their Aldermen, and organize interest groups. But more like them are needed if there is any chance of rescuing St. Ann from the black hole of vacancy.