A plan for redevelopment of a three-block stretch of 39th Street south of Interstate 44 from a depressed shopping area into town houses has moved one step closer to reality. But people who would be displaced by the redevelopment have bitterly complained about the plan.
On Friday, the Board of Aldermen approved by a vote of 23 to 0 the redevelopment plan, which was introduced by Alderman John Koch, D-8th Ward.
Michelle Duffe, president of the 39th Street Redevelopment Corp., said the plan would bring ”the redevelopment of a very bad stretch of blighted property in our neighborhood.” Duffe also said that tenants in the building would have no immediate need to move.
The plan calls for tearing down most buildings between DeTonty Avenue and Russell Boulevard. The plan envisions construction of town houses, possibly two-bedroom units costing about $90,000. A six-family unit at 39th Street and DeTonty Avenue would be renovated.
The plan calls for tearing down buildings to make open space until developers build the new housing.
Open space will bring in good buyers, Duffe said.
The people who would be displaced said last week that they were concerned that they might face higher rents or would be forced to sell their property for less than what they believed it was worth.
”I don’t understand it,” said Howard Holland, owner of a well-kept building that houses his hair salon, several other businesses and three apartments in the 2000 block of South 39th Street.
”What resources does a guy have to protect his place? How can you fight 20-plus aldermen? They come along and say, ‘Hey, it’s tough.’ ”
Holland will be 60 in February. He bought the building in 1964. He has been in business for 31 years.
He said he had planned to use the building’s revenue to augment his Social Security when he retired. He said he hoped he had five or six years before his building would be bought and razed.
Holland said he had spent about $35,000 in the last decade on such items as new furnaces, roofing and tuckpointing. Some apartments have been remodeled.
Eva Dunaway, who lives in an apartment on the corner of 39th and Castleman, said, ”I don’t want to split my family up.”
Dunaway lives with her two daughters, each of whom have young children. She pays rent of $560 a month, including utilities, for five furnished rooms and two baths.
”They say they are going to put in flower gardens and a pool,” she said.
She questioned the need for a park area with Tower Grove and Reservoir parks only five and two blocks away, respectively. But Duffe denied that gardens or a pool were in the redevelopment plan.
Duffe and Koch said the plan ultimately would increase property values in the surrounding Shaw neighborhood. Duffe said she hads letters from 24 groups, churches and institutions favoring the plan.
Among those, said Duffe, are the Shaw and Flora Place neighborhood groups, St. Margaret of Scotland School and the Tyler Presbyterian Church.
Koch said the demoliton and redevelopment would not happen immediately. He said the elimination of the blighted area would make current residential property more attactive to buyers and would encourage newer housing to be built.
About three years ago a committee of the Shaw Neighborhood Improvement Association began studying the building problems at the area’s east entrance, Duffe said.
That area has been dying since the state bought property for the construction of I-44 in the 1960s, she said. Much of the property on 39th Street is vacant and some has been vandalized, she said. In earlier talks, some property owners were uncooperative with the group’s plans.
In early 1986, said Duffe, the neighorhood association decided they had to act, and they set up a redevlopemnt corporation.
Initially, she said, consideration was given to acquiring blighted buildings and selling them to individuals willing to commercially develop the first stories with residential above.
But Duffe called the former business area obsolete.
She said that she had told James Reynolds – the operator of a dry cleaning firm at 2009 South 39th, who moved into the block about 10 months ago – that he was at risk.
But Reynolds said the building was in good shape and that he would have to start his business all over if the building were taken over by the redevlopment company and razed.
Jean Daugherty, with her husband, Charles, owns the building, which has several stores. They said they had taken care of their property and done repairs.
”I don’t want these people thrown out of their homes,” Jean Daugherty said. Daugherty said she and her husband owned a total of five store units and 22 residential units in the area.
Mildred Bone, 78, who has lived in an apartmemt in Holland’s building for 47 years, said any move would be a wrench. ”At 78, its hard. I’ve been here so long. Howard’s always kept the outside so nice. Why can’t they let this building stand and tear down the garages (buildings to the north and south). I’m just sick about it. I cry myself to sleep about it.”
Bone said she lived on about $350 a month and recently had to place a sister she had cared for in a nursing home.
Another longtime resident, Opal Lester, has operated a music s tore that she and her late husband started 41 years ago.
”It makes me sick to think of it (leaving),” she said. ”I’m very much shaken.”
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