A new map plotting current and future developments in areas of north St. Louis hit by last year's tornado shows at least $337 million worth of projects under construction or in the design stage.
The city's development arm, St. Louis Development Corporation, created the map to identify ongoing and potential developments in the recovery area.
Last year, an EF3 tornado ripped through the city's north side, destroying or damaging thousands of properties and killing several people.
Questions about the area's future have persisted as recovery efforts have chugged along for more than a year since the tornado touched down. In the wake of the storm, Mayor Cara Spencer said success will depend on how many north city residents can stay or return to the area.
She said the new maps come from a partnership among SLDC, the city's tornado recovery office and its urban design agency to focus on development opportunities within the tornado zone.
"Our goal is to ensure every neighborhood has a plan and a future," she said of the maps. "We are still in the early phases, but we look forward to working with residents to shape the future of their neighborhoods and drive investment."
The corporation's CEO, Stephen Westbrooks, sees a large part of that role as identifying funding gaps for possible development and finding ways to bridge those funding divides. SLDC works with developers to attract investment to St. Louis, particularly in areas that need redevelopment.
"One of the roles that we're trying to play is that of an intermediary. How do we pair and match these potential projects up with the funding that they need?" Westbrooks said. "[It] allows us to really play that intermediary role in trying to find ways to get the resources that these projects and developments need to keep moving forward."
The map aims to identify areas where SLDC can offer more support to businesses, housing and other developments and areas where they may want to attract more developers.
He said the map also helps SLDC track small businesses that continue to operate in the tornado zone by identifying the financial resources they may need to keep going.
The map covers 25 neighborhoods, including the Ville, Fountain Park, Academy and other areas heavily damaged during the storm. It identifies different developments and businesses through color coding, labeling them as in design, started, under construction or as developments with a funding gap.
SLDC identified about 17 projects already under construction and 16 projects in the design phase, which together are worth an estimated $337 million.
Russell Halliday, a contractor hired by St. Louis Development Corporation, led the effort to create the map. He said it gives the city an up-to-date look at the area from a development and business perspective.
"We needed to understand — across all of the folks that are involved — what is actually happening in the tornado area," Halliday said. "What this represents [is] all of the developments that have come to SLDC at kind of varying degrees of requests — from 'we want to do something in this location, but we don't have a site secured, and we don't have funding secured' — all the way through to construction."
Halliday said he gathered information through several community meetings held by SLDC with businesses in the neighborhoods hit by the tornado.
SLDC hired Halliday and his firm, Kea Point Solutions, under a roughly $1 million, two-year contract to aid the city with short-, medium- and long-term recovery on the business and economic front.
He said SLDC will also use the map to identify areas where development is already happening in an effort to "double down" on development.
"If we have a number of developments occurring in any location, we should be targeting those locations as well," Halliday said.
The map also identifies about 19 projects worth roughly $252 million that have funding gaps, meaning they aren't certain to come to fruition. He said that while finding funding for those sorts of projects remains a challenge, identifying the gaps is a step in the right direction.
"We're not quite there yet in terms of how to fund all these things and how to do all that — all that stuff is going to take a little while," he added.
In the past, SLDC has used American Rescue Plan funds to help bridge those gaps through the North City Grant Program, Westbrooks said. That one-time funding is set to expire at the end of the year, meaning the city will need to find new ways to support development in the area.
Some funds could come from a recent bill that allocated the city's $255 million portion of settlement funds from a lawsuit against Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke. The bill sets aside $120 million for north St. Louis, including $31 million to help neighborhoods north of Delmar implement strategic redevelopment plans.
"We've just got to make sure we use all those funds as best we can in terms of getting the best outcomes for the community," Halliday said.
Halliday said that while recovery and future developments take a long time, the map can help plan out what long-term recovery looks like with input.
"If we need to be ambitious in terms of what true recovery looks like — not to bring back to what it was pre‑tornado, but to lean forward on that. So we can make north St. Louis what it wants to be," he said.
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