From an early age, business owner Mak had a love for architecture. The St. Louis native and CEO of Business 20 grew up admiring the homes and buildings on drives with her father. When she returned to St. Louis after some time away, Mak missed the vibrancy she remembered.
Mak’s efforts to recapture that vibrancy now means that she’s in the beginning stages of restoring a historic home in the Kingshighway West neighborhood. “As a developer, it can be very isolating, particularly working in north St. Louis, where people are saying: ‘Well, why are you working on that house? Why are you working on that area?’” she said.
Mak, whose last name is being withheld for personal safety reasons, is among more than 50 St. Louis Community Development Administration grant awardees. She’s received a share of $20 million that the federal government awarded to the city from the American Rescue Plan Act. Over the next few years, individuals, nonprofits and community groups receiving the money will put it into neighborhood transformation work on specific building and beautification projects. The funds can also be used to hire and retain staff that, in turn, develops critical organizational capacity.
“It feels amazing to be able to work in partnership and collaboration with the City of St. Louis and with CDA to make that happen,” she said.
North Newstead Association also received a grant. The north St. Louis-based nonprofit provides residents with affordable housing support, such as rental assistance and minor home repair. After economic uncertainty brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the grant money was transformative because it allowed North Newstead Association to hire more people and expand operations.
“Because our organization is a community development corporation of 31 years, we have lots of different community development and community building programs,” said Constance Siu, the organization’s executive director. “But at the end of the day, our bread and butter and our cash flow is our rental [housing] portfolio. So having these grant dollars specifically to support that arm of our work allows us to do everything else that we do for our community.”
While this bit of funding will eventually run dry, St. Louis Art Place Initiative co-director Kaveh Razani called his organization’s grant award a steppingstone to acquiring more funds. The nonprofit is using its grant to help support rehabbing or constructing 18 affordable, for-sale homes for local artists in the Gravois Park neighborhood in south St. Louis.
“It's about using these dollars to put the tools in the tool belt that you need to raise more dollars,” said Razani. “We all know, those funders out there that love to jump onto a moving train once it's already moving. We need the CDA to get the train out of the station.”
Monique Thomas, executive director of Cornerstone Corporation, agreed. She said this federal funding — the first Cornerstone has received since it began its anti-displacement work in 1976 — enables the organization to move from its current headquarters in a two-bedroom West End apartment into a building that will include an office. The new office will also have a dedicated space for West End and Visitation Park residents to meet, talk, plan, and keep growing together. “We never thought we'd have the capacity to handle federal funding ... but the work the residents breathed into us and ushered us into required something this big. So it's significant that CDA would entrust us at our size to handle this.”
To hear the full conversation about neighborhood transformation, including comments from Nahuel Feffer, executive director of St. Louis’ Community Development Administration, listen to St. Louis on the Air on Apple Podcast, Spotify or Google Podcast, or by clicking the play button below.
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Roshae Hemmings is our production assistant. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr. Send questions and comments about this story to talk@stlpr.org.
