Samples
A Better Place to Grow Up (Chapter 9)
Chapter 9
"Count on us"
Harry Morley has long admired Richard Baron. But for the past 20 years he had been doing it from afar.
While Baron has worked his magic in the inner city, Morley has been building subdivisions in St. Louis County as chairman and chief executive officer of Taylor-Morley Homes. His subdivisions have names like Forest Creek, Fox Trails, Pinehurst and Chateau on Conway.
Now for the first time in a long while, the two are talking about a joint venture. Baron wants Morley -- quintessential county home builder -- to play a role in the rebirth of Pruitt-Igoe, the notorious housing complex in the city that was demolished in the early 1970s.
The two had met nearly 30 years ago when Baron was a Legal Aid lawyer working with tenants and Morley was an administrator with the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
In the 1980s, they went into the private sector and redeveloped the Hadley Dean Building downtown. Morley had had trouble getting banks interested. But Baron sold the former Mark Twain Bank on the project and made it happen. The restoration came off beautifully and made Morley proud.
And now Morley is getting that same feeling -- that Baron could make it happen. Only this time the results could be seismic.
It's not as if Morley has turned his back on the city. How could he? He grew up in the Grand Boulevard and Cherokee Street neighborhood. He graduated from Roosevelt High School. But as the years went by it became so hard to do business in the city. President Ronald Reagan's administratio n ended tax breaks for urban redevelopment projects. Interest rates shot up. And Morley's company got so good at creating new neighborhoods that it pretty much gave up on the idea of salvaging old ones.
"Building homes and neighborhoods where people want to live." That's the Taylor-Morley mission statement. And his research shows that most people want to live in safe neighborhoods and in modern homes near good schools.
That would not fairly describe the 30-acre, weed-covered lot just east of Jefferson Avenue where the Pruitt-Igoe complex once stood.
Still, Morley drove down there one day for a look around. His interest had been piqued by a developer from Detroit who told Morley that something could be done with that property with the right vision and the right people.
Morley wasn't particularly impressed with the site. God knows what sort of problems a builder would encounter with a lot left vacant for more than 25 years and used as a dumping ground by residents and contractors.
But he liked what he saw when he drove further east to Murphy Park and O'Fallon Place and then back around again to the spiffy-looking Gateway School. He saw a new police station across Jefferson Avenue and a firehouse just down the street.
Further north, he saw some vacant buildings, but he also saw some recently renovated homes and well-tended lawns.
It's getting clean, Morley thought.
So Morley attended a Housing Authority meeting where the agency explained how to apply for redevelopment rights to the Pruitt-Igoe site.
And he got discouraged again. Morley hadn't done a city project in a long time and the research that would have to be done and the paperwork that would have to be filed seemed overwhelming.
But then Baron called. And a few days later, he's holding forth in Morley's conference room with his maps and site plans and the research that would have taken Morley's firm a year to do. And Morley is enthusiastic again.
Baron says the city is ready for a neighborhood of $150,000 single-family homes. Schnucks would build a superstore and shopping center to provide services. The school district and the Danforth Foundation are pouring resources into surrounding schools.
Baron says the homes would attract first-time buyers from his rental units, police officers who are required to live in the city and retirees wanting to return from the county to their roots.
With tax credits, financial incentives and the support of a major bank, a home builder could make it work. They'd call the project CityView. Total investment: $38 million.
It takes only this one meeting to get Morley on board. As Baron finishes his presentation, Morley rises, squeezes his hand and says: "Count on us."
