University City Introduces Olive/170 Bills Amid Controversy

UNIVERSITY CITY, MO — University City officials introduced enabling legislation for a redevelopment project at Olive Boulevard and Interstate 170 Monday night in a familiar way, amid controversy. The four bills given first reading would designate the city's third ward a redevelopment area and approve various aspects of a secretive commercial development.

Funded by tax-increment financing — essentially a sales tax — about a third of the costs for the approximately $200 million project would be footed by taxpayers. Meanwhile, Webster Groves-based Novus Development will reap about $70 million in tax breaks for its planned shopping center, likely anchored by a Costco, which will displace about 60 homeowners and dozens of small, minority-owned businesses. Big box retail stores, offices, luxury apartments and more than 2,000 parking spaces will take their place.

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"I am against this project," said U. City resident Sonya Pointer, who has expressed fear the project could lead to gentrification, the displacement of low and moderate income residents as well as the minority business owners who make the district unique.

Indeed, Councilmember Paulette Carr seemed to confirm some residents' fears of gentrification when she announced that her sister-in-law will be bringing her clothing business to University City's third ward, about half a mile from the planned development.

"We've been discussing her move to U. City's International District — the one that everybody thinks is under siege but is, in fact, not — since early summer, during the redevelopment discussions and TIF hearings," Carr revealed Monday night.

Carr said her sister-in-law would "add her Italian heritage to our Asian, African and Caribbean businesses" as early as December, adding: "This is the beginning of what I expect to happen on Olive."

Patricia Washington, who has been a leading proponent of a Community Benefits Agreement for the third ward, called Carr's statement "offensive" and "an embarrassment."

"Next she'll be telling you how many black friends she has to prove she's not racist," Washington said. "Unfortunately, what Carr can't see is she just proved the point about gentrification."

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Jan Adams, a former Missouri assistant attorney general who has herself run for University City Council, called the bills "poorly crafted and egregiously incomplete." According to Adams, the exhibits to the bills were not published until Monday afternoon, which she said could be a violation of the state's Sunshine Law.

City Manager Gregory Rose pushed back on that accusation. "I have conferred with City Attorney John Mulligan and was advised there have been no sunshine violations relative to the ordinances introduced tonight," he told Patch in an email.

U. City resident Don Fitz, a former environmental psychology professor at Washington University and Fontbonne University, who also recently ran for state auditor on the Green Party ticket, said Monday night that he was disturbed by the way the Olive Development had been handled.

"I worked to elect those on the council who opposed the political machine of [former] Mayor Shelley Welsch, who is almost everybody here," Fitz explained. He said that Welsch had moved ahead with a plan to privatize the city's EMS service against the will of residents and accused her of vilifying her political opponents, including then councilmembers Terry Crow and Paulette Carr.

"I assumed that when the opposition became a majority, they would fundamentally change not only the policies in University City, but the willingness to listen to those who have concerns without denigrating them," Fitz said. Instead, he added, "...The new political machine has become the same as the old political machine that it replaced. The faces have changed, but the policies and practices are identical..."

Fitz said he's afraid the development will undermine minority and small businesses, and "give away tens of millions of dollars to super rich corporations who already have more money than they know what to do with." He believes the council has ignored reasonable requests from citizens, instead presenting the project as a final deal with no room for compromise.

He said it reminds him of how the former council handled the ambulance deal, and he asked for the project to be put to citizens for a vote.

"I would like to request that the city council allow citizens to vote on these proposals before going forward with them," Fitz said, adding that he doesn't believe the council will allow a vote, but that he wants his request to appear in the council's minutes "so that in the future, citizens of University City can see there was a request for a democratic vote on the most divisive issue that has come before this council, and that the current administration is refusing the citizens of University City the right to decide on this issue."

Rose said the city has already held more than 10 meetings and spoken to hundreds of residents and non-residents regarding the TIF project and that he would not support such a vote.

"In each of the meetings it was evident that a critical mass of residents support the project," Rose said. "The TIF Commission, with representatives from various agencies reviewed the project in detail and recommended approval with a super majority. I would not recommend that the Mayor and Council incur the expense associated with placing this matter for a vote of the residents because one resident makes a request to do so."

But that's not entirely accurate. Over the course of one-two-three-four public hearings, and many smaller neighborhood meetings, all of which Patch covered, those against the project outnumbered those in favor by about 2:1, with more people against the project attending the first few meetings and tapering off at subsequent ones. At some meetings, only three or four people showed up due to a lack of notification from the city. Only at the last hearing were those in favor a narrow majority, and a not insignificant number of the comments in favor of the development were read into the record by councilmembers or their family members.

State Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, who will represent University City in the Missouri House of Representatives next year, said after the last public hearing that many of those most opposed to the project work one or two jobs and couldn't afford to attend, while those in favor were predominately from the city's more affluent first and second wards.

Nonetheless, Rose has called those against the project a "vocal minority" and Crow echoed those sentiments Monday night.

"We just may not agree with you," Crow said. "We just may not. And when a person gets up and speaks and says 'we demand this' and 'we demand this,' it's usually one person saying the same thing over and over again. Just using the pronoun 'we' doesn't mean that there's a huge group out there. It doesn't."

Councilmember Jeff Hales said he has received more emails about stray cats than the Olive/170 development, adding that his constituents in the city's first ward have shown "tremendous support" for the project.

Photo by J. Ryne Danielson/Patch