This summer, Abstrakt Marketing Group, by far the largest employer in Laclede's Landing, grew increasingly frustrated by the city's inaction on the large unhoused population living on the riverfront near its offices.
"I propose you come out of your office and show up," says one email from Abstrakt sent to various city officials, including the mayor. "We understand you can’t magically solve our homeless problem….But you can do SOMETHING."
Recently released emails between the company and the city show Abstrakt employees taking pains to document their concerns, some of which are small-ball, quotidian happenings that would be commonplace in almost any city, including groups of unhoused individuals simply gathering outside the marketing company's space.
However, for the most part, the emails from Abstrakt to the city describe alarming scenes playing out on the streets and sidewalks alongside — and occasionally in the lobbies of — the buildings where the 500-plus employee company operates. The emails include accounts of a man exposing himself to workers and a woman walking around without pants on. A man brandishing a knife. A different man choking out a woman. Two men beating up each other. A man throwing a large rock at landscapers.
Bricks have been thrown through windows. There are reports of open drug dealing, thefts from the offices. In May, a man reportedly threatened to kill a group of employees eating lunch at the Katherine Ward Burg park on the Landing. That same day, a man entered the lobby of Raeder Place building, which houses the Abstrakt office space and Old Spaghetti Factory, "waving a meat cleaver."
The city’s response, based on the emails made public, appears to be minimal. An email from Adam Pearson, Department of Human Services director, to the mayor's chief of staff Jared Boyd states, "We have a number of encampments and other outreach efforts we’re trying to prioritize with a small team, but I did give them notice about this one." Pearson advised that police accompany the outreach workers.
In addition to Boyd and Pearson, the email exchanges include Mayor Tishaura Jones, the city’s executive director of operations Nancy Cross as well as other officials.
Asbent what they feel is effective action from the city, business owners on the Landing have hired private security as well as paid out of their own pockets to have the streets cleaned, further examples of the privatization of what many say ought to be public services in the city. The email exchange also indicates the city repaired a broken traffic signal on Lumiere Place Boulevard, but only several months after Abstrakt first raised it as a concern.
The city's handling of its unhoused population has been increasingly in the news in recent weeks. Earlier this month, the mayor ordered a makeshift tent city on the front lawn of City Hall camp to be cleared. Jones caught flack for that move, with activists accusing her of only doing so because Vice President Kamala Harris was coming to visit St. Louis for a Democratic National Committee meeting, but defended her actions as necessary to save lives.
After spotting the emails between Abstrakt and City Hall in the city’s open records portal on Thursday (where they'd been requested by the St. Louis Business Journal), an RFT reporter called Abstrakt and was referred by the company to Jan Sandweiss, who owns the historic Raeder Place building and is the president of the Laclede’s Landing Neighborhood Association.
"Everything you read about happening at City Hall has been happening here for years," Sandweiss says. "I'm not angry. I know it's a difficult situation. [But] when we saw the encampment at City Hall, we thought, OK, now they'll understand. They'll come and help."
Asked if that has happened, Sandweiss says, "No."
In March, the city cleared a homeless camp under the former President Casino Laclede’s Landing Pavilion. The city posted eviction notices to the camp's residents, about two dozen of whom accepted shelter services from the city, a city hall spokesman told the RFT at the time. Soon thereafter, the remaining 10 or so residents were forced out.
But both Sandweiss and Alderwoman Cara Spencer tell the RFT that within a few days, that camp had constituted itself not far from its former site. (The same thing seems to have occurred with the camp cleared from City Hall earlier this month, too.)
Syd Hajicek of Lifeline Aid Group, which assists unhoused people in the St. Louis area, says lately the inhabitants of the riverfront camp are moving to other areas of downtown. There’s “not a lot of resources” in the area, he says, and it takes 45 minutes for first responders to arrive at the camp during medical emergencies. Cement blocks obstruct many of the roads that lead to the camp.
Despite the rough conditions, the rotating crowd of people who live there have nowhere else to go, Hajicek adds.
“St. Louis has a very large homeless population and there’s not enough resources,” he says.
Estimates of the population living at the riverfront camp vary depending on who you ask, with numbers ranging anywhere from 10 to 20, to as high as 50.
Spencer, whose 8th Ward includes Laclede's Landing, says that the riverfront neighborhood is a victim of the region's patchwork of policies related to homeless people, which have the effect of a few areas shouldering the great majority of the burden.
"Every business district in the city has the responsibility of shouldering some of the unhoused and being home to members of that community," Spencer says. "But when we concentrate them in a very small segment of the city without helping the business districts in other ways, they can't shoulder all that."
Put another way, she says, "Laclede's Landing is out of balance."
She blames both the state and the city. The state has disproportionately put the burden of unhoused on the city of St. Louis, she says. But the city has in turn disproportionately put its burden on a few specific areas, including the Landing and downtown.
The Board of Aldermen is considering a bill to change a laborious plat and petition process that in the past prevented shelters from opening. Current zoning laws require shelters to receive signatures from residents near proposed sites. Some neighborhoods have made their opinions clear in the past — they don’t want shelters near their homes.
Critics say nixing the plat and petition diminishes citizens' voices. The bill, which would incorporate an Unhoused Bill of Rights into city code, has also received flack for its call to allow unhoused people to urinate and defecate in public.
Spencer has not come out one way or the other on that unhoused bill of rights. However, she says she recognizes that the city needs to be able to open new shelters. “Our current laws don’t make it possible,” she says.”But it’s important we do this WITH community, not at them.”
At least in theory, making it easy to open smaller shelters could have the effect of more evenly distributing the unhoused population throughout the city.
"We need to recognize that Laclede's Landing is literally the closest entertainment district to our region's National Monument," Spencer says. "We forget how insanely cool the Arch is. And that's the entertainment district next to it, that should be working in tandem with it."
There is serious worry expressed by both Sandweiss and Spencer that if the city doesn't take action, Abstrakt could pull up stakes. Sandweiss says that roughly 700 people work on the landing (not including Horseshoe Casino), making Abstrakt's 500-plus in-person workforce crucial for the vibrancy of the area.
On a recent sunny morning, Laclede's Landing was certainly looking the part of a residential and nightlife district worthy of its real estate just north of the Arch. Buildings along cobblestoned First Street have been renovated. Planters dot the sidewalks. What not long ago was a muddy, ad hoc parking lot is now the beautiful Katherine Ward Burg Park abutting the Eads Bridge. A new barbecue place is about to go in nearby.
Yet, at least on this morning, foot traffic is minimal.
"Everyone's afraid to come down," says Sandweiss.
She says that many tourists who make the Arch their first sightseeing stop come to the Landing right after. As Sandweiss spoke, a family of sightseers did walk by, having just come under Eads Bridge from the Arch. They headed down First Street toward a private security guard on one corner, a man muttering to himself on another.
"They say, 'What have you done with your river?' They're from all over the country and they say, 'We have a lake, and this is what we've done. We have a river, and this is what we've done.'"
She keeps hearing the question, "How can you do this?"
"I don't know what to say," Sandweiss says.
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