History of St. Louis (1981–present) facts for kids
The history of St. Louis, Missouri from 1981 to the present has been marked by city beautification and crime prevention efforts, a major school desegregation case, and gentrification in its downtown area. St. Louis also continues to struggle with crime and a declining population, although some improvement has been made in both of these aspects.
School desegregation and voluntary transfers
Although St. Louis Public Schools legally were desegregated according to plans developed in 1947 and implemented in 1954 after the Brown v Board of Education decision, housing segregation that had developed due to restrictive covenants kept most black St. Louisans in compact areas. Students in St. Louis public schools were given the option of "continuation transfer", meaning that they could stay in their respective schools until graduation, while the policy of "intact busing" allowed whole classes of black students to be transferred to white schools with vacant rooms. These black classes then would eat separate lunches and leave on separate buses from white students, and the combined effect of St. Louis policies maintained a system of desegregation through 1960. During the 1960s, few efforts were made toward changing neighborhood school boundaries so as to promote integration, and predominantly black schools became significantly overcrowded while white schools emptied out.
In 1971, a lawsuit filed against the St. Louis Board of Education by a black parent alleged that the city's schools were segregated, and although local U.S. District Court JudgeJames Hargrove Meredith ruled against the parent, the decision was overturned in the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Gerald Heaney noted that efforts to desegregate schools in St. Louis City might require an interdistrict solution that would involve county schools, and the 8th Circuit returned the case to Meredith for reconsideration. During this period, the NAACP had joined the case by filing suit against suburban school districts alleging their participation in a segregating system prior to 1954, due to their busing of black suburban students into the city based on state segregation laws. Following Meredith's death in 1981, a plan was developed under court order by Edward T. Foote II that attempted to rectify the segregation situation in the city and county districts by having suburban districts voluntarily accept black students from the city. Because the state of Missouri was responsible for the state law that encouraged the initial busing of black students into the city from the county, the state would be required to pay all transportation costs and any cost that the suburban districts incurred in educating the students.
To encourage participation, the court offered to remove districts from the NAACP's lawsuit (resulting in four districts offering to participate), then raised the possibility of consolidating the area's districts into a metropolitan district if more districts did not volunteer (resulting in nearly all suburban districts agreeing to participate). The agreement, signed in early 1983, had five components, with the first encompassing the transfer program. Under the transfer program, all participating suburban districts would increase their African-American student population by 15 percent or reach a student population that was 25 percent black. The second element of the plant called for county students to voluntarily transfer to city magnet schools, a program which peaked in 1997 with nearly 1,500 students. The third component of the plan called for capital improvements to city schools, while the fourth and fifth elements included the financing of the plan, which was to be at the expense of the state of Missouri. The plan was approved by the court in mid-1983, and its provisions entered into effect starting in the 1983–1984 school year.
Political pressures (particularly from Missouri Attorney General John Ashcroft) challenged the implementation of the plan. During the 1984 Missouri gubernatorial campaign, Ashcroft used the issue of busing to his advantage, claiming that the plan was "illegal and immoral". Ashcroft won both the Republican Party primary and the general election by campaigning against the plan. Despite Ashcroft's opposition and legal challenges, the plan significantly desegregated St. Louis schools. In 1980, 82 percent of black students in the city attended all-black schools, while in 1995, only 41 percent did so. By the late 1990s, roughly 13,000 students were enrolled in the transfer program.
At the same time, members of the Missouri General Assembly and Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon again began attacking the desegregation plan on the grounds of its costs. Nixon proposed that instead of spending money to transfer students, funds would be better spent improving derelict conditions in city schools, a view supported by St. Louis's first black mayor, Freeman Bosley, Jr. After another legal challenge to the plan in early 1996 (based on recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings), the court ordered a review of the plan and a second settlement agreement. A settlement plan developed in the Missouri legislature called for reduced state money for the program and a focus only on funding magnet schools in the city and the voluntary transfer program. All but one of the suburban districts agreed to renew the agreement on these terms (Ladue School District was the exception), and in 1999, the renewed settlement was established. However, under the 1999 agreement, school districts have been permitted to withdraw from the voluntary transfer program starting in 2002, and two districts have done so (Lindbergh School District and Pattonville School District). A five-year extension of the voluntary transfer program was approved in 2007, allowing new enrollments to take place through the 2013–2014 school year in participating districts.
Most of the desegregation under the plan is via transfer of black students to the county rather than in the suburbs-to-city component of the plan: although the plan called for 2,500 white students to enroll in city magnet schools, by the late 1980s, only 600 had done so, and in 2010, only 167 suburban students were enrolled in city schools. In contrast, roughly 6,000 city students are transferred to suburban schools as of 2010 (down from a peak of more than 14,000 in 1999–2000). Other failures included the portion of the plan that was to improve the quality of St. Louis city schools via capital improvement programs; despite considerable funding, the curriculum, course offerings, libraries, and art and music programs in city schools remained weaker than county schools. Among the criticisms of the desegregation program also has been that it weakens city schools by removing talented students to county schools. Despite these issues, the program will continue until all transfer students reach graduation; with the last group of transfer students allowed to enroll in 2013–2014, the program will end after the 2025–2026 school year.
New construction, gentrification, and rehabilitation
During Vincent Schoemehl's three terms in office from 1981 to 1993, downtown St. Louis experienced a growth in construction it had not had since the early 1960s. Among these new buildings was the tallest building in the city, One Metropolitan Square, which featured ... square feet of office space. New retail projects also began to take shape: since 1978, Union Station had been abandoned by Amtrak as a passenger rail terminal, but in 1985, it was reopened as a festival marketplace under the direction of developer James Rouse. The same year, downtown developers opened St. Louis Centre, an enclosed four-story mall costing $176 million with 150 stores and 1,500,000 square feet (140,000 m2) of retail space. By the late 1990s, however, the mall had fallen in favor among shoppers due to the expansion of the St. Louis Galleria in Brentwood, Missouri, and the mall's flagship Dillard's store closed in 2001. The mall itself closed in 2006, and since 2010, development has been underway to convert the mall building into a parking structure, with an adjoining building being converted into apartments, hotel, and retail.
The city also sponsored a major expansion of the St. Louis Convention Center during the 1980s, and Schoemehl focused efforts on retaining professional sports teams in the city. To that end, the city purchased The Arena, a 15,000-seat venue for professional ice hockey that was home of the St. Louis Blues. In the early 1990s, Schoemehl worked with business groups to develop a new hockey arena (now known as Enterprise Center) on the site of the city's Kiel Auditorium, with the promise that the developer would renovate the adjacent Kiel Opera House. Although the new hockey arena opened in 1994 (and the original arena was demolished in 1999), renovations on the adjacent opera house only began in 2011, more than 15 years after the initial development plan. However, the Kiel Opera House (since renamed Stifel Theatre) reopened on October 1, 2011.
Starting in the early 2000s, a number of rehabilitation and construction projects began in St. Louis, some of which remain incomplete. Among the St. Louis areas to undergo gentrification was the Washington Avenue Historic District, which extends along Washington Avenue from the Edward Jones Dome west almost two dozen blocks. During the early 1990s, garment manufacturers moved out of the large office buildings on the street, and by the end of that decade residential developers began to convert the buildings into lofts. Prices per square foot increased dramatically in the area, and by 2001, nearly 280 apartments were built. Among the Washington Avenue projects to remain in development is the Mercantile Exchange Building, which is being converted to offices, apartments, retail, and a movie theater. The gentrification also has had the effect of increasing the downtown population, with both the central business district and Washington Avenue district more than doubling their population from 2000 to 2010.
Other downtown projects include the renovation of the Old Post Office, which started in 1998 and was completed in 2006. The Old Post Office and seven adjacent buildings had been vacant since the early 1990s, but as of 2010 included a variety of tenants, including a branch of the St. Louis Public Library, a branch of Webster University, the St. Louis Business Journal, and a variety of government offices. The renovation of the Old Post Office spurred development of an adjacent plaza, which is linked to a new $80 million residential building called Roberts Tower, the first new residential construction in downtown St. Louis since the 1970s.
As early as 1999, the St. Louis Cardinals began pushing for the construction of a new Busch Stadium as part of a broader trend in Major League Baseball toward stadium building. In early 2002, plans for a new park were settled among state and local leaders and Cardinals owners. According to an agreement in which the state and city would issue bonds for construction, the Cardinals agreed to build a multipurpose development known as St. Louis Ballpark Village on part of the site of Busch Memorial Stadium. The new stadium opened in 2006, but construction on Ballpark Village is still ongoing.
The Forest Park Southeast neighborhood near the Missouri Botanical Garden and the old Gaslight Square district are also going through extensive renovations.
