ST. LOUIS — Mayor Tishaura O. Jones on Wednesday signaled plans to turn the site of the former medium-security jail on Hall Street, known as the workhouse, into affordable housing or shelter for struggling residents.
Such plans would contradict a panel of community organizers and activists Jones commissioned to study the issue last year. They said the site’s environmental concerns, sordid history and out-of-the-way location on the industrial north riverfront meant no one should be living there unless there’s nowhere else for them to go.
But Jones wrote in a letter to the panel that her staff will be meeting with relevant service providers, digging into potential environmental concerns, and laying out plans to connect the site with the rest of the city via public transportation. “We will share updates and our full timeline for site remediation with the public over the next several months,†she wrote.
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Conner Kerrigan, a spokesman for Jones, said the administration is already looking at putting tiny homes on the site. The city helps pay for 100 of the small structures providing temporary shelter at a site northwest of downtown, and Jones recently remarked that they seem to attract less opposition from neighbors than traditional shelters. Kerrigan said the homes could be accompanied by services helping occupants get jobs, medical care and more permanent housing.
The mayor’s plans would cap years of work on a site that sits at the confluence of two of Jones’ top priorities: reworking the city’s approach to public safety and reinvigorating the long-suffering North Side.
Jones spent years campaigning with activists to close the workhouse, which they derided as a sweltering, rat-infested disgrace rife with abuse. She emptied the facility as mayor, transferring its inmates to the downtown City Justice Center in June 2022. Replacing the workhouse with tiny homes could put a definitive end to incarceration on the site, extend a helping hand to struggling residents, and address concerns about a shortage of shelter for the unhoused in the city.Â
But the tiny home plan would also mark yet another break between Jones and activists, some of whom pushed hard to get her elected. They have already expressed disappointment at Jones‘ support of police department budget increases, fights against watchdogs at the city jail and breakup of homeless camps downtown. And some have begun threatening to sit out her reelection campaign.
Deidre Wortham, one of the activists who fought to close the jail and worked on the report to the mayor, was beside herself after reading Jones’ letter. People put in tiny houses at the workhouse site will be isolated and forgotten just like inmates were, she said.Â
“I don’t know what Tishaura’s thinking,†she continued. “But she’s not thinking about us.â€
The activist Close the Workhouse campaign issued a statement Wednesday applauding comments in the letter about not using the site for a jail again. But it said it would continue to demand adoption of the committee’s recommendations.
In the nearest residential neighborhood, Gloria Gooden had mixed feelings on the matter Wednesday.
Gooden, who works on housing and economic development for Baden neighborhood association, said she’d prefer to see a grocery store on the site. There’s nothing like it in the neighborhood right now. And she said tiny homes would be an odd fit in a commercial area.
“But,†she said, “if she put ’em in a neighborhood, people might not want ’em there.â€
Jones appointed the Re-envisioning the Workhouse Committee last spring. Members included representatives from progressive organizations like ArchCity Defenders and Action ºüÀêÊÓƵ that spent years campaigning with her to close the jail. And they spent months surveying people — including nearby residents, former jail staff, and former inmates — on what should be done with the place.
Dozens of ideas for the site, which sits on 31 acres on the north riverfront, flowed in. There were calls for gardens, a grocery store, a child care facility, and mental health services. There were calls for affordable housing, shelters, or something geared toward helping people get jobs or giving young people something to do. Some even said it should be a jail again.
But in its final report, the committee said the site’s location in an area home to truck lots, warehouses and salvage yards made only a few uses tenable: They said it could be an animal shelter, host a solar energy farm, turned back into natural prairie, or put to industrial use.
They noted that the city has had some issues with homeless people refusing to go into shelters because they generally don’t allow pets, and said the animal shelter concept could make provisions for a few of them to stay on the property.
But they recommended against anything more than that. Unhoused people, they said, need to be closer to jobs and other resources. They said the city could tackle the need for housing and other services with a “memorial resource hub†elsewhere on the north side.
In her letter to the committee, Jones acknowledged the recommendations, and promised the site would not be used as a jail again.
But she said she couldn’t ignore residents’ original calls for housing.Â
A statement on the city's website said the administration would announce next steps later this spring.