ST. LOUIS — The old City Workhouse has sat empty for more than a year now. But one day, that silent mass of concrete could be replaced by open air, roaring engines, a cheering crowd and a checkered flag.
A racetrack is one of several possible futures city officials are now considering for 31 acres on the north riverfront after reviewing hundreds of suggestions from residents submitted over the past few months. The old jail could also become a solar energy farm for nearby residents, an animal shelter to supplement an overflowing site in Midtown or, after demolition, nothing at all.
The workhouse sits at the confluence of two of Mayor Tishaura O. Jones’ biggest priorities: reimagining the city’s approach to public safety and reinvigorating the long-suffering North Side. She transferred the last of its inmates in June 2022 to the downtown jail after left-wing supporters spent years casting the place as a sweltering, rat-infested disgrace.
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Now, she’s waiting on a special advisory committee to get public input and come up with a plan for what’s next.
And in a news release Monday, her office announced that that committee had zeroed in on eight possible uses enumerated on its website, :
The committee said it could be an industrial site, a natural fit in a place surrounded by lots full of tractor-trailers and a compost dump.
The committee said it could be a museum memorializing the history of the jail. The website highlights a similar project in Montgomery, Alabama, atop land where slaves once worked.
The committee said it could also be restored to its natural prairie state, returned to Native Americans, or transformed into a racetrack, animal shelter or solar farm.
The committee acknowledged that many people responding to its online survey said they need other things in the area, such as affordable housing, a grocery store or a community center with child care. But committee members said the jail’s location in an industrial strip makes those uses difficult: The soil is likely contaminated. There’s pollution from adjacent sites. And it’s isolated from other residential areas.
The committee said profits from any development on the site could help pay for a community center or something like it elsewhere in the city, though.
Alderman Rasheen Aldridge, who represents a broad swath of the northeast side, said the recommendations made sense for the most part, and that an industrial use would probably be best. He said the city could use part of it to store towed cars; the current lot has been bursting at the seams and delaying pickups. The North Side also needs job training centers teaching skilled trades that pay well, he said.
A lot of people of color struggle to get into the trades because they don't have the opportunities nearby, Aldridge said.
But Alderwoman Pam Boyd, whose ward covers the workhouse along with the rest of far north ºüÀêÊÓƵ, said she still couldn’t understand why the jail closed to begin with, let alone why the committee would consider demolishing it. The city spent millions of dollars upgrading the facility in its final years of operation and it has recreation space that the downtown jail doesn’t.
The inmate population downtown has been climbing this summer, too.
“Nobody sees the craziness this is,†Boyd said.
But Nick Desideri, a spokesman for Jones, said the workhouse will not be reopened to house inmates.
“This site must be used to address a pressing issue in our city,†he said.
Officials are now asking residents to fill out another survey, this time to rank the eight ideas for the jail site as well as possible uses for profits generated by the makeover.
Out of more than 700 responses from the initial survey released this summer, about 80 were from the Baden neighborhood, which is the closest residential neighborhood to the former jail. At a neighborhood meeting on Monday, the city’s steering committee presented and encouraged residents to fill out its latest survey, where again residents can indicate if they live in the area.
It’s a step in the right direction for the city to prioritize the community in the closest proximity, said Tashara Earl, president of the Revitalization of Baden Association. Earl, a former aldermanic candidate and lifelong Baden resident, said any transformation for the workhouse will affect the Baden neighborhood, whether it be through additional traffic or pollution.
“Whatever the facility will be, they’ll have more engagement with it if they include residents in the process,†said Earl.
A report on those follow-up survey results could come before the end of the year.
Taylor Tiamoyo Harris of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.