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Always a symbol * Poor public policy, white flight accelerated decline of neighborhood, city
Ripe for revival * Northside development, NGA give energy to emotionally laden project
The woods at Cass and Jefferson Avenues have had 40 years to overwhelm the concrete where homes for thousands of people once stood.
A newcomer might mistake it for a park, but that green overgrowth covers what many point to as "Exhibit A" in urban housing policy failure and the decline of St. Louis in the latter half of the 20th century.
Since 1976, the vacant Pruitt-Igoe public housing site has served as a reminder of the abandonment many north St. Louis neighborhoods experienced as residents and capital moved elsewhere, a conspicuous bit of foliage in a part of the city where crumbling houses and vacant lots often outnumber the houses kept standing by those who remained.
But for the first time in decades, a private investor owns the land.
After years of holding an option to purchase the 34-acre property for a little over $1 million, Paul McKee finally exercised it this month, acquiring the property from the city's Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority. The man behind the ambitious Northside Regeneration project plans to make it the "crown jewel" of his development northwest of downtown, an "urban village" with offices, a hotel, retail and a medical campus with a three-bed hospital.
Long a neglected patch of ground on the city's struggling North Side, the Pruitt-Igoe site's stock rose this year with the federal government's decision to build the new western headquarters of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency directly across Cass Avenue.
When the spy agency revealed it wanted to move from its longtime home on the south St. Louis riverfront, Pruitt-Igoe was originally part of the land McKee and the city pieced together to offer as a new home for NGA. But the parcel was later dropped from plans as NGA settled on using 100 acres north of it, leaving it as prime real estate for future development, surrounding what is anticipated to be a massive federal campus.
McKee, in an interview, said development on the Pruitt-Igoe site will coincide with his plans to build some 500 housing units to the north and east of the $1.75 billion...