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Mayflower Court, a predominantly Black and immigrant community in University City in the heart of St. Louis, Missouri, faces an onslaught of gentrification. Delmar Boulevard is famous for its deep-rooted socioeconomic and racial divide. South of the divide, near Washington University, a bustling business district caters to students, and University City seeks even more tax revenue.
The newest development in the neighborhood is a police training area, where abandoned homes are now being used for raid and assault exercises. Danny Wicentowski, a seasoned reporter for St. Louis Public Radio’s talk show “St. Louis on the Air,” has been following the neighborhood’s story for years, witnessing the community’s struggles against city officials and developers seeking to reshape its identity.
Britny Cordera: How did you find this story?
Danny Wicentowski: This story was the result of reporting on this issue going back to when I was with the Riverfront Times in 2019. This neighborhood had gone through this long process of University City saying, we need more tax revenue so bad that we’re willing to bring in a Costco that’ll give us millions of dollars of tax revenue. And in return, we’re going to bulldoze local businesses in this predominantly African-American, diverse community.
Developers pulled out of this project because they had overestimated it by millions of dollars. The initial plans for the area included a Costco, apartments, and retail spaces, which would have significantly altered the identity of the community. Instead, they left 16 empty homes in Mayflower Court to the police. This kind of action brought a lot of fear to the people of this neighborhood. It signals that something isn’t right here and that the area is not being treated the same way as nearby ones.
Imagine a family opens up their door and there’s armored cars and armed cops with dogs everywhere. Families wondered why they were going through their neighbor’s home they didn’t know was empty. It immediately grabbed my attention as a narrative of how powerful entities—city governments, police forces, and developers—collaborate to displace marginalized neighborhoods.
BC: Why Mayflower Court for this police training area?
DW: In my interviews with city leaders, I learned about the decision-making process behind choosing Mayflower Court for redevelopment. The city sought increased tax revenue and viewed this area, with its diverse population and relatively affordable homes, as the perfect opportunity.
University City’s choice of Mayflower Court for police training reflects broader historical and economic trends in the region. The area is known for the Delmar Divide, a symbolic and physical line of segregation where neighborhoods north of the divide have faced years of disinvestment and demographic shifts, including significant white flight.
BC: Is this a sign that Cop City is happening in St. Louis?
DW: I think a lot of folks would describe St. Louis as Cop City already. We have large police departments in the region that are always doing active training. There are 80 or so municipalities with seventy individual departments in the region.
I think this question of how do police train, what do police train for, and how do those trainings translate in the real world is a question I’ve thought about a lot. I asked St. Louis County why train in these homes? And the spokesperson for the police department said this is very typical. Police don’t know what situation they’re going into. And this kind of training is helpful for them to train in an unfamiliar home layout.
Logically, I get that, police don’t always know what situations they are getting themselves into. But, on some level, you have to ask, why not have these facilities for training elsewhere? The fire department does training, but they don’t plan to randomly burn an abandoned house down in a neighborhood.
“Cop City” I know is a case where the Atlanta Police Department is taking the South River Forest and they’re repurposing it. In University City, this land was taken and repurposed for capitalism, for development, for the creation of money. And a lot of people lost their land in a very similar way.
It is stark that this is all happening on the ten-year anniversary of Ferguson. It makes me wonder if the police are preparing to use SWAT and militarized vehicles soon if they want to do it in the future. It makes me wonder what the cops think is a danger and does that correlate with community perception of danger. It drives a lot of uncomfortable questions about what police are training for and how they look at their communities.
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BC: What kind of impact are you hoping this reporting will have?
DW: People often just don’t think about what would happen if their government would turn on them in this way. And what goes behind a city making this kind of decision for a community. This started with city council meetings, with votes that may have only had a few dozen people in attendance.
All of this was really done without overt violence, without even some kind of huge Trump-like election of someone coming in and really changing the way things are. This was all very logical, rational-seeming decisions and votes. And even when reporters, like myself and others, found big problems with the developer, it didn’t matter. They still got the tens of millions of dollars of public tax funds from the UCity tax codes that some of the folks living on Mayflower Court and others had paid.
A lot of folks really started showing up. They started reading the documents. There were a lot of citizen activists, some who had gone through this same situation in a neighborhood called Sunset Hills in the 80s.
Sadly our governments keep making these same mistakes because the money is so tantalizing, and they don’t have to pay it. They’re not living in those areas they can go to. This is a cycle that I think a lot of people don’t want to repeat. And we keep seeing different variations of it.
My biggest takeaway has been seeing just how many people care about this issue, some who did leave, some who stayed, some who were from different communities. It’s inspiring to see how much of that activism does really take place and build on itself, even if a lot really was lost and a lot can’t be reclaimed at the end of it. This has been a lesson in activism. It’s a lesson of the difference between winning the battle and winning the war and how that war really does continue with the same players and neighborhoods.
Thank you for the clear and concise explanations. This was really helpful!