Posted on 09/28/2015 3:14:30 PM PDT by TroutStalker
ST. LOUIS • For 17 years, Karen Bryant has watched her beloved neighborhood along Martin Luther King Drive deteriorate.
Bryant, who does alterations from a storefront along King, can recite a long list of flourishing businesses that used to line the street. They all left. Now she’s left sandwiched between two vacant buildings.
Despite her location on a desolate and run-down area of Martin Luther King, she’s determined to stay. She and her husband even moved in above her shop to ward off thieves who have stolen her air conditioning unit and removed copper pipes from her store, which is full of clothes needing alterations.
A similar story has unraveled across the country along streets named for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., according to Melvin White, of St. Louis nonprofit Beloved Streets of America. Now a team of Harvard graduate students is working with White to turn St. Louis into a template on how to revitalize streets honoring the civil rights champion.
White began the nonprofit Beloved Streets of America to find ways to redevelop America’s Martin Luther King Drives, starting with St. Louis.
“I want it to be a beautiful and vibrant place,” White said of the neighborhood. In its current states, “it’s kind of a slap in the face” to King, he added.
On Saturday afternoon, a group of Harvard graduate students studying urban planning and architectural design arrived in St. Louis ready to interview community members and gather input on redevelopment ideas. Later this week, the group will travel to Washington, D.C., to examine the issues there. At the end of the 15-week course, the students will present to White ideas on ways the street can be improved.
(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...
Melvin White (third from right in red), president of Beloved Streets of America, leads a group of Harvard University School of Design graduate students on a tour of the 5800 block of Martin Luther King Drive in St. Louis on Saturday, Sept. 27, 2015. Photo by Christian Gooden, cgooden@post-dispatch.com
LOL!!!! Good luck with that!
Young liberals on the short walk to reality
This should be interesting. They should make a reality show out of it.
Isn’t it racist of these liberals, to conclude that Martin Luther King Drive is various cities are in the slums????
Naivety can be just another form of stupid.
Rename it James Earl Ray drive?
Too soon?
White privilege.
Definitely should be a reality show.
Lemme guess, all their “solutions” involve someone else’S money.
Probably good to stay away from MLK Avenue and Malcolm X Avenue intersection.
Now this will be entertaining.
L
Or evil.
That’s a no-brainer! Just rename them the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. They’ll be upwardly mobile, professional enclaves in no time flat.
True.
Name one where I could safely take a walk some evening.
Take my advice. No matter what color you are, never ever drive or walk down any street after dark, anywhere in the nation that is named after MLK.
I agree with you. I was sarcastically trying to say, apparently unsuccessfully, that the liberals are actually being prejudicial, about the areas where Martin Luther King Drives are found. They preach to us not to prejudge people and places and situations but they are doing that themselves in this case. If my sarcasm doesn’t register, sorry.
Oh, come on, now! Look what the First Black President, Bill Clinton, Renaissance Man, did for Harlem! Wait...What? Just ONE building in that entire area was renovated? As a Bimbo Crash Pad, you say?
*SNORT* My bad.
That’s a good way to start improving MLK Drive. I was going to say burn it down using napalm, and start all over.
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