This story was originally published on Feb. 7, 2010
ST. LOUIS聽鈥 Even those who love this neighborhood call it a ghetto, a scarred landscape left abandoned like other large swaths of the northwest corner of town.
As city neighborhoods became more integrated in the second half of the 20th century, the American Dream for many became a two-car garage and a large lawn away from the urban core. 50度灰视频 saw its population drop quickly. Businesses shuttered. Homes were abandoned. Hamilton Heights and surrounding neighborhoods were hit hard.
"It was left to those who couldn't leave, who didn't have the wherewithal or resources to do so," said the Rev. Michael Jones, who grew up in the neighborhood, a boy listening to the sermons of his grandfather at Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church.
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About 1970, as the neighborhood was rapidly declining, some church members began pressuring Jones' grandfather, the Rev. Robert Fulton Davis, to relocate Friendly Temple to the suburbs.
"My grandfather decided to stay," said Jones, who became pastor of Friendly a year after his grandfather's death in 1993. "There were all kinds of struggles, and he wanted to help change the community."
The neighborhood struggles 鈥 poverty, crime, abandonment 鈥 continue. But the church has thrived, moving last month into its third building in 23 years to accommodate the growing congregation.
And early this summer, construction on a church-led effort is to begin on a four-block, $34 million housing development adjacent to Friendly Temple. Jones, 49, is urging church members to move into the new houses and help bring the neighborhood back to its once lively self, filled with middle-class families, restaurants and department stores.
The new $8 million Friendly Temple sanctuary includes 2,500 stadium seats, a balcony, a large stage and a two-story atrium open to a circle-drive entrance. A congregation that began with three members in a building with no plumbing now worships in what could be called a megachurch, with two Sunday morning services and 5,000 members.
With the new sanctuary, the church is now a 100,000-square-foot campus in the 5500 block of Martin Luther King Drive, which includes the building Friendly worshiped in for a decade before the new sanctuary opened.
Dedicating the new worship space on Martin Luther King Day was a proud moment for Jones, one he would have loved to share with Davis.
"I wish he were here and I could have walked him through, " Jones said. "To show that his work was not in vain."
Part of the community
Davis started Friendly Temple in a tiny midtown building in 1955 and moved it nine years later to an old Jewish temple on Belt Avenue, just off what is now Martin Luther King Drive. In 1987, the congregation moved into a building it built on King. But a decade later, the church needed more room.
Jones had his eye on an old warehouse across the street. The congregation believed in Jones but had doubts about the building's viability. Half of the money for the new church was raised privately, and a bank loan covered the remainder.
"When I first walked in during the early, early stages, into this massive warehouse just filled with trash and birds and rats, and the pastor said this is going to be our new sanctuary, I'd be the first to admit I trusted him but at that time I didn't see it, " said church member Aaron Reeves, 39, who grew up in the neighborhood.
Reeves, like the majority of Friendly Temple's congregation, now lives outside the city. Jones said the church was taking steps to change that, working with developer McCormack Baron Salazar to rebuild the neighborhood, including quality, affordable housing. With a solid housing stock, church members can move into the neighborhood and turn it around, Jones said.
"We can't wait for others to do it," he said.
The pastor says he is continuing the vision his grandfather had: Grow the congregation and preach giving back to a community that has been forgotten, where the median household income is just above $18,000.
That has happened. The church has built 110 senior living apartments and a child care center. The church also has become a community center. Neighborhood children have access to the gym. Tax return assistance is provided, and the church is working with various higher education institutions to offer on-site courses.
A place to live
The new housing partnership with McCormack Baron, called Arlington Grove, is a mix of 112 residential units, including renovation of the historic Arlington School into apartments.
Also on tap are newly constructed townhouses and living spaces above a proposed commercial building on King Drive, adjacent to the new church sanctuary. All but 11 of the units will be affordable housing. The church and developers hope additional phases will bring in more market-rate homes as the neighborhood grows stronger.
The church has steadily acquired land in the neighborhood over the past decade and now owns about 100 acres. Jones said it was relatively easy; there was little interest in the land. As the church maps out its future, which includes more housing and a school, having the property in hand will make the growth easier, he said.
Jones said the church was confident in Arlington Grove's success, drawing on its large congregation to move into the new housing and become part of the community. Don Roe, the city's acting director of planning and urban design, said the project made sense for the area.
"They're implementing the collective wishes of the city and neighborhood," Roe said. Friendly Temple's growth fits into the overall plan for city improvements going west, he said.
Church members say a sustained commitment to improve the community makes sense.
"The church cannot grow alone. The community must grow with us," said Reeves, of Florissant, an accounting and finance professor at 50度灰视频 Community College at Forest Park. "We didn't want to be the church where all the members came in from other parts of the county or city on Sunday and then are gone the rest of the week."
Carolyn Shannon grew up in the church. She moved out of the neighborhood as a young adult and now lives in Ferguson. But she still worships at Friendly Temple.
"I witnessed the corrosion, the deterioration of the neighborhood," said Shannon, 48. "It's the neighborhood that people have given up on. But Pastor Davis had a vision, and Pastor Jones has built on that. We hope that we can make a difference in the neighborhood."
Reeves and Shannon are among church members considering a move back into the neighborhood.
"If I could get something I could afford, and feel pretty secure there, absolutely I will," Shannon said.
The Arlington Grove project will be funded from a mix of sources, including low-income housing tax credits, tax exempt bonds and stimulus money, which stipulate that the new homes must be environmentally friendly.
The homes will be equipped with solar panels, the first affordable housing project in the city to include them. The new housing also will include Energy Star labeled appliances and water conserving fixtures. The homes will be built, in part, with recycled materials.
The stimulus funds also emphasize job training and generation. McCormack Baron and the church's nonprofit development arm, serving as co-general partners, will oversee the jobs program.
Ida Martin helped organize the church in 1955, serving as its first secretary. She voted with the majority on the name of the new congregation of about 20. The Friendly Temple name remains appropriate today, she said, even as the membership has grown into the thousands.
Jones has said the church works hard to make sure that no member "gets lost in the shuffle."
Now living in Bel-Ridge, Martin is happy to see the church take an active role in bringing back the neighborhood.
"I'm excited. I think it's very important, " said Martin, 75. "The Lord let me stay here to see this."
Jones said that growing up, he did not see himself following in his grandfather's footsteps. He dabbled in the corporate world, working in management information systems. But the more he was around Davis, the more he knew preaching was his calling.
"Birds were meant to fly. This is what I'm meant to do," Jones said. That includes returning his childhood neighborhood into a thriving place "so people will again be proud of this area.
"It was a ghetto when we started, but it will not remain as a ghetto."