The Downtown St. Louis Community Improvement District exists to support and improve our neighborhood. They are supported by an assessment paid by all property owners in the District. Because the CID has failed over a number of years to effectively address declining conditions downtown we opposed the required reauthorization of the organization and assessment in 2021. The reauthorization required the the passage of a petition by the signatures of a majority of property owners. However, the CID was authorized for another twenty years by a majority of a single signature. The CID spent large sums to promote the reauthorization and took years to accumulate sufficient signatures. Our opposition was a grass roots effort done with very little money. The difficult reauthorization process clearly indicated a dissatisfaction with the effectiveness of the CID and we believe that nothing has materially changed since that process concluded.

We continue to believe that an effective CID is essential to address the quality of life issues that keep our downtown from thriving.

The CID has fallen short in addressing:  
• the causes of crime (gun violence, cruising, drug sales)
• infrastructure maintenance & improvements (sidewalks, paving)
• green space management (parks blighted)
• metered / garage parking
• abatement of nuisance properties
• homelessness
• liquor licensing
• development of vacant properties
• traffic management (traffic signals not synchronized and broken)
• development of bike facilities
• management of sidewalk cafes
 
Problems need to be addressed quickly and vigorously, and the current CID has not been agile or effective enough to do so.  These are just a few of the issues Downtown faces that the existing CID is simply not engaged in addressing, and hasn’t been for its 20-year history.

Trends in property values, office occupancy, rents, and other key economic measures have gone in the wrong direction in Downtown for a number of years.  The legitimately celebrated renaissance of Downtown some years ago has not been sustained and, except for a few highly subsidized developments, the growth of Downtown has been largely stalled or even reversed. In 2014 the average sales price of a downtown condominium was about $124 per square foot and today it is about $117 (not adjusting for inflation – which makes the actual decline even greater); a time period where property values increased almost everywhere else in the region. 

The CID has not provided leadership or served as a facilitator for developing collaborative strategies and plans for addressing critical issues with local government.   The CID has not vigorously advocated for the interests of property owners, businesses, and residents by holding City government, law enforcement, public utilities, property owners, and others accountable for meeting their responsibilities.  

• To address the growing gun violence Downtown, the strategy of using secondary police patrols has done little or nothing to stem gun violence. Almost all gun violence occurs at night / during weekends, when these supplemental police patrols are largely absent. Rates of violent crime have continued to escalate.

• The Clean Team is responsible for picking up trash on Downtown streets, but Downtown streets and sidewalks remain littered with dog feces, gravel, chunks of concrete, pigeon waste, weeds, construction debris, abandoned newspaper boxes, overflowing dumpsters, illegally dumped furniture, etc.

• The CID has now offloaded its former responsibility for marketing downtown to Greater St. Louis Inc., but Downtown’s reputation is increasingly negative.  Marketing alone will not offset the negative conditions of violent crime, lack of cleanliness, decaying infrastructure, nuisance properties and other issues that the CID has either ignored, downplayed, or funded ineffective strategies over the last 20 years.