05/27/2025
Reflections from North St. Louis: What Was, What’s Lost, and What’s Next
I’ve spent the past few days driving through my childhood neighborhood in North St. Louis—reflecting on memories, changes, and the quiet strength still there.
In the 1970s, North St. Louis was a vibrant, working-class community. We had thriving public schools, safe streets, and strong families. Handy Park was full of kids in Little League uniforms. After a long workday, my father would coach and mentor us, teaching life lessons that still guide me.
We had real economic anchors:
🏭 The GM Corvette Plant at Natural Bridge & Union—shuttered in 1981.
🛠️ Carter Carburetor, just off Grand Blvd—once a symbol of dignity, hard work, and opportunity for generations, including my grandfather. Demolished in 2013 after decades of abandonment.
When those jobs left, so did many people's sense of purpose. Factories didn’t just provide paychecks—they provided identity, pride, and stability.
Today, there’s a national push to “bring back manufacturing”—but now it's high-tech, lean, and automated. Still, the need for economic opportunity in North St. Louis is just as urgent.
My mentor and business partner, Peter Jones from Cairo, IL, reminds me that communities unravel when jobs leave and never return. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
At MSM, LLC, we were built with the community in mind. From our first office on Washington Ave to our home in the Cortex Innovation District today, our commitment to the inner city remains unshakable.
***If we invest in each other, we can rebuild—block by block, business by business, generation by generation.
We are more than what was lost.
We are what’s next.
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