This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Oct. 25, 2011 - Growing up here, Laura Miller couldn't wait to get out. She wanted a house in the suburbs, maybe, something big and new. In her mid-20s, she chose the city instead and lived in St. Louis Hills and Lindenwood Park. But she and her husband missed being part of a community.
And so, 13 years after moving away, Miller and her family came back to Maplewood, to a place that feels a bit like Mayberry, she laughs, but it's a place that has always felt like home.
"It took me a while to realize the beauty that was right in front of me," she says.
Since the spring of last year, Miller, her husband and their three children have become part of a place with one of the highest percentages of 25 to 44 year olds in the entire metro area.
"I was shocked about that," she says. "I always think of it as an older community, but I guess when you think about it, there are more and more young families."
The numbers show, at least, that there are definitely more and more young people.
In Maplewood, according to the 2010 U.S. Census, 37 percent of the population is between the ages of 25 to 44. For the St. Louis metro area, including Missouri and Illinois, that number is 26, according to the Missouri Census Data Center. In St. Louis, 31 percent of residents were 25 to 44.
Maplewood matches up well to other inner-ring suburb cities, too:
- Richmond Heights -- 33 percent.
- Clayton -- 28 percent.
- University City -- 30 percent.
- Kirkwood -- 23 percent.
- St. Louis County -- 24 percent.
In St. Charles County, the number of 25 to 44 year olds was 27 percent and 31 percent in booming O'Fallon.
Census numbers show some other positive things for Maplewood, too.
The poverty rate changed little from 2000 to 2009, when it was just under 14 percent. That's higher than the county's poverty rate of about 9 percent, says Will Winter, with the Public Policy Research Center at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. But it's remained stable.
And while the straight numbers show that Maplewood lost 13 percent of its population over 10 years, most of that can be accounted for with the developments of a Wal-Mart, Sam's and Lowes, which took out houses.
"This is a stable inner-ring suburb," Winter says.
That, and the high percentage of young people, tells a different story than the typical one you hear about St. Louis, says Winter. Todd Swanstrom agrees.
"We have this whole story about the region, that we're losing our educated young people," says Swanstrom, a professor of community collaboration and public policy partnership at UMSL.
Maplewood's ability to attract young people, he says, is a very good sign.
The question is, can it keep them?
This Old House
When Miller, 39, and her family decided to move back to Maplewood, they were shocked to find that they couldn't afford a house. The downturn in the economy helped them finally get in. For other young people, though, Maplewood looks very affordable.
Charles Hinderliter, 32, and his wife moved to Maplewood in 2007.
"It was in part affordability, in part the community seemed to have undergone a resurgence, and in part because of location," he says.
Hinderliter, who grew up in Kirkwood, finds Maplewood exceptionally affordable, he says, with mostly middle class, working class and some poor.
Hinderliter and his wife don't have children, but they'd like to stay in the community for the foreseeable future, maybe move two blocks north into a bigger home.
"I think that staying in Maplewood is a possibility," he says. "It's a community I've really grown fond of."
And it's also one where the value of houses has mostly improved over the last decade.
William Rogers, an associate professor of economics at UMSL, looked at the values of single-family houses in St. Louis County from 2000 to 2010.
"Over that time, Maplewood, Brentwood and parts of Olivette and parts of Creve Coeur appreciated the most out of all the other zip codes in the county," he says.
From 2006 to the present, of course, those values have depreciated, he says, "but every place depreciated."
Location has always been an advantage to places like Maplewood, Rogers says, so you can't really take that into account. Instead, he thinks, the real credit goes to the school district, redevelopment of Interstate 64 and Maplewood's retail core and the addition of the Metrolink station in Maplewood in 2006.
In 2000, Maplewood had among the lowest housing values, he says, and now they're somewhere in the middle of the pack.
Currently, a little over half of the housing units in Maplewood are rentals and apartment units, says Marty Corcoran, city manager. Also, he adds, the number of people per household declined over the last decade, which could show an aging population -- or more young couples or singles.
And while Maplewood had that chunk of 25 to 44-year-olds, that number did decrease by a few percentage points since 2000. It also has a smaller number of people under 18 than many surrounding communities.
Here's how it breaks down: In Maplewood, 17 percent of the population was under 18, according to the census.
- Kirkwood: 23 percent
- St. Louis: 21 percent
- University City: 20 percent
- Richmond Heights: 18 percent
- St. Louis County: 23 percent.
"We definitely want to attract and keep young families that have or will have children to go to our school system," Corcoran says.
And as of last spring, the Miller kids are now a part of that system.
An Education
Now, when her children come home from school, Miller hears about the importance of getting each food group on the table at dinner. Her daughter often suggests they should go on a walk and get some exercise.
She's very happy with the schools, Miller says, but choosing them was tough.
"It was a really hard decision for us," she says.
Miller and her husband both grew up in Catholic schools. When they moved to Maplewood, they pulled their own kids out of Catholic schools to be a part of the Maplewood-Richmond Heights School District.
It's still small, she says, and feels like a real community.
"Our enrollment actually bottomed out in 2005-6," says Dr. Linda Henke, superintendent of the district.
It's now up to 1,089, she says. Twelve years ago, more than 50 percent of kids in the school district did not attend MRH, Henke says. Three years ago, when she last analyzed those numbers, it was less than 25 percent.
"What we're seeing now is people are saying, no, I'm coming here because I want a different education than we find in most county schools."
MRH offers a private school mentality in a public school setting, Henke says. The classes are small, the instructors are hands-on, and, to her, it feels more like a boutique school.
The district got the Distinction in Performance designation for the second year in a row from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and Henke says while they'd like standardized scores to be higher, they're comparable to Webster Groves and Pattonville.
The Pattonville comparison holds. MAP scores between the two were similar, but in 2011, about 60 percent of MRH students scored proficient or above, while in neighboring Webster Groves, the number was 70 percent.
Both the district and the city have made deliberate decisions about who they are and how to let people know about them.
"It has worked for the city of Maplewood," Henke says, "and I think it's worked for us as well."
Building Momentum
On weekends, Miller and her family park the car and walk to soccer and the grocery store and restaurants and shops.
Hinderliter and his wife love the foodie vibe of Maplewood and the presence of so many locally owned businesses.
There are events that get the community together, including art walks and coffee crawls.
And there's socioeconomic diversity as well as some racial diversity. Maplewood is about 74 percent white and lost a little more than 1,000 white residents from 2000 to 2010. Seventeen percent of the population is black, and the city lost 86 black residents over the decade.
"This is an eclectic community that has a wide diversity of people," Corcoran says. "Part of the charm of Maplewood is that eclectic mix. I'm not sure you want to see us become gentrified. Maplewood in a sense is the real world."
Miller and Hinderliter credit the city with doing a lot to turn Maplewood around. They've made tough decisions, Miller says, like bringing in big box stores like Wal-Mart, which generate tax dollars for the city. Over the next decade, she thinks the city will have to maintain the balance of locally owned and big retail to keep the city stable. She'd also like to see more public art, which seems like a natural fit for the vibe Maplewood already has.
Mostly, says Rachelle L'Ecuyer, director of community development, Maplewood has to keep doing what it's doing.
"We can't fall off the radar now that we're there," she says.
There's an urban fabric here, she says, with a small town feel. As the city's website says, it's "Somewhere between Mayberry and Metropolis."
In her lifetime, Maplewood has changed dramatically, Miller says.
But so much of what made her parents choose to stay in Maplewood still remains. There's diversity, it's centrally located, and houses are affordable.
"It was a neighborhood that they were gonna see through good and bad," she says. "It was our community."
And now, for her family, it is again.
The Inner Ring
Here's a glance at what's happened over the last decade in a few areas that ring the city.
Richmond Heights: lost 10 percent of its population, but like Maplewood, that loss is due to development, including reconstruction of Interstate 64 and an apartment complex that was demolished and didn't get rebuilt when the economy turned.
University City lost 6 percent of its population.
Clayton looks to have gained 24 percent, but that's actually an error from 2000, when the census failed to count a dorm. Otherwise, it's remained the same.
Kirkwood gained 1 percent
Webster Groves lost 1 percent
Frontenac lost .3 percent