All the units of a new affordable housing development in downtown East St. Louis, 38 apartments and townhomes, have already been spoken for since going on the market just a couple of months ago.
Called Winstanley Park, the $13 million development offers one- to four-bedroom units that primarily serve working families.
The project, spearheaded by a Baptist church’s economic development arm and the Illinois Housing Development Authority, aims to breathe new life into East St. Louis and will serve as a stepping stone for more development, according to the project’s backers.
“For our long-term success here, we have to create the community around us and then be the anchor for that community,” said Dennis Jackson, executive director of the Mt. Sinai Development Corp.
Downtown East St. Louis has seen a handful of projects get underway or come to fruition, including the $44.5 million redevelopment of the historic Broadview Hotel into housing for seniors, this year.
Jackson hopes Mt. Sinai and others will be able to revitalize East St. Louis by attracting back some of the population that’s been lost over many decades and bringing in new business. Providing new, safe and affordable housing is the best place to start, Jackson said.
“I truly believe if you build up the housing market here, they will return,” he said.
The facts that all units are rented and that Mt. Sinai has built up a lengthy waitlist shows the demand for quality housing, Jackson said.
“We’re trying to just do something to bring back what was,” Jackson said. “Having a 100-person waiting list really speaks for itself.”
The Illinois Housing Development Authority financed nearly 95% of Winstanley Park through tax credits and pandemic-era grant dollars. St. Clair County also provided a $400,000 loan, and Midland States Bank covered the remaining roughly $335,000 with a loan.
A vast majority of the renters make 60% or less of the St. Louis metropolitan area’s median income. In the area, the median household income for a family of four stands just below $67,000, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
This isn’t the first effort in East St. Louis from the state housing agency and Mt. Sinai, which have been working the past 17 years to redevelop the neighborhood, also named Winstanley Park. The two previously have financed 60 rentable single-family homes that sit just east of the new development.
The space where the state agency and Mt. Sinai retrofitted 10 loft-style apartments used to be an industrial site that had long sat vacant. In addition to those 10 units, Mt. Sinai plans to turn the space into a community center, which will expand the church’s free after-school child care and family services for elementary students to teenagers. Construction is slated to begin later this year.
There’s also a broader master plan to build more than 220 new homes, create a home repair fund for existing homeowners, build new recreation facilities and attract commercial investment in East St. Louis, according to the Illinois Housing Development Authority.
“It is our plan to redevelop this whole community — not just to stop here,” Jackson said. “We plan to have more housing, more projects in hopes that more businesses will come and make Winstanley Park what it used to be years ago.”
