Todd Reinecke and Natalie Salinas kept busy over the summer in St. Charles. They and a small army of volunteers attended parades and concerts and went door to door through St. Charles neighborhoods seeking signatures for a petition aiming to give voters a say when the city moved to sell a public park.
With enough signatures, a referendum to alter the city charter, requiring a vote for the sale of any city parks, would be added to the next election. All told, they collected more than 4,600 signatures.
Reinecke and Salinas hope to prevent other city-owned parks from meeting a fate similar to Mueller Park's. The city sold the property in 2024 to a development group for $3 million. The group plans to develop it into a youth soccer complex.
The city had previously placed the land on a list of surplus properties.
“It had been around for over 50 years,” said Reinecke, whose grandfather sat on the board that helped create the park. “And when they sold it, they sold it without anybody knowing about it. It was all done behind closed doors."
If the referendum reaches voters and they approve it, St. Charles would add charter language similar to rules in St. Louis’ charter that prevent the sale of publicly owned parks without voter approval. Several municipalities in the area have such rules, including University City, Florissant and Olivette.
Per the St. Louis city charter, city-owned land “held out for use as a public park” cannot be sold without a vote from residents approving the sale.
But the very rules the Save the Parks group vies for in St. Charles have flexed in recent weeks due to the impending sale of Interco Plaza in downtown St. Louis.
Debate over sale of St. Louis park
There, developer StarWood Group seeks to purchase a 0.71-acre plot of land for $275,000 for redevelopment into a parking lot for the nearby old Post Building. The group approached the Board of Aldermen through a board bill brought by Ward 14 Alderman Rasheen Aldridge.
While pushing for the sale, Aldridge pointed to continued issues with homeless encampments and violence at the plaza. The park previously was fenced off due to safety concerns.
The Board of Aldermen approved the measure to sell the land 10 to 5 after weeks of debate and despite outcry from some members and the public that, per the city charter, sale of the park required a public vote.
But city legal officials and proponents of the sale contend that without an ordinance officially declaring the plaza a park, only a vote by the Board of Aldermen was needed. On the city’s website, the plaza is described as a park and said to be maintained by the city’s parks division.
Alderman Michael Browning voted no on the bill.
"Parks are public land,” Browning said. “They're the people's land and it is really important that the people be involved in those decisions when we are disposing of it and making it no longer able to be used by the public."
Browning believes the board broke the city’s own charter rules by approving the sale and worries a lawsuit may be coming over the sale of the property.
What’s more, he worries over the precedent the impending sale of Interco Plaza set for the city’s charter and other municipalities that adopted or plan to adopt similar rules — like St. Charles.
“There's not just this danger of our own park lands potentially being sold without a vote, but that this could be used in other cities to sell their park land without a vote,” Browning said.
Among the vocal opponents of the sale was Conner Kerrigan, former city communications director who worked under former Mayor Tishaura Jones. He writes about the city in his free time and has posted frequently about the sale of Interco Plaza.
He said the sale of the plaza questions the validity of the city’s charter rules and opens other parks in the city without ordinances up for sale.
Both Kerrigan and Browning pointed to how the Board of Aldermen’s decision in St. Louis might have a sweeping influence on park sales in the region. Kerrigan said it might embolden developers to approach cities about purchasing more public land.
“Developers have now been given a playbook to avoid that protection,” he said. “All they need now is eight votes to overturn an ordinance and 10 votes at the Board of Aldermen to sell."
Setback in St. Charles
Still, Salinas and Reinecke remain steadfast in their goal of changing the St. Charles city charter to mirror St. Louis’ rules. That’s even after recent setbacks.
After collecting the number of petition signatures St. Charles officials originally put to the group, the city changed the number needed.
Reinecke said the group now needs 191 more signatures than originally required — which amounted to 10% of the registered voters from the last city election. He said the city argued that the 2025 election did not count as a city election.
“That's the number we went on for our six months of collecting,” Reinecke said.
He noted the group was told it would have more time to collect additional signatures. A group behind a separate petition to recall Mayor Dan Borgmeyer was also told in recent days it needed additional signatures.
Salinas and Reinecke believe they can get those votes. Salinas said that without voter say, she worries city officials will continue selling off land to developers.
“They're constantly selling farmland and things like that to build more houses and more houses,” Salinas said. “All of that is great. Cities need development. However, they also need space for parks and nature.”
According to reporting from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Borgmeyer said the city’s parks should bring more profit. He described one park, Woodlands Park, as a piece of property that “does nothing for the city.”
Salinas said it’s that line of thinking that has her worried for the future of green space in the area.
“It just seems like every time we turned around, there was discussion of the parks and what piece of land they were going to take next,” Salinas said. “We feel like communities need these places, and they're becoming fewer and fewer.”
