On Saturday, April 20, 2024 at Lane Tabernacle CME Church there was a community cleanup sponsored by SLACO, helping to keep the Hodiamont Tracks clean and beautiful!
On Saturday April 20, 2024, residents and volunteers gathered at Lane Tabernacle CME Church at 9am to get tools, supplies and t-shirts for an event called “Keeping It Clean On The Hodiamont Tracks”. This event was sponsored by the St. Louis Association of Community Organizations (SLACO). Judith Arnold, Urban Planner for SLACO, arranged the cleanup and there was a decent turnout. Judith is also the Champion and Planner for the conceptual design of the Greenway on The Tracks.
Volunteers worked alongside residents to pick up litter along the Hodiamont Tracks which has been approved to become a greenway. Refreshments were available on site in front of the church. The name for the cleanup used to be called “Cleanup to Greenup” but is now called “Keeping It Clean On The Hodiamont Tracks”.
Many people often ask, “Why are the Hodiamont Tracks important?”. Well first of all the Hodiamont Tracks was a historic treasure in the City of St. Louis but now it is an abandoned streetcar trail which spans three and a half miles going from Vandeventer out to the city limits. The Hodiamont Tracks traverse seven neighborhoods which are Covenant Blue-Grand Center, Vandeventer, Lewis Place, Fountain Park, Academy/Sherman Park, Visitation Park and the West End. These seven neighborhoods are north of Delmar Boulevard which is known as the Delmar Divide.
Yet there are many St. Louis residents and younger generations who don’t know what the Delmar Divide was all about. It is about under resourced neighborhoods that are north of Delmar Blvd. These neighborhoods were the victims of blatant social economic discrimination and there are stark differences between communities north of Delmar and south of Delmar. At the present time community leaders, neighborhood organizations and grass roots activists are coming together to break the divide.
This divide can be broken by infusing more resources into communities both north and south of Delmar. When this announcement to break the divide was made five years ago an explosive amount of investments started happening. We can now see improvements in the Vandeventer neighborhood. In the last two years $77.5 million was invested in the Vandeventer neighborhood alone not including rehabs or new construction!Â
All images courtesy of Keith Watkins
St. Louis Association of Community Organizations and many residents have turned their attention to Delmar Blvd. because it is a very important corridor in the City of St. Louis. SLACO is working with Gaslight Square and the Central West End to come up with a report and a conceptual design of what the residents would like to have in the Vandeventer neighborhood. When this cleanup started five years ago the tracks were a filthy mess which further devastated the community. Today in 2024, the Hodiamont Tracks doesn’t look like a trashy mess it once was five years ago, and the change is very evident.
Have so many people lost hope where they live north of Delmar? Have so many people lost their pride and just turn a blind eye to the dishonorable and shameful conditions of the communities north of the Delmar Divide? One must ask these questions because in order to make a change one has to actually participate and be a part of the change. That’s why I’m glad that SLACO has acquired people through an EPA grant that go out every week to some of the hot spots to make sure that certain areas are kept clean.
The Tracks have been overgrown by brush and Johnsongrass (a fast-growing perennial weed that can grow seven to nine feet tall) not to mention all the litter and debris from illegal dumping. These slighted areas give rise to crime, drug use, prostitution and other harmful criminal activity which is a detriment to the community. We need to alleviate these type of areas and replace them with green spaces to make the communities more visually pleasing to the eye and a safe place that draws people in and a place that visitors can enjoy.
#CleanUp #HodiamontTracks #SLACO #CommunityVolunteer #UrbanPlanning #Greenway