6 days Ago By By Tony Messenger St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS — My first meeting with Cara Spencer spurred a feeling of déjà vu. We were enjoying pizza and beer sitting outside Yaqui’s on Cherokee .
Spencer, about a year into her first term as a south-side alderwoman, had given me a tour of her ward, showing off the growth in businesses, particularly restaurants and bars. It was 2016, and as I looked around, I realized I had been here before. “Did Steve Smith used to own this building?” I asked Spencer.
He did, she told me. Smith, owner of The Royale restaurant and bar near Tower Grove Park, had invited me to play poker with him and his friends in the summer of 2009. I was a reporter in the state capital then, covering the Missouri Legislature, and Smith, a bit of a political junkie, wanted to meet me.
I joined Smith and his friends for a poker game in an empty building on Cherokee Street that he and his father were rehabbing. We sat on the top floor, with the windows open. Cherokee Street was mostly empty.
This was my introduction to the city of St. Louis. Smith had big plans for the building.
Maybe a boxing studio with a bar upstairs. But he never got to put his big ideas into action. The alderman at the time, Craig Schmid, wasn’t a fan of approving liquor licenses in the 20th Ward.
Smith eventually sold the building and looked elsewhere for his next project. Spencer, in her first run for office, beat Schmid. She was a young upstart, supported by the president of the Board of Aldermen at the time, Lewis Reed.
She defeated the establishment candidate backed by then-Mayor Francis Slay. Her message was the same one she used this year to win the election for mayor against incumbent Tishaura O. Jones.
Spencer wants this often-broken city to work. “This campaign was built on the simple idea that St. Louis can do better,” Spencer told supporters Tuesday night after winning the race in overwhelming fashion, topping Jones with 64% of the vote.
Her message — after persistent issues with trash pickup, slow 911 response times, a disastrous snowstorm response and the bungling of a grant program for north city businesses — clearly resonated with a majority of voters. That day nearly a decade ago, sitting outside a pizza joint on a lively Cherokee Street, is evidence that Spencer has at least some experience making the city work better. A new alderman was hardly the only reason the neighborhood revived itself, but it didn’t hurt having an advocate who would help business leaders navigate City Hall.
Spencer’s challenge now is to do what Jones failed to do during her term as mayor: Build a lasting coalition that can navigate the city’s arcane charter, fight through the city’s often-bitter racial divide and make city services work for residents. As an alderman, Spencer has been a bit of a bomb thrower. She installed her own stop sign to draw attention to the fact that the city is too often bogged down in bureaucracy to fix traffic problems.
She sued the city and the owners of the St. Louis Blues when she thought the hockey team was getting a sweetheart deal for improvements to the Enterprise Center. She called out developers who didn’t take care of derelict properties.
Now, supported by some of the same St. Louis establishment leaders she previously criticized, Spencer’s in charge. Making the city work is her responsibility.
Soon, an alderman will wonder why they can’t get a stop sign in their ward. A business will question why it can’t get a liquor license. A high-profile downtown crime will bring the sorts of headlines that have haunted mayors for decades.
The city is broken, people will say. Can you fix it? Can a local entrepreneur with big ideas get the help he or she needs to turn old red bricks into commerce, from Cherokee Street to Page Avenue? Spencer becomes the third first-term mayor in a row, and the second consecutive mayor who is a single mom with a teenage son, hoping to improve the city for the next generation. It’s déjà vu all over again, as St.
Louis continues its decadeslong search for a better future..
