Ed Stroesser retired Friday.
On Saturday, he joined the ranks of other retirees, millennials, piano tuners and lobbyists, lawyers and actors, appraisers and software designers and all manner of other folks who live and work within sight of the decommissioned Missouri State Prison and the Capitol, within walking distance of East High Street and thousands of state and private jobs. Habitues all of the storied East Capitol Avenue neighborhood, once upon a decade one of Jefferson City's finest.
For the past 32 years, Stroesser, the co-founder of Communique Inc. with Steve Veile and others, has worked in an imposing red brick structure at 512 E. Capitol Ave., which began its existence in 1870 as the home of the Ewing Family, as the Historic City of Jefferson plaque above the front porch declares. The handsome building is filled with striking fireplaces, staircases, gleaming woodwork, offices, antiques, modern heating, cooling, plumbing and creature comforts.
It is one of the notable properties in the storied 31-acre neighborhood the Jefferson City Council and its Housing Authority will alter through the East Capitol Avenue Area Urban Renewal Plan, which begins next week.
Stroesser is just now digesting the reality of urban renewal, the legal apparatus which will acquire the many blighted properties in any direction he looks from his front porch. Current owners who have not maintained their properties will have them appraised and purchased, if voluntary and amenable; if not, the power of the American jurisprudence system will seize the properties.
Those properties will be offered for rescue, rehabilitation, repurposing and revival - where possible - to new owners, meaning developers, investors and, perhaps like Stroesser and his Communique partners, folks who will want to work in the East Capitol Area or live there. Communique is an often-honored public relations, digital media, education and research firm concentrating on the agriculture and nutrition sectors. Its digs need no urban renewal.
As one who has, however, observed the nefarious encroachment of blight from all four directions, Stroesser is well qualified to call the state of the neighborhood "a travesty."
Like Stroesser, Stacy Young, at Appraisal Associates at 518 E. Capitol Ave., is way past ready for urban renewal to bring change to the area around the substantial building from which she and partner Ann Nunn-Jones operate their demanding business. Young remains just a tad skeptical urban renewal will produce the results it is promising.
Across the intersection with Marshall, at 601 E. Capitol Ave., sits the immaculate - inside and out - Bella Vista Apartments, a 1927 era lodging center, a showpiece of Spanish Revival architecture, reminiscent of Kansas City's Country Club Plaza. Among the tenants are Dan McClard, a piano tuner and window washer, and his wife, Tracy, an advocate for juvenile justice programs and frequent visitor at the Capitol. Recent move-ins from Jackson, Mo., the McClards chose Bella Vista and the East Capitol Avenue neighborhood, simply, because it is a beautiful place to live, they said.
A few doors down from the Bella Vista is the Houchins House, at 611 E. Capitol, one of Jefferson City-designated landmarks originally built in 1900 by James Albert Houchins, the founder of the Star Clothing Co., who operated on labor from the next door prison. Houchins' only daughter, Myrene, married James Hobbs, another of Jefferson City's most prominent residents of the early 20th Century.
Purchased by Jim Weber in 1969, remodeling on the home began in 1972; its previous occupant had been a nursing home. Weber says he could see "the diamond in the rough" which was the Houchins house. The 7,500-foot stone home required three years to build, was completed in 1910 and expanded in 1910. Like Communique's headquarters, Weber's stately edifice is a star of the neighborhood and anything but a candidate for urban renewal.
Just steps from Weber's pride and joy is the former prison worker apartment building at 619 and 621 E. Capitol, today famed as Avenue HQ and the Scene One Black Box Theatre. The complex is owned and operated by millennials and long-time kindred spirits Nathan and Holly Stitt and Quinten Rice.
The Stitts are serious software and graphic designers, who've done website design for Rice University in Houston. Holly Stitt also is a painter and the space features her work. Rice is an artist of many hues and the driving force behind a new venture to open the former Bridge club of Columbia in their basement.
And, across the street, at 720 E. Capitol, is the 1920s brick home of Cathy and David Bordner. Retired state employees, the Bordners have long been passionate, valiant devotees of urban renewal in the East Capitol Avenue area. It was not until April, however, that they sold their long-time home in the Fairmount Boulevard-Moreau Drive area and moved to East Capitol. The Bordners are active on eBay, but are fully engaged in advocating for the urban renewal project about to begin on their street. Cathy Bordner, a skilled writer and editor, has produced much of the printed materials which have argued for the City Council and Housing Authority to do what they are now actually doing.
So back to Stroesser. He'll continue to contribute to Communique but will be very involved as a Catholic deacon at St. Andrew's parish in Holts Summit. He'll also be scrutinizing urban renewal, he says. "My partners and I were very proud to invest in this neighborhood 32 years ago," he said, "and we're still proud to be here. Nothing would make us more proud than if the rest of the neighborhood shared our vision for East Capitol."