The proposed residential Job Corps Center temporarily slated for the Skinker-DeBaliviere area will apparently be located elsewhere.
The center was a focus of community discussion for about one month, from mid-October to mid-November, as a proposal to have it located at 5621 Delmar Boulevard sat on the desk of Governor Warren E. Hearnes.
Hearnes, using power in his hands to pass on proposals for center locations, vetoed the Delmar site on November 18 after various community groups including the Skinker-DeBaliviere Community Council, expressed opposition.
“I had mixed feelings about the proposal, but I was pleased that Gov. Hearnes finally vetoed it because a majority of residents in our neighborhood opposed it,” said the Rev. Calvin B. Stuart Jr., former chairman of the Skinker-DeBaliviere council.
The council opposed the site in a meeting Nov. 15 after a council-sponsored meeting Nov. 11 brought out about 100 neighborhood residents, who voted overwhelmingly to oppose the Delmar site.
Events leading to the council action went something like this:
The job corps center, designed for 250 male trainees from St. Louis and four surrounding counties, was originally proposed for the Sportsman Inn, a former motel on North Lindbergh Boulevard in suburban Bridgeton.
After residents of the Bridgeton area complained that the trainees wouldn’t necessarily be near their jobs and that the community didn’t have facilities for the trainees, Gov. Hearnes vetoed the site.
Bernard H. Tureen, owner of the Bridgeton motel, persuaded federal officials to consider another site owned by him, the old Sloan’s Moving and Storage Co. at 5621 Delmar Boulevard, just west of DeBaliviere Avenue.
The building had been renovated to be a nursing home; the officials said it would be ideal also as a job training center.
An initial meeting to explain the center proposal to the public was held Oct. 29 at the Ascension Episcopal Church at Goodfellow and Cates, sponsored by Twenty-fifth Ward Committeeman David Pentland and Committeewoman Helen Shelton and Seventy-second District State Representative Fred Williams.
This meeting resulted in primarily favorable public opinion toward the Delmar site, according to press accounts. Williams has since continued a drive for the center to be located on Delmar. As The Paper went to press, he was urging federal officials to override Hearnes’s veto.
The public meeting in the Skinker-DeBaliviere area Nov. 11 was originally just a meeting of the council, Stuart said.
It was opened to the public, and both Charles DeLargy, an official of the Missouri State Employment Service and William A. Atkins Jr., who would operate the center for the General Learning Corp., were on hand to answer questions.
Stuart said that although he believes most Skinker-DeBaliviere residents are not opposed to job corps centers, they felt that the lack of recreation facilities and the relatively high crime rate in the neighborhood meant that suddenly adding another 250 residents would not be a good idea.
In addition, some residents were unhappy about the experience of the defunct women’s job corps center in the old Missouri Baptist Hospital on North Taylor Avenue.
The result of the meeting was a reported 100-to-3 vote of those present against the Delmar site. DeLargy promised that Hearnes had an “entirely open mind” on the situation and had asked him to survey community opinion on the issue.
The council voted on Nov. 15 to endorse the citizens action and report the vote to Hearnes. Three days later the Delmar site was vetoed.
Stuart emphasized that the council did not take a leading role in opposing the center but waited for citizen opinion before acting.
Referring to the Nov. 11 meeting, Stuart says, “I thought we had a good exchange of ideas.”
He admits, though, that there still is some division in the area on the center. Williams and Republican leader Solomon Rooks were still campaigning for the Delmar site at press time, but it appeared that discussion would focus on a new proposal for the center to be located in the Fairgrounds Park area on the North Side.
Originally published in The Paper, December 1970.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1970_12.pdf, printed page(s) 6.
