Twitter’s Dorsey, Detroit’s Pulte Line Up Behind St. Louis’ War on Blight
Date Posted: July 19, 2019
Posted In: Ideas, Projects,
From St. Louis Post-Dispatch: The city’s uphill fight against blight is getting a big assist from a couple of private sector heavy hitters.
Detroit philanthropist Bill Pulte is joining forces with St. Louis native Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of tech giants Square and Twitter, to launch a privately-funded initiative to tear down abandoned buildings in some of the city’s most distressed neighborhoods.
The effort, called the St. Louis Blight Authority, adds a major philanthropic commitment to one of Mayor Lyda Krewson’s top initiatives and formally kicks off Friday in the Wells-Goodfellow neighborhood of north St. Louis.
Demolition of houses in the four-block target area is already underway, but the goal is to completely clear and clean about 150 lots there over the next 20 days, Pulte said. Landscaping specialists will plant flowers and beautify the remaining lots in a way that’s easy for residents to maintain.
“We don’t want trash on the ground, we don’t want one little receipt from CVS,” he said. “That’s how you solve this blight problem, is you get rid of all the trash and debris and everything else. If you just go and knock down these structures, you don’t get rid of the cancer.”
Pulte, who describes himself as “Twitter’s #1 philanthropist” in his profile on the social media platform, is the grandson of the founder of homebuilder Pulte Group. He’s spent the last six years tackling the much larger vacancy problem in his hometown of Detroit and one of its neighboring suburbs, Pontiac, Michigan. There, he founded the Blight Authority, which has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and cleared hundreds of houses in Detroit and Pontiac.
Pulte and Dorsey are expected to formally outline their plans at a news conference Friday on Burd Avenue, near the intersection of Goodfellow Boulevard and Martin Luther King Drive.