By Tom Braford
Did you know that there are 10,000 buildings on the City of St. Louis’ demolition list?
On May 10, this Community rose up to be sure the 110-year-old historic buildings of the Arizmendi Ecovillage do not meet that fate.
We are grateful to the City’s Board of Building Appeals for generously giving us a reprieve.
It is clear that this happened because the Com-munity rose up.
Thank you to everyone who helped make this happen:
To our elected officials: President of the Board of Alderman Lewis Reed, Comptroller Darlene Green, Alderman Terry Kennedy and Alderwoman Marlene Davis.
To the community members, many of whom are future residents and/or worker/owners at the Ecovillage, who attended the hearing or wrote letters of support.
To Great Rivers Environmental Law Center who filed amicus briefs on behalf of 350 STL and Good Life Growing on the grounds that the Ecovillage project will implement many Drawdown solutions to social, environmental and economic justice challenges that the City of St Louis and the region face and that these organizations are committed to resolving.
To our team of professionals, investors and community builders who wrote letters of support.
And especially to all those who spoke so eloquently at the hearing, including Lindsey Buening, Erika Boeing, James Forbes, Miles Dela Cruz, Ashley Sturm, Paul Sheldon, Petros Keshishian and Marlene Davis.
It takes a Community to build an Ecovillage.
This action to preserve and reuse this cultural and historical treasure is an essential first step in fulfilling our promise of 100% Renewables by 2035 and is in complete alignment with the stated policies of all branches of City government and goals of the surrounding Central West End, North Central, Grand Center neighborhoods and Cortex Innovation District.
How do we know this new approach to preserving these valuable stores of embedded energy and thermal mass isn’t better if we just continue to tear St Louis down?
Please let us know how you would like to get involved in building the Ecovillage community. We hope to see you the weekend of June 22-24 at the CommonBound 2018 conference at Harris-Stowe University, put on by the New Economy Coalition.
Contact braford@sbcglobal.net
www.ArizmendiEcovillage.com