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Accuses St. Louis, airport officials of plot to depopulate, destroy town
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
March 6, 2000
By MICHAEL SHAW
Of the Post-Dispatch
KINLOCH -- Like a big fish swallowing a small fry, sometimes cities cannibalize or "destroy" one another.
It is legal in most cases. But in the case of a David-like Kinloch, Mo., city officials there say they will no longer fall prey to a much larger, Goliath-like St. Louis, and its sprawling airport located to the west of Kinloch.
In a lawsuit, filed March 3, Kinloch officials allege St. Louis officials, have essentially tricked them into giving up portions of their city in the hopes that new development will revitalize Kinloch, at one time one of the largest all-black communities in the nation.
Kinloch contends that St. Louis also is buying homes outside the area reserved for noise abatement and letting those properties deteriorate in an attempt to dissolve Kinloch.
Kinloch Mayor Keith Conway, city aldermen and residents announced the Friday filing of the lawsuit in St. Louis County Circuit Court.
They made the announcement Sunday in front of a dilapidated house the St. Louis Airport Authority owns. The message officials are giving is that St. Louis is allowing Kinloch to fall apart.
The house, like many other properties, sits vacant. A yellow sign of the St. Louis Airport Authority warns against dumping or trespassing, but it is clearly ignored as rusty 55-gallon drums and soiled mattresses are scattered around the home. The airport authority and the city of St Louis own about 75 percent of the land in Kinloch, Conway said.
"We don't appreciate another city stepping in and telling us how to live," he said. "We've been betrayed and lied to."
In a statement, Leonard Griggs, director of the airport, said, "We have not seen the petition, so we cannot comment on it at this time."
Conway, who was elected last April, is eager to be the next official to take up a fight that has languished for years.
The airport authority's intentions with Kinloch, however, haven't been clandestine. In 1998, the board announced a $6 million plan to buy all but about 50 homes in the small city.
Conway estimates there are 1,200 people left there, about half of the US. Census Bureau's population estimate for Kinloch just last year.
Alderman Leonard Carter, 60, was born in Kinloch and said he wants to stay. Airport appraisers offered him $7,000 for his home and property, he said.
The buyouts began more than 20 years ago, when the two cities developed a plan called "Kinloch Tomorrow." The small city lies due east of the airport grounds. St. Louis began buying houses as part of an overall program of noise abatement in communities around Lambert.
Under the original program, St Louis bought up the southwest third of Kinloch. The airport authority knocked down homes there and cleared the land, and the 175-acre site remains airport property.
Kinloch City Attorney Al Johnson said the airport authority promised to return that land to Kinloch. Commercial development there was supposed to replace property tax revenue lost when residents left under the buyout.
That plan was the agreement 20 years ago, Johnson said, and it was the heart of the settlement in 1995.
Johnson is also new to the fight, becoming city attorney nine months ago.
"They promised us 'Kinloch Tomorrow'," he said. "They have given us 'Kinloch Never'."