AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
A decade ago this weekend, unrest erupted on the streets of Ferguson, Miss., after a white police officer killed a Black man, 18-year-old Michael Brown Jr. When the protests turned violent, buildings and stores were burnt down along commercial strips in and around the St. Louis suburb. St. Louis Public Radio's Eric Schmid reports on the efforts to revitalize those areas.
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ERIC SCHMID, BYLINE: Thousands of vehicles travel West Florissant Avenue in Ferguson every day. Back in 2014, It was also one of the main places where people gathered to protest Michael Brown's death and where some nighttime protests turned violent.
REGGIE JONES: It was, like, unbelievable - you know, the anger people had.
SCHMID: At the time, Reggie Jones was the new mayor of Dellwood, Miss., the town right next-door to Ferguson.
JONES: I can remember coming home at night seeing folks on the street and just seeing devastation to places that once were thriving businesses, thriving gathering places.
SCHMID: Jones says, his community saw the worst of it - thirteen businesses destroyed.
JONES: It takes years to recover from that.
SCHMID: And there has been some recovery in the region. Jones says, many of the Dellwood businesses that were destroyed couldn't rebuild, but his city has managed to find new tenants for all but one of those sites. And in Ferguson, more than 100 businesses have opened up in the city since 2014. However, Ferguson Mayor Ella Jones, no relation to the Dellwood Mayor, says there needs to be more diversity in the area where Michael Brown lived.
ELLA JONES: We need a grocery store in West Florissant. We need a sit-down restaurant. It's 30,000 cars that pass West Florissant every day. We need them to stop.
SCHMID: Jones says, her No. 1 goal in the next few years is to help this corridor begin to look like other areas in her city that are bustling with entrepreneurs, restaurants and other shops. The Urban League of Metro St. Louis took some of the first steps to revitalize the strip where so much damage occurred. It built its empowerment center, which helps residents with job placement on the site of an old gas station that burned down during the protests. Michael Holmes oversees economic development for the League. He says, it was crucial to establish something the community can use.
MICHAEL HOLMES: If you don't react or do something immediately, people move on. So with the Urban League saying, we are putting our stake here, we're hoping others would do the same.
SCHMID: Holmes adds, the League also opened a new senior living facility where an auto supply store burned down and recently broke ground on a new business plaza. But still, recovery for the region is a work in progress.
IDOWU AJIBOLA: Hello.
SCHMID: Hello.
AJIBOLA: How are you?
SCHMID: Good. How are you?
AJIBOLA: I'm good.
SCHMID: Idowu Ajibola owns African Depot, a small grocery and retail store he's had along West Florissant since since 2006. And in 2014, it was damaged during the unrest.
AJIBOLA: The building was broken into. The doors were broken. The glass was broken two times at that time.
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SCHMID: These days, he says, store traffic is picking up as customers come in for African products that aren't at other grocers. Just up the road, pastors Beverly and Ken Jenkins redeveloped a strip mall, which opened last year. Beverly Jenkins says the R&R Marketplace now has resources that promote economic mobility. There's a bank, a child care facility and organizations that provide employment training and addiction recovery, along with co-working space.
BEVERLY JENKINS: These were the opportunities that we felt like were missing, spaces that our community was traveling to or utilizing in other neighborhoods or other communities.
SCHMID: She says, the death of Michael Brown and the protests that followed highlighted the economic disparities in the area and what's needed to address them.
JENKINS: That was not just the catalyst for beginning to change. The change was already coming. But I believe that people were just already tired, and I think that was just, like, that moment of, like, we're going to get moving even faster now.
SCHMID: And that's the resolve of a community that continues its work to rebound 10 years after a fatal shooting and protests brought nationwide attention to a small Missouri City. For NPR News, I'm Eric Schmid in Ferguson. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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