What Should the Workhouse Become? St. Louis Wants Your Ideas

The former jail occupies 23 acres in north city

May 25, 2023 at 10:41 am

Danny Wicentowski

The Workhouse, also known as the Medium Security Institution.

The City of St. Louis wants to hear from the people most affected by the Workhouse as elected leaders try to figure out what to do with the now-shuttered jail and the land it sits on.

While it was open, the conditions at the Medium Security Institution — better known as the Workhouse — were called "hellish" by the activists trying to close it. In 2017, the ArchCity Defenders filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of those who had been detained there, the vast majority of whom were locked up because they lacked the money to post bond. The facility was shut down last year.

But now there's the question of what to do with the empty husk of the jail and the 23 acres it occupies in the North Riverfront neighborhood.

Inez Bordeaux is ArchCity's manager of the community collaboration and also sits on the steering committee for Reenvisioning The Workhouse, the group tasked with answering that question.

The group has planned what it's calling a "massive community engagement effort" that starts with collecting suggestions from the public about what to do with the acreage and the empty buildings that come loaded with a grim legacy.

"We want to get as many responses as possible, specifically from people who have been directly impacted by the workhouse their families, their communities, their neighborhoods," Bordeaux says. "Those are the people that we need to hear from the most."

Reenvisioning The Workhouse's survey can be taken online . You can also text or leave a voice mail with your thoughts at (314) 266-8620.‬