On a stretch of West Florissant Avenue that had gotten used to dark windows and empty parking lots, a former Schnucks strip mall is back in the game. The once-vacant plaza in Dellwood has been reborn as R&R Marketplace, a roughly $20 million, 90,000-square-foot community hub driven by pastors Ken and Beverly Jenkins.
The first phase quietly swung open in fall 2023 after years of planning and fundraising. Where residents once had little more than vacancies and fringe lenders, there is now child care, job training and health services under one roof. Organizers pitched the project as a $20 million, 90,000-square-foot economic hub meant to restore basic services close to home and help people move up, not just get by. As reported by St. Louis Public Radio, the Marketplace is designed to knit together services that help residents find work, build savings and get treatment without leaving North County.
Pulling it off took a complicated financing puzzle. A $13 million New Markets Tax Credit allocation helped close the deal and bring in partners, according to Smith NMTC Associates. Project leaders say that tax-credit equity, mission-focused lenders and donor support all had to line up to make the phased redevelopment possible.
What's Inside the Marketplace
Instead of a half-empty parking lot, the site now houses a mix of tenants and programs aimed squarely at everyday needs. Inside R&R Marketplace are Employ St. Louis, the North County Innovation Center co-working space, Brilliant Angels Academy early learning, a Midwest BankCentre branch and Cathy's Kitchen ToGo, among others.
The plaza also added a nonprofit pharmacy and an addiction-treatment clinic that provide low-cost or no-cost prescriptions and behavioral health care, according to the St. Louis American. For a corridor that had watched core services drift farther away, it is a notable reversal.
Career Training and Personal Stories
Workforce development sits at the center of the Marketplace's five-pillar model. The team runs short training cohorts that blend soft-skills coaching with hands-on placement support, trying to move graduates into steady jobs rather than one-off paychecks.
One participant, Kendric Johnson, told First Alert 4 that after completing the program she received three raises in about two years and ultimately hit a six-figure salary goal. It is the kind of personal story organizers point to when they argue the model can change a household's trajectory, not just pad a résumé.
Financing and Partners
Behind the scenes, the capital stack was anything but simple. Project documents show a layered structure that brought in Heartland Regional Investment Fund and U.S. Bancorp Community Development Corporation, along with local lenders and Midwest BankCentre, according to Smith NMTC Associates.
On the development side, Summit Real Estate Group handled site acquisition and early construction work after a 2021 groundbreaking, per Summit Real Estate Group. The goal was to turn a struggling retail strip into something closer to a neighborhood engine.
Why It Matters Locally
Local officials and residents had long seen the old Schnucks plaza as a symbol of what had gone missing along West Florissant. The Marketplace is framed as a deliberate effort to replace that lost economic anchor and push back against a pattern of vacancy and high-cost lenders filling the gaps.
Regional business coverage has tied the project to a broader push to restore services and jobs along the corridor. The community-driven planning and emphasis on long-term stability and employment have been central to that narrative, with the St. Louis Business Journal highlighting R&R Marketplace as part of a wave of reinvestment efforts in North County.
Looking Ahead
The first phase is not the finish line. Organizers are already talking about a second phase that would add a larger community multiplex, more space for programming and an expanded church presence on site. Backers project that those additions would bring more jobs over the coming years.
Public listings and New Markets Tax Credit tracking materials outline plans for additional square footage, tenant recruitment and long-term sustainability goals as the Marketplace seeks more partners, according to the NMTC Coalition. For a plaza that once sat idle, the to-do list is long, which in this case is exactly the point.
