A vacant Family Dollar store that has sat empty since 2022 at the corner of Virginia Avenue in South St. Louis is about to become the anchor of a 78-unit housing development. The project, known as Virginia Plaza, sits at the intersection of the Dutchtown, Carondelet and Mount Pleasant neighborhoods, and developers have already started work on the site.
The project carries a total estimated budget of $25 million, according to First Alert 4, and combines new infill construction with historic rehabilitations spread across several South City parcels. The nonprofit developer behind the effort, DeSales Community Development, designed the plan to pair newly built residential structures with restored historic multi-family homes, per NextSTL.
Of the 78 planned housing units, 70 are designated as low-income affordable housing, with 12 reserved for households earning up to 30% of the Area Median Income and 58 for households at 60% AMI. The remaining eight units will rent at market rates, and the same report notes the developer has committed to maintaining those affordability caps for 30 years.
Replacing a Blighted Corner Store
The primary new construction site, at 5300 Virginia Avenue, replaces the vacant retail building that formerly housed the Family Dollar, which closed in 2022 and became a blighted eyesore at a prominent South City intersection, according to CityScene STL. The former retail lot is slated to host a two-story mixed-use building with 24 apartments and ground-floor commercial space.
Beyond that new construction, the project's footprint extends across several nearby residential streets. It encompasses historic rehabilitations of existing apartment buildings at 5333 and 5401 Virginia Avenue, six two-family structures on the 5300 block of South Compton Avenue, and two sets of new townhomes, the outlet notes. Two of the parcels included in the development were acquired from the city's Land Reutilization Authority inventory.
Playgrounds, Live-Work Units and Community Space
Architectural plans for Virginia Plaza go beyond housing alone. They include more than 2,500 square feet of commercial space, live-work units along Virginia Avenue, a new neighborhood playground, and dedicated interior and exterior community gathering spaces, according to the article notes, per the developer's project page hosted by The Oakland Group LLC. Naismith-Allen Inc. is serving as project architect, with Roanoke Construction as general contractor and Fox Grove Management handling property management once units are ready for tenants.
DeSales Community Development, the project's developer, was founded in 1976 by residents seeking to stop urban decline in Fox Park and Tower Grove East. Its property management affiliate, Fox Grove Management, now manages more than 1,600 housing units across the St. Louis region, according to background from the City of St. Louis. DeSales has previously been named among the city-backed nonprofits awarded municipal funding for rental housing production, as Hoodline reported in its tornado recovery coverage earlier this year.
Public Financing Behind the Project
Public subsidies funding Virginia Plaza include $2.5 million in state and federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credits from the Missouri Housing Development Commission, $2.7 million in federal HOME grants, and $500,000 from the St. Louis Community Development Administration, per NextSTL's reporting. In November 2023, the city's Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority recommended a 15-year real estate tax abatement for the project, structured as 90% property tax abatement for 10 years followed by 50% abatement for five years.
Virginia Plaza also received funding under the St. Louis Community Development Administration's 2024 Neighborhood Transformation Grants, which awarded $17.5 million to 22 citywide projects to leverage more than $250 million in total investment, according to the City of St. Louis. The city's total affordable housing development pipeline has expanded to over 3,500 units under development since 2022, representing more than $800 million in total construction value.
Part of a Broader South City Push
Virginia Plaza is not an isolated initiative. CityScene STL reports that it complements nearby South City housing investments, including Lutheran Development Group's Marquette Homes development, which is redeveloping and constructing housing several blocks north in the Dutchtown and Gravois Park neighborhoods. Both projects rely on Low-Income Housing Tax Credits and municipal CDA funding to target long-standing disinvestment along the corridor.
Open questions remain around the project, including which specific local businesses will lease the more than 2,500 square feet of commercial space and the exact schedule for resident pre-leasing. It's also unclear how the added commercial activity along Virginia Avenue will interface with ongoing public safety and infrastructure efforts in the area, after Hoodline reported on a shootout near a Dutchtown bar just days ago that wounded three people along the same street.
