DELLWOOD, Mo. – The Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis is set to break ground Friday on a major new shopping center in Dellwood.
The new project will be located on the 9800 block of West Florissant Avenue and is set to transform a vacant lot into a multimillion-dollar shopping center.
Tenants for the new plaza so far include First Bank, Sweetie Pie’s restaurant, Proficient Chiropractic, Save Our Sisters, At-Home Care and a Community Conference Center. There will also be an incubator and additional retail space.
This will be the Urban League’s fourth project in this area. All of them are designed to help revitalize the West Florissant Avenue corridor, which was where much of the unrest happened after the shooting of Michael Brown in 2014.
Urban League officials tell the St. Louis Post Dispatch that the center could be open by next summer. The price tag for the project is expected to be around $8.5 million.
Friday’s big announcement comes on the ten-year anniversary of the deadly shooting of Michael Brown.
Brown was 18 years old when Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed him following a confrontation with Wilson close to a Ferguson apartment complex.
A great deal of unrest followed the deadly shooting. Multiple businesses were looted and set on fire and there were many confrontations between police and protesters.
The unrest continued for quite some time and drew a large law enforcement and community response. Wilson was not charged in connection with the shooting of Brown.
The groundbreaking is set for 1 p.m. on Friday afternoon.
