Families uprooted from St. Paul’s West Side seek redress from the government

Larry Lucio remembers the day 60 years ago when he saw a bulldozer leveling his home. He was riding his bike past the house his family was given two weeks to vacate — the home where he and nine of his 11 siblings were born.

“I could see my bedroom, the TV room, a lot of the memories of our family,” he said. “It was a neighborhood where everybody took care of everybody. And then it was gone.”

On Monday, West Side residents and community leaders released a report detailing the demolition of the West Side Flats, their flood-prone but tight-knit community that was replaced by an industrial park for which the city immediately built a flood wall to protect.

Now, as expensive apartment complexes have risen near where their longtime homes were flattened, West Siders say it’s time for the city to help them become whole again. The report, compiled by Research In Action on behalf of the West Side Community Organization, recommends a number of measures government should take, including a public apology, compensation for affected families, development of affordable housing and pollution cleanup.

Monica Bravo, executive director of the West Side Community Organization, said decades of disenfranchisement followed the destruction of the Flats as residents struggled to re-create the same sense of togetherness.

In 2021, the organization began a “Stories of the Flats” project to collect the recollections of people who experienced the destruction 60 years ago. In 2022, the neighborhood organization started talking to St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter’s office about accountability and redress. In 2023, they contracted with Research In Action to study the history, cause and effects of displacement detailed in the report made public Monday.

According to the report, “Research In Action is a Black queer female-led, multiracial and gender-diverse social benefit corporation created to reclaim the power of research by centering community expertise and driving actionable solution for racial justice.”

For generations, the area called St. Paul’s West Side was home to the Dakota people. Starting in the 1850s, French, Irish and German immigrants settled on the Flats. In 1874, the area was annexed to St. Paul. In the 1880s, Russian Jews fleeing antisemitic violence began settling on the West Side. Neighborhood House was founded in 1895, first to provide training to Jewish children, then to serve a diversifying neighborhood.

Lebanese Christians, Mexicans from Texas and Syrians saw their numbers increase. The Mexican community established Our Lady of Guadalupe church in the Flats in 1931. In 1932, a major flood devastated the Flats and, again, in 1952. In 1956, the St. Paul Port Authority announced the creation of the Riverview Industrial Park, slated to be built on top of the existing West Side Flats.

In 1961, the city began buying the houses and tearing them down. In 1964, after the last family moved out of the Flats, a 3-mile-long levee, or flood wall, was built to protect the Riverview Industrial Park from floods. The park opened in 1965. According to the WSCO report, 2,147 people were displaced.

In today’s dollars, about half of the homeowners on the Flats received less than $50,000 for their home, the report states. Renters got much less, between $35 and $1,000 in today’s dollars for moving assistance, based on the size of the rental property.

Bravo said community members don’t yet have a dollar figure for the reinvestment they want. On July 18, the report will be presented to the broader West Side community for its feedback and mobilization at an event near the Robert Street Bridge, Bravo said. Several other recommendations will be made then.

Lucio, who was 10 when he saw his house demolished, was luckier than most. His family was one of the 37% of Flats residents who owned their home. They bought another home “up the bluff,” he said.

But while they worked to preserve connections through church and school, he said, it was not the same as on the Flats.

“I went to school with my cousin and then one day he just told me, ‘We’re moving,’” Lucio said. “We didn’t see each other for years after.”