ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - Kevin Bryant jokingly calls it "The Mason-Dixon Line."
"On the south side of Delmar, you have one of the highest valued census tracts in St. Louis and on the north side, you had, at one point, one of the lowest," said Bryant to KMOX's Debbie Monterrey on Total Information A.M. "People don't realize is prior to that, it was one area that was the Central West End."
"What happened was about 40 years ago, there was a plan to intentionally disinvest in that part of the street because it was one of the first neighborhoods to be integrated. We didn't know that at the time. We just knew there was a vast difference in one side of the street and the other."
Bryant of Kingsway Development is redeveloping about 200 acres just north of the Delmar Divide.
"There's really no place to go but north," said Bryant. "It's hard to find continuous patches of land to develop where you can create a plan and see it through. We got very lucky in that Fountain Park was so disinvested for so long, there were stretches of land where we can just connect projects."
His project is part of a renaissance stretching to the Delmar Loop.
"We saw the vacancy as opportunity because now we can stream together blocks and present whole new homes without having to displace anyone," said Bryant.
First, he has to deal with the crime, which he says is now way down in that neighborhood.
"Fountain Park was one of the highest crime-ridden neighborhoods in St. Louis," said Bryant. "We reduced crime by 82%, which allows people to now see that as a viable location to consider buying houses."
Bryant says right now the status of the project is finally at construction and they are finally at a point where "they can make an argument this is a place to consider buying homes."
"We have sold four homes so far, our larger office building project will be done in December and opened in February," said Bryant. "From there, we can start focusing on the infrastructure of Delmar, improving the streets, the traffic the lights."
"Our largest project, the apartment buildings, will hopefully begin construction in February. We're finally at a point where we can now start to see the sprouting of what we invested in."