On March 18, 2025, just three weeks before the mayoral election, St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones stood in front of a bulldozer and announced the long-awaited demolition of the Workhouse, the city’s notorious former jail. Once a symbol of mass incarceration and racial injustice, the Workhouse had become something else in the years since its closure: a monument to mismanagement.
Since 2023 alone, the City of St. Louis has spent over $6.4 million on repairs and maintenance to a facility that sat empty since May 2022. Those repairs followed a burst pipe and asbestos contamination during the winter of 2023 that caused widespread damage. The city received an $8 million insurance payout—yet even as it cashed that check, it had no clear plan for what to do with the facility.
Image from KMOV First Watch 4 coverage
Now the city is actively demolishing the facility, awarding a $2.24 million demolition contract without a public RFP, and without a demolition permit—because, according to the city, the contractor wasn’t required to obtain one on city-owned property.
Contractors with experience in public demolitions reported never having seen a call for bids, because, as it turns out, there wasn’t one. And oddly, the company listed on the demolition equipment, T.A. Contracting, the subcontractor of the contractor awarded the contract, had been administratively dissolved the previous year for tax delinquency and not restated until later in the year. (KMOV, Mar. 18, 2025).
As reported in The St. Louis Business Journal (March 18, 2025), Environmental Operations, Inc., along with subcontractors T.A. Contracting, RJP, Gooden Plumbing, Volition Hauling, and M. Jones Enterprises, is working on the project. In lieu of a Request for Proposals, engineers at the Board of Public Service selected Environmental Operations, Inc. via “Informal” procurement, a solicitation method by which competition is not required or an emergency work award is required. The City of St. Louis solicited bids directly from bidders and circumvented the city’s own MBE/WBE requirements. The Board of Public Service President Rich Bradley and Comptroller Darlene Green approved the selection. The $2.4 million demolition contract is to be paid from funds budgeted for building repairs.
The process for declaring this an “emergency work” in December of 2024, as well as the source of the funding, has been questioned by other city leaders. This contract is to be paid with funds budgeted for building repairs, after years of maintaining and repairing the facility with millions in other city funds.
The winner of this no-bid contract, Environmental Operations, is a major cleanup firm in St. Louis, led by Stacy Hastie, who has long held ties to Missouri political leaders. The general counsel of one of his other firms, Environmental Risk Transfer, is John Diehl, a former Republican speaker of the House. Hastie and one of his other companies, U.S. Strategic Materials, announced recently their success in securing $230 million in financing for their mining, recycling, and processing operations in Fredericktown, MO, to harvest minerals needed for electric vehicle battery production.
City leaders and residents alike are justified in asking: Why invest millions in repairing a jail only to demolish it, especially with no reuse plan and no transparency? Why declare this “ emergency work” in December of 2024 and forgo a formal and transparent procurement process?
A Broken System in Plain View
Built in 1966, the Medium Security Institution (MSI), commonly known as the Workhouse, long symbolized systemic failure. It held people who were presumed innocent but couldn’t afford bail, often under inhumane conditions—extreme heat, poor sanitation, black mold, infestations, and violence (Filter, Mar. 4, 2024).
Following the 2014 killing of Michael Brown and the national awakening around criminal justice reform, a coalition of advocacy organizations launched the Close the Workhouse campaign. In 2020, a report released by the campaign revealed the Workhouse cost the city $16 million annually to operate despite a population that had dropped to just over 200 inmates. Advocates argued the city could save $11 million each year by moving detainees to the newer City Justice Center (CJC), ending federal inmate contracts, and investing in services that actually reduce incarceration (Riverfront Times, Jan. 14, 2020).
“The city of St. Louis should not be in the business of detaining its residents,” Alderwoman Cara Spencer told the Riverfront Times in 2020. “It doesn’t make sense from a moral perspective, and it doesn’t make sense from a financial perspective.” Spencer was among a group of aldermen supporting a board bill to eliminate funding for the Workhouse and redirect its budget toward addressing root causes like poverty and instability.
Millions Spent, No Plan in Sight
The Workhouse was closed in June 2021 after years of public outcry, lawsuits, and organizing. . Mayor Jones had made the jail’s closure a central campaign promise. But while people celebrated its closure in June 2021, the path forward quickly became murky. After riots at the City Justice Center (CJC), detainees were briefly returned to the Workhouse, with the final prisoner leaving in May 2022.
Screenshots from Abandoned Central’s visit to the Workhouse, Feb 23, 2023
After the Workhouse officially closed, the city did not decommission the site or provide for adequate, ongoing maintenance, as city leaders determined the next steps. As a result, pipes burst during the winter of 2023, leaving the facility flooded and unsecured. From there, urban explorers, journalists, unhoused individuals, and even kids were able to enter the complex, where sensitive inmate records, uniforms, tactical equipment, and other materials had been left behind in abandoned cells and unsecured offices Three teens were even trapped inside a cell during one such unauthorized entry (Abandoned Central, Feb. 23, 2023; Fox 2, Feb. 26, 2023; Fox 2, Dec. 7, 2023).
Re-envisioning The Workhouse Report
Despite these risks and ongoing deterioration, the city failed to secure the Workhouse site for months. Repairs continued, with blueprints on the walls, even as officials floated land reuse ideas ranging from a solar farm to a go-kart track to a homeless village—none of which progressed. Meanwhile, a city-sponsored committee spent 18 months engaging more than 2,500 residents to create a comprehensive reuse proposal. The city’s January 2024 Re-Envisioning the Workhouse Vision Report called for a memorial, a resource hub, and environmental redevelopment—but only the memorial was mentioned when demolition began (Fox 2, Apr. 29, 2024; Filter, Mar. 4, 2024).
No Oversight, No Bids, No Answers
In recent years, taxpayers have spent more than $13 million on the Workhouse—despite its closure in 2021 and its now-ongoing demolition. From 2018 to 2021, the city poured nearly $7 million into upgrades, including $1.6 million for HVAC systems, $1.7 million for a security camera system, and close to $1 million for plumbing renovations (KSDK, May 7, 2021). Additional spending went toward fencing, kitchen and laundry equipment, door repairs, and commissary wiring.
Between 2023 and 2025, the city spent another $6.4 million to repair burst pipes and make additional improvements to the already-vacant building. Now, demolition is underway at an added cost of $2.24 million.
In total, more than $15.5 million has been spent on a facility that has remained empty for nearly three years.
Back in 2023, Benjamin Singer, CEO of the public policy group Show Me Integrity, argued the city needed to either sell the property or put it to use. The city, he said, “needs to be protecting the value that the taxpayers own.” Failing to do so, he added, meant being “bad stewards of taxpayer dollars” (KMOV, Apr. 26, 2023).
Even longtime critics of the Workhouse’s existence were dismayed by how the closure was handled and how additional city funds were used to prop it up. Inez Bordeaux of ArchCity Defenders, who once spent time inside the jail, told KMOV the city had been warned not to keep investing in the facility. “There is no amount of money that makes the Workhouse livable,” she said. “We urged the city not to invest more in this.”
Image from KMOV First Watch 4 coverage
Now that the facility is being demolished, some city officials have questioned the timing and lack of transparency. Since the report was published a year ago, no concrete plans for the site have materialized other than the allocation of $100,000 for a memorial. And the mayor has refused to answer questions (KMOV, Mar. 10, 2025).
Alderwoman Pam Boyd, who represents the area, voiced frustration to KMOV, saying she was never informed about the imminent demolition.
The Real Issues Remain Unresolved
That lack of transparency extends to the City Justice Center, where 18 people have died in custody since 2020 while awaiting trial (St. Louis Public Radio, Nov. 18, 2024). The facility lacks outdoor space for detainees and has been plagued by repeated denials of access to oversight boards, attorneys, and court monitors (Missouri State Auditor, 2024; Circuit Court Order, Apr. 2024).
In that context, rushing to demolish the Workhouse after spending so much money on it, and without a plan to address overcrowding—or a comprehensive vision for justice reform—feels less like a win and more like a warning.
If Mayor Jones hoped the wrecking ball would mark the end of a painful chapter in St. Louis’s history, her administration’s handling of the facility suggests otherwise. St. Louis residents deserve more than symbolic gestures. They deserve transparency, oversight, and real policy solutions—not press events at demolition sites. Right now, all they have is rubble—and a growing tab.
