ST. LOUIS – St. Louis City is finalizing plans on a six-month lease of a 140,000-square-foot warehouse to store large donations and supplies for tornado recovery efforts, Mayor Cara Spencer said Monday.
“We’re very, very pleased that this will be a hub site that will allow us to receive very large-scale donations and then to distribute them to the smaller hubs throughout the community. That will really act as the point of contact for the community who is going to need these resources,” Spencer said.
The mayor provided updates on the immediate and long-term plans of the tornado recovery during a news conference Monday. She also announced that the city is planning on using $5 million of ARPA funds for the tornado recovery.
“We’ve obligated all of those funds at the end of last year. So, making sure that we are in full compliance and not changing anything of the allocations but rather working within those to ensure that we are targeting here the folks that were impacted by the tornado is really the goal,” Spencer said.
The mayor said the city identified other funds they are potentially looking to use for the recovery, including Rams settlement money.
“When it comes to Rams funds, you’ll see a proposal this week going to the Board of Aldermen that should get us through the summer. This is a very, very long recovery process and we want to be very thoughtful and deliberative in how we deploy the funds that are going to be required,” she said.
Spencer did not release specifics but said the Board of Alderman is looking into how they can legally spend the funds.