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ST. LOUIS - A crash shut down eastbound 64 at 270 near Town and Country for a time early Wednesday morning. MoDOT completely shut down the eastbound direction of 64 in order to work on clearing that crash. The crash happened at 5:41 a.m. Starting at about 6 a.m., some traffic was able to get [...]

GRANITE CITY - Granite City School District Superintendent Stephanie Cann issued information to families and the public late Tuesday about the upcoming winter storm. Cann said: "Dear GCSD9 Families, The National Weather Service has issued a Winter Storm Warning for our surrounding area. Severe conditions, including potential snowfall of between 6” and 13”, may make road conditions hazardous. "For this reason, Granite City Community Unit School District #9 will NOT hold in-person learning on Wednesday, February 2, 2022. Students and teachers will have an E-Learning Day . All sports and extracurricular activities are canceled. "Please refer to the E-Learning Student Expectations on the GCSD9 website for detailed information. Thank you and be safe."

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New York wants clean energy to benefit “disadvantaged communities.” First it had to define them.

ST. LOUIS - MetroLink has stopped transportation between multiple stations Wednesday morning due to the weather. It is not operating between Lambert Airport and UMSL South MetroLink Stations in Missouri, and it is not operating between Emerson Park and Shiloh-Scott MetroLink Stations in Illinois. This decision comes as there is ice accumulation on the overhead [...]

ALTON - Barb Evans has earned the Alton Memorial Hospital February Employee of the Month honor. Barb, (center, holding plaque) , is a member of Alton Memorial Hospital’s Respiratory Therapy department. She received the award Tuesday from her manager, Penny Krause, left, and AMH President Dave Braasch. Barb’s nomination was anonymous and indicated that the entire RT team is excellent. “There is not one therapist who should be singled out more than another,” the nomination read. “However, Barb Evans stands out. Her service excellence is apparent in her day-to-day actions in providing excellent care to ALL of our patients. "Barb not only provides excellent care to her patients, she supports new staff members in their onboarding, is a go-to resource for all departments when questions arise regarding RT care, precepts RT students and picks up countless additional hours to assist in meeting the needs of the department.”

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A pair of discontinued Red Wings has spurred the latest hypebeast craze.

HIGHLAND - Highland High School and the surrounding area are in mourning Monday after freshman student Jarron Haberer died in a tragic car accident on January 29, 2022. At 10:29 p.m. on Saturday, the Clinton County Sheriff’s Office received a report of a crash on Sportsman Road just north of Rutz Road. The Clinton County Sheriff's Office said Haberer was ejected from the vehicle in a “rollover type crash.” He later died at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Breese. Highland Principal Dr. Chris Becker wrote this statement to HHS students, faculty and family: Dear HHS Students, Faculty, and Families, "It is with a heavy heart I share with our community that this weekend Highland High School lost a member of our school family," Dr. Becker said. "Jarron Haberer, a freshman, was involved in a tragic car accident that took his life. Our thoughts and prayers are with Jarron’s family during this difficult time. To honor Jarron, we are asking students and staff to

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ST. LOUIS - A fatal single-car crash happened early Wednesday morning in south St. Louis. Police said one man died at 2:51 a.m. when his car struck a tree located at Chippewa Street and Marine Avenue. The man was pronounced dead at the scene. FOX 2's Nissan Rogue Runner reporter Jason Maxwell was at the [...]

In Phoenix, a new heat office hopes to prevent more people from dying of extreme heat.

A storm system is expected to bring ice and heavy snow to the St. Louis region Wednesday morning (February 2, 2022).

In 2020, during the height of the pandemic lockdown, Maleah Ingoldsby entered a neighborhood baking contest, not sure what to expect, or even what she would bake. To her surprise, she won, spurring her to consider whether or not she might make a go of her baking passion.…

Graham Nash, the British singer/songwriter who has made his mark on the music world with The Hollies, Crosby, Stills & Nash and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, as well as…

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How the unsustainable growth of the container ship industry led to the supply chain crisis

Controlling market power is an integral tool to deal with rising costs.

The candidate for the Supreme Court vacancy has a history of tough-on-crime sentences and opinions that higher courts subsequently tossed out.

by Anjeanette Damon

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

For more than five years, the mayor of Reno, Nevada, has supported the demolition of dozens of dilapidated motels that provided shelter for thousands of residents squeezed by the city’s housing crisis, rather than rehabilitate the buildings to provide affordable housing. Now she’s changing course.

Mayor Hillary Schieve is proposing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire and rehabilitate motels in downtown through the Reno Housing Authority. In fact, the agency has already moved quietly to buy two shuttered buildings. Last week, the agency submitted an offer to buy the Bonanza Inn, a closed 58-unit motel with a history of code violations that is now part of an estate sale. It also submitted a letter of intent to make an offer on a much larger property — the 19-story former Sundowner casino-hotel.

Details of the offers — the prices, contingencies and financing — are not public. The RHA’s board of commissioners discussed the offers last month in a series of closed-door meetings allowed under an exemption in the state’s open meeting law. An RHA spokesperson said the agency has enough funds to purchase the Bonanza Inn but would need to secure financing for the Sundowner purchase. An early estimate by the RHA indicated it would cost $22 million to buy both properties and up to $50 million to rehab the buildings.

The purchases would be the beginning of a broader effort to increase affordable housing in the region, Schieve said. She supports using part of the city’s share of federal stimulus money from the American Rescue Plan Act and would like to see the state, the county and the neighboring city of Sparks chip in money, as they do for other regional projects such as Reno’s homeless shelter. Schieve also wants to explore whether the housing authority can use its existing housing stock as collateral for bonds to help finance more affordable housing. She’d like to borrow at least $200 million. She didn’t provide details on her plans for the additional funding.

“We have a real opportunity when it comes to workforce and affordable housing,” Schieve said.

The city’s about-face follows a ProPublica investigation that found Reno did little to deter the demolition of similar motels that housed some of the city’s most vulnerable residents. Nor did the city provide any incentives for landowners to replace that housing. One developer, casino-owner Jeff Jacobs, has been responsible for most of the motel demolitions, razing nearly 600 housing units since 2017. Schieve and other council members posed for photos during some of those demolitions, celebrating the elimination of what they said were blighted properties to make way for a proposed entertainment district.

After widespread criticism of the demolitions, Jacobs recently announced he would be willing to donate up to $15 million in land for an affordable housing and public parking project. The donation would be contingent on the housing authority financing the project and the city acquiring additional land, he said.

Jacobs has been assembling more than 100 parcels in downtown Reno for what he describes as a $1.8 billion entertainment district that would include hotels, restaurants and an amphitheater. He said the motels he demolished were slums that couldn’t be remodeled and said he provided relocation assistance to most of the people who lived in them.

The property sought by the Reno Housing Authority sits within Jacobs’ proposed district, directly across from his signature casino, the Sands Regency. In fact, the agency’s letter of intent on the Sundowner includes a vacant parcel on a block primarily owned by Jacobs.

The Sundowner has been vacant since 2003. The Bonanza Inn, however, was only recently listed for sale following the death of its owner. Her son told the Reno Gazette Journal that the estate was forced to sell the motel, which had been vacant for more than a year, following aggressive code enforcement efforts by the city. His family couldn’t afford to make the required repairs, he told the newspaper. The property had been cited multiple times for code violations since 2012, according to public records.

In an interview with ProPublica, Schieve reiterated that she doesn’t think “slumlords should be landlords,” but also said she doesn’t favor wholesale demolition of the hotels.

“If you can rehab something, then that’s great, obviously, and if it makes sense to,” Schieve said. “I honestly believe in saving everything you can.”

She added, “I’m not like, ‘Let’s demolish everything.’ That’s not who I am.” Rather, she said, she doesn’t believe people should be forced to live in terrible conditions.

This is the city’s first attempt, however, at preserving such buildings. In addition to supporting Jacobs’ razing of mostly squalid motels, the city used its blight fund in 2016 to finance the demolition of two vacant motels despite pleas from the community to preserve them as housing.

Schieve said the city hasn’t had the financial resources to buy and rehab motels for housing. Federal stimulus money has now made it possible to pursue such acquisitions, she said.

“It’s tough to build it. It’s expensive,” she said. “With the ARPA funds, it really gives us a foot in the door.”