11.07.25
North County Community Nexus, Bellefontaine Neighbors in  St. Louis County
Conversation with Danya Gerasimova

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Dr. Erica Williams is the founder of A Red Circle, a nonprofit promoting community betterment in North St. Louis County through a racial equity lens. A Red Circle operates community gardens, farmers markets, and other food justice programs in the Riverview and Bellefontaine Neighbors communities near Cementland.

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Danya:

Could you tell me about A Red Circle and how you started it? 

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Dr. Erica Williams:

I started A Red Circle in 2017. We work to address racial disparities here in North St. Louis County. At first, we were going to deal with a lot more systemic issues, like the high number of payday loan places and dialysis centers spread throughout our region, or having the felony box on job applications. At the same time, we were going to talk to people who live in our region about financial empowerment and nutritional health so that they don't have to rely on those payday loans and kidney treatment places. But we realized early on that those industries have very large lobbies both at the state level and federally, and on both sides of the political aisle. It wasn't just a political party, it was money.

So we brought our work from outward systemic change to more hyper-local, people focused change, with our systemic work being focused on the food system. We began to teach about nutrition, grow food, and work with other farmers and growers to get more food out into the community, distribute it, and cook it. And now we are in the process of turning the space that we are sitting in now, the North County Community Nexus [in Bellefontaine Neighbors], into a community driven grocery store. It will have a grocery store, a healthy food bistro, and a kitchen for a food co-op where members can make products like seasoning, salads, etc.

Outside of that food system work, we still do things in education, getting kids resources that they need for literacy and success in school. We also do things in the art space. We want to make sure that we're hitting all three points: community wellness, education, and arts.

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Danya:

Could you talk more about the issues your food system work is addressing in North County? 

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Dr. Erica Williams:

We are trying to overcome the huge amount of unhealthy food choices that are available. It's really challenging to get your body and your brain healthy. Not just relying on medication, but actual wellness, feeding your body nutrients. It's really tough to maintain a healthy diet because there is a lot of grease, a lot of fat, a lot of salt, and a lot of sugar in our region. We're trying to overcome that through not only growing the food, but also getting it out, teaching about it, and making recipes with it so that people feel comfortable with healthy food. 

For years, healthy food was weaponized, and it was only available in affluent areas and to a certain demographic—and it was not North County. So now, we're trying to make sure that everyone knows that they belong in the healthy food system, that there is not a negative connotation to eating healthy for us as Black people. We can grow food; we don't have to think about the times when our ancestors were slaves and they had to grow food for others. We could think about the time before slavery, when we were in Africa and still growing food, and taking care of each other and the community. That's what we're trying to get back to.

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Danya:

As part of Cementland Archive, we've been looking into the history of pollution from the Missouri Portland Cement factory in this area. We were able to get in touch with former residents of Riverview and Bellefontaine Neighbors who witnessed the factory while it was active in the 1960s and 1970s. Most of the former residents we were able to get in touch with are white, most of their families left the neighborhood between the '80s and the '00s, and many of them mention the neighborhood "going downhill" and businesses closing. What's your perspective on how this history of white flight relates to the present issues A Red Circle is addressing in North County?

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Dr. Erica Williams:

I grew up in North County, and I won't date myself, but when I graduated high school we had one Black cheerleader on the cheerleading squad. All the rest were white. And one thing about this change of demographics is that when people leave, they take the resources that they have with them. They leave open room for others to move in, but the new people don't always bring the same resources that the other people took out. Some of the people who moved away still owned their homes, and they allowed their homes to be rented. Other people who left the region owned businesses and employed people. So when they left, they uprooted their business to wherever they were going, and that took away those jobs. It also took away the tax revenue that those jobs were bringing into the region. So it really left an economic dent within resources.

Across the street from [the Bellefontaine Neighbors coffee shop] Koffee Ko, there is an empty Shop 'n Save. That was a big grocery store, it employed a lot of people, and it took in a lot of money. And it's just sitting vacant now. The space that we are in now was recently occupied, but the other space in this complex has been vacant since the '90s. Think about the people who were coming here working, shopping, going to restaurants, spending money, and flowing the dollars into the region—when that closed, they left, and nothing has happened. 

When healthy food leaves, it opens up the door for your dollar stores, your liquor stores. And we can't fight that. We are a small organization, and like I mentioned earlier, those groups that are preying on our population have very large lobbies. But what we can do is talk to the people. We can talk to families, and go to schools, and educate about eating healthy, so that we become a market for healthy food—and not for the liquor stores and the dollar stores, so that they no longer look to this region as somewhere they can make a quick buck.

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Danya:

How is A Red Circle facing the current moment, with federal grants in jeopardy on one hand and a heightened food access emergency stemming from the loss of SNAP benefits on the other?

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Dr. Erica Williams:

We were impacted by the federal grants issue. We are a majority Black and woman led organization, and they decided to weaponize the terms "DEI." Even just the two of us sitting here is diversity; we're both different from each other. But they decided to make that a bad thing. So they looked at funding applications and decided, "They don't need funding cause they're talking about race." Even though everyone deserves to enjoy good, healthy, and nutritious food.

We're also impacted by the focus of donors right now. Because of the crazy things that are happening in DC, we have to cut through the noise of advocacy against ICE raids and things like that. Not at all to say that those aren't worthwhile causes, but when people's priorities shift, their dollars shift. As we're trying to improve the health of our community and make sure people are fed, we have to help people see our work as a still valuable place to invest, to donate to.

I know we're going to be doing one food giveaway for the SNAP victims this coming Monday at a restaurant not too far from here. The owner is going to provide hot meals from a restaurant, and we're going to provide groceries and farm fresh produce that we're picking from our farms for the end of the harvest. Two of our farmers are getting everything they can picked so that we can have that to give out on Monday.

We're watching the news, and the judges are ordering Trump to fully fund SNAP. We'll see if he does it. And if he doesn't, maybe we'll come up with a second giveaway. But we're also getting the word out for other giveaways that are happening. St. Louis County has been doing food trucks, and Aldi is doing a Thanksgiving special. We're being a good collaborator and a good neighbor.

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Danya:

Are there projects you had to put on hold because of the funding issues?

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Dr. Erica Williams:

One of the biggest was a grant through the EPA to do some greenscaping elements on our parking lot [here at the North County Community Nexus]. This parking lot has a lot of pavement, and there're not a lot of places for storm water runoff. There also aren't a lot of trees out here, so it gets really hot. We wanted to not only do that work on the parking lot, but also to educate the community. We were going to partner with Black Girls Do STEM and bring the girls over so that they can see what happens when you put in greenscaping and rain gardens.

We are still going to be able to get a pollinator garden at our farmhouse in Pine Lawn though. I'm super excited about that, because if you want to grow successful food, you have to have a successful climate. You have to have nutritious soil and you have to have pollinators.

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Danya:

How can folks support your work right now?

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Dr. Erica Williams:

Donate at aredcircle.org. There will be future volunteer opportunities too. We're closing down the gardens for the winter. We're going to plant garlic, onions, and overwinter crops, and then be done until spring. But we'll have a garden volunteer week in March of 2026. 

Support our work, follow us on social media, and send our work to your friends, families, colleagues. And just continue to champion good food. Don't stop championing the other things that need to be championed, but add good food to your list.

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Danya:

Can you talk about the Healthy Flavor Community Garden in Riverview?

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Dr. Erica Williams:

We have the Healthy Flavor Community Garden and a Healthy Community Market that runs May through October at the same site.

A college intern and I were canvassing in 2018 or '19 to find out where the community got their food and what they thought about the food offerings in North County. We learned through some research that the zip code 63137 had two grocery stores, a Ruler Foods and an Aldi. And they were on either end of the zip code region. So the people who lived where our garden is didn't have access to a lot of good, healthy food unless they had cars. We walked around and noticed one convenience store, a junk food store. We asked people where else they got their food. And they were like, "Eh, when we can, we go somewhere, but it would be nice to have a farmer's market or a garden here."

While we were canvassing, we met the pastor of the Zion Travelers Missionary Baptist Church, Rev. Dr. Linden Bowie. And he said, “Well, I got the perfect spot for you to do your project.” He showed me where the garden is now. It was just completely empty grass. Those circle beds and the pavilion was there. We set up our market in 2019, and it went over really, really well.

Then 2020 happened, and we didn't know what to do with ourselves. We didn't do the market that year, but we thought, "Hmm, this would be a nice space for a garden though." So we planted the garden there in September of 2020, and it just flourished. It's some beautiful soil over there, probably because it's close to the river. We didn't have to do a lot of soil amendments at all. The stuff grows really, really well.

We call it the Healthy Flavor Community Garden because we know that there is a myth that healthy food is not flavorful, that you have to eat bland if you're going to eat healthy. And we were like, "No, you don't have to eat bland. You can add fresh herbs, and garlic, and onion, and tomatoes, and other things to your meals to make them tasty." 

And then the Healthy Community Market is our once a month affordable farmers market, where we provide food from that garden, from our farm space up in Pine Lawn, and from other farmers if they have food for us to provide, as well as resources and a cooking demo. And when we can, we add some exercise and fitness things to make it fun.

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Danya:

What do you grow in the garden?

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Dr. Erica Williams:

Cucumbers, tomatoes, leafy greens like kale, collard, Swiss chard, bok choy, salad greens. All kinds of herbs too: oregano, thyme, lemongrass. We have a tiny pollinator garden over there, so we have some native flowers. We have peach trees, apple trees, and pear trees over there too. We have some blackberry bushes, asparagus, lavender—all kinds of stuff. We plant flowers like marigolds to keep pests away. We don't use any harsh chemicals in any of our growing spaces, we grow just how the good Lord intended: sunshine, good soil, water, and nutrition—fish guts.

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Danya:

Is pollution a concern in your urban farming practices? Particularly in Riverview, where so much pollution from extractive industries had occurred over the years, and where nearby trucking businesses are burning diesel all the time?

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Dr. Erica Williams:

Great Rivers Greenway were going to install some air monitoring boxes for us, first at the Pine Lawn farm and then possibly at the Riverview garden. They never got around to that. I don't know if they lost the funding for that, cause that's par for the course right now. But thankfully, even though we are on Chambers Rd and we do see the trucks run by, things that grow in the ground and away from the street don't get as much impact. And if we do any kind of samples, we are very good about washing the produce.

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Danya:

Is there any sort of soil testing you have to do working in urban environments?

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Dr. Erica Williams:

Yeah, you should definitely soil test. One, you want to soil test for contaminants. You never know what was there before. And then you want to soil test for nutrients to see if you need to amend the soil so that your food can grow well. Thankfully, our soil testing came back great.

That's one of those due diligence things that you want to do anywhere you want to grow, because you never know what was there before. In Pine Lawn, the space where we're growing had houses, and when the houses got torn down, they got buried. And as we're digging to make the room for garden beds, we are also finding items. So we had to do a lot of soil testing.

We also brought in fresh soil and fresh compost to grow on top of the ground. That's a good way that you can still grow safely without having to disturb the earth too much. We have a low till, but the soil test is still very important if you're going to till the ground up.

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Danya:

Do Riverview residents tend the Healthy Flavor Garden or is it just the visiting employees of A Red Circle?

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Dr. Erica Williams:

It's a mix. We do have someone who is employed by A Red Circle who manages the garden, making sure we have all the right seeds and tools. And then we invite neighbors to garden with us. Sometimes they come over to volunteer, but it's not like this is your bed and you can only eat from this bed. We grow all the food for everyone.

What's neat about the space is there's a bus stop right outside of the garden. So sometimes when people are waiting for the bus, we get to provide them with freshly picked produce to take home or to work with them. And then we also get volunteers from all over the region. We get church groups and college groups. We get out of town groups too.

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Danya:

Do you ever come down there yourself?

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Dr. Erica Williams:

I used to do it more often. I don't get a chance to as much anymore. I'm hoping next season to get back there at least once a month. I enjoy growing food, putting my stamp of approval on what's happening, and talking to the plants, thanking them for their bounty that they're going to give us. I just had a lot of administrative stuff to do this year, so I kept in touch with the gardener, and he sent me pictures all the time.

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Danya:

Were there any challenges you faced developing the garden?

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Dr. Erica Williams:

Not so much developing that garden. This garden [at the North County Community Nexus], yes. We're at a crossover between Jennings and Bellefontaine Neighbors. Jennings was like, "Yay, garden!" And Bellefontaine Neighbors was like "Garden? Blegh."

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Danya:

Like the local government?

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Dr. Erica Williams:

Yeah, they tried… But they were unsuccessful, and we were able to get it up and running and growing. And people were happy and excited about the food that we were providing to the community.

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Danya:

What was their issue?

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Dr. Erica Williams:

That's a great question. They said part of it was safety, because it is a dangerous intersection. But we made sure that we grew things low and not in the line of sight for people. And some of it was just petty personal stuff. 

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Danya:

And you didn't have to interact with Riverview government that much?

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Dr. Erica Williams:

I did not, because the space is owned by the church. We would go over to the Riverview City Council meetings sometimes just to keep them informed on what's happening, make sure the mayor knows who we are. It is an interesting dynamic between governments and nonprofits, which I'm learning. I did not realize there are a lot of government officials that want to be the heroes, and if they are not the heroes, they aren't super excited about nonprofit groups coming in and doing things that they want credit for. So there's a lot of ego massaging that we have to do because we want the government and the citizens to be in favor of the work we're doing. Because the work that we're doing is great, and we don't want to make enemies of anyone because they feel like we're usurping their glory.

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Danya:

Can you talk more about the North County Community Nexus in Bellefontaine Neighbors? What's your vision, and what was the history of this project?

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Dr. Erica Williams:

This property was built in 1950, and at the time, it actually had a grocery store. It was called Bettendorf. Then the grocery store closed, and a hardware store came in. Then it closed too, and the building sat vacant for a little while until a church came in. The church has since left, and it became vacant again until we bought it.

A Red Circle purchased the property in 2023. Between both buildings and the surrounding parking lot, this space is 44,000 sq ft. We knew the big picture of what we wanted to see here. We had a Good Food Summit back in 2021, and the overarching response from the community was, "No more liquor stores, no more food pantries. We want a store. We want a place where we can go and pick out our own food, get jobs for our youth, and get workforce development."

We talked to a few already existing grocery stores about coming into the space, and they all said, "No, this is not our demographic." We said, "Fine, we can do it ourselves." 

So we are going to open People's Harvest. It's already up and running as a business. We did popups in the parking lot over the summer, but we'll do a grocery store and a healthy food bistro called Bistro on the Boulevard, where we'll offer soup, salad sandwiches, wraps—very flavorful, healthy items for the community. And this space we're sitting in will be a production kitchen that we can do some teaching out of and some sharing with the food co-op members to make their own products.

Further up from us, we'll expand the grocery store to add in more service elements like a bakery, a produce stand, a seafood stand, a juicer, and maybe grab and go meals. That way, people can have the full grocery experience right here in Bellefontaine Neighbors. 

Further up from that space, there's going to be a performance hall put in the old church space. We're going to turn what was the church sanctuary into the auditorium so that we can have music, dancing, and plays for the community.

In the lower level of this space, there's a whole storefront with its own set of entrances. The middle of the storefront would be the Learning and Opportunity Center. That would be space for people to come and learn, get opportunities to do things, whether it's learning about nutrition, credit, home buying, estate planning, or making items like lotions and soaps. And then the other spaces will be available for small businesses that are health, wellness, and education focused to lease.

The building next to us will be A Red Circle's administrative headquarters and a conference room center for the community to have a meeting, do a podcast, anything like that.

So that is the North County Community Nexus. Of course, I need like $10 million right now! But I'm working towards it. I've raised a little bit over $3 million so far.

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Danya:

Can you talk more about your community engagement process and developing relationships with community partners?

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Dr. Erica Williams:

On one of our canvassing days, we posted up at the firehouse, gave out bowls of freshly made beef stew, talked to people, and got their input about food. Where did they get their food? Did they like the food offerings?

We've done stuff in this space before. We've done stuff at our farmhouse. There was a Pasta House restaurant up on West Florissant where we were able to do some focus groups. We sent out some surveys through Google Forms. And then we did a proof of concept, where we just started selling food and getting people's reaction to the food that we were selling and the prices. We learned that we were doing the right thing. Every time we would do a popup, we would get more and more traffic, and more and more people would come up to learn about us.

And we're very big on partnering. We don't try to just do stuff by ourselves. So that's why we partner with Zion Travelers. One of the things we learned about Zion Travelers is they offer a food pantry every week on Wednesdays, and then on Saturdays they do their big food pantry. That's why we did our Healthy Community Market there on Saturdays: so that when they're doing their big pantry, people can come to us too and get their fresh produce. That just makes it more community focused.

Sometimes people from Riverview walk, so we have to walk back to people's houses carrying the bags of stuff for them. Sometimes people carpool, so we give out two bags of things instead of just one bag. We are big on listening to the community and doing what the community wants us to do as best we can. I live in North County, and most of us live in North County, but we have cars. We can go where we need to go to get food. So we didn't want to just show up telling them what they needed. We wanted to work with the people so that we can help enhance the food system with everyone.

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Danya:

Does A Red Circle have any partnerships across the City/County lines? 

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Dr. Erica Williams:

A Red Circle does not have any City/County agreements, but we're always looking for groups to collaborate with. Since we're right on the border of St. Louis City, you can get to Baden hop skip and a jump from the garden. If there are groups in the City that want to collaborate with us, we would totally welcome that.

There is a garden group that we sometimes work with, but we don't have anything official. We were going to reach out to one of the Alderwomen in the City, but that just hasn't happened yet. When bigger issues are happening, making time for those types of connections can be tough.

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Danya:

Have you interacted with the Chain of Rocks Community Association that mainly works on the City side near Riverview?

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Dr. Erica Williams:

No.

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Danya:

Have you heard of Cementland before I reached out?

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Dr. Erica Williams:

No.

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Danya:

City Museum's creator was turning the abandoned Missouri Portland Cement factory into sort of an outdoor City Museum in the 2000s. What sort of a positive or negative impact on the area do you think a big development project like that would've had if it was completed?

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Dr. Erica Williams:

It's always good to give kids somewhere to go, give families an outlet. We've got the Zoo coming in [to the Spanish Lake area in North County], and on its face it's like, "The Zoo is coming in, yay!" But then you have to look at what they are bringing. Is it affordable? Is it safe? Does it provide opportunities for people who live here to actually work there? Is it extractive? Is the tax account linked to this area, so that any sales tax revenue flows back to this area? Or is the tax account linked to where the office headquarters are, and the tax revenue flows back to that area? Those are all things that you have to dig deeper into in order to know if something is going to be a positive or a negative development.

I'm a big fan of the Zoo in general. I would take my kids to the Zoo. We grew up going to the Zoo when I was a kid. But they've had to make some changes to some of the landscape over there already, block and tear down some streets. So it's great, but you also have to keep the people in mind when you're doing things. Even when we're putting our gardens in—gardens are great, but we're trying to work with the community and the local government so that we're not making enemies off of a great thing.

The Zoo just has to be very careful about that. And if Cementland had been able to go forward, that would've also been something to look into. One of the things I learned about early on when I first started A Red Circle was something called a community benefit agreement, which is an agreement between the government, your private investor, and the people in the community. Where is the tax revenue going to go? Who's going to be hired? Do you have to close streets or tear down neighborhoods? Are you going to tear things down using sustainable methods, so all the dust doesn't fly all over?

A Red Circle got away from that. There was so much that was distracting in these past eight years, from politics to COVID. When these big issues are happening, it's easy to lose sight of the small pieces that you have to consider. So I don't know if anyone is still pushing for community benefit agreements to be done for things like the Zoo. I don't know if they were approached by anyone with one of those. That would be something good for them. If Cementland had been able to go forward, that would've been a great place for that too. Especially with City Museum being downtown, we want to know who's making the money. Where's the money going?

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Danya:

If you had access to a huge swath of post-industrial land like Cementland, what would you like to do with it? What are some good uses that come to mind?

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Dr. Erica Williams:

Depending on how the soil is, we could always grow more food. We could put up another grocery store. We could even put up a small scale food manufacturing place, depending on how safe that would be based on what was there before. We could put in a space for workforce development, some training, a school, those types of things.

There are a lot of churches in the area and a lot of buildings that just don't generate productivity, whether it's jobs, education, or revenue. I think we need the type of businesses in the region that don't solely rely on foot traffic, but that can also bring some tax revenue into the region, not just solely nonprofit work. When we bought the space for the North County Community Nexus, we started a social enterprise LLC, so that the grocery store and the bistro can be operated as a for-profit. That way we can one, collect sales tax revenue to reinvest into the region and two, reinvest any profits back into A Red Circle.