Refugees revitalize city neighborhoods
St. Louis Business Journal - by Linda Tucci
In blue jeans and baggy sweater with his shoulder-length hair pulled back in a ponytail, Alem Boric could be mistaken for a graduate student or latter-day hippie. But in actuality, the 28-year-old is a hard-driving entrepreneur.
A Bosnian refugee who arrived in St. Louis in 1995, Boric is the owner of Europa-Market, a grocery and convenience store in south St. Louis near the Bevo Mill.
In his 42 months here, he has worked in two local factories, found a better-paying job as a sales clerk at a video distributor, opened a small grocery store in leased space and helped bring 12 people to the United States.
In April 1998, Boric bought a $79,900 building that houses Europa-Market, another business and two apartments. He spent $16,000 of his personal savings to fix up the property.
Boric's ability to carve out a new life here is just one example of how Bosnian refugees are making an impact on the city of St. Louis.
Since the mid-1990s, Bosnians have come in the tens of thousands to south St. Louis, settling mainly in an area bounded by Kingshighway Boulevard on the east and Hampton Avenue on the west. The city's new immigrants are filling apartment buildings, working at factories, buying homes and spreading the word to Bosnian enclaves throughout the United States that St. Louis is a good place to buy a home. Neighborhoods such as the blocks around the landmark Bevo Mill that were heading for ghost-town status now are teeming with new residents and new economic activity.
Alderman Craig Schmid of the 10th ward, another area where many Bosnians have settled, said the Bosnian refugees have brought welcome activity and by and large have been "very welcomed" by the neighborhoods.
"These immigrants tend to be very industrious and concerned about building a new life with both their homes and businesses in the same area. This has had a tremendously positive impact upon our neighborhoods," Schmid said.
At the Gravois location of Southern Commercial Bank, for example, loan activity is up 200 percent in the past two years, from 30 loans a month to 90, virtually all of the new business coming from the Bosnian community. The increases have catapulted that branch to lead lender in Southern Commercial's seven-branch chain -- and made the bank a legend in the Bosnian community for its willingness to take a risk on the new immigrants.
"Almost everyone who comes to us comes because a friend or relative said go talk to Southern Commercial," said Steve Hrdlicka, vice president at Southern Commercial.
Hrdlicka (an American of Czech descent who has worked at the bank for 21 years) said Southern Commercial did not initially solicit the Bosnian business but has since addressed the needs of its Bosnian customers, hiring 10 employees at various locations to help in translating.
Transactions cover the gamut from $500 unsecured personal loans to a $100,000 loan to buy a semi-truck. To make many of these loans, the bank had to forgo the usual work, residency and credit requirements, but the default rate, said Hrdlicka, has been "minuscule."
"We have had so little problem with these loans, they are almost without difficulties," he said, adding that his clients now are beginning to put money in CDs and other savings accounts.
"Bosnians relatively quickly accumulate money. They work as a family unit. Everything goes into a common pot, mother, father, sons and daughters who can work contributing. After their needs are taken care of, anything left over gets put away in the savings account for the next car or apartment," Hrdlicka said.
Bankers, factory owners and real estate agents make the point that these new immigrants are unusually hard-working and eager to play out the American dream.
The adaptation to American life is all the more remarkable since the thousands of Bosnians who have immigrated to the St. Louis area in recent years came under duress. The storekeeper Boric, for example, escaped from Bosnia to Croatia with a fake ID and under cover of night. He then spent seven months in a refugee camp before being admitted to the United States.
"Refugees are reluctant immigrants. They escape in the middle of the night with no worldly goods," said Anna Crosslin, president and chief executive of the International Institute.
Founded in 1919 and now located in cramped quarters off Grand Boulevard at 3800 Park Ave., the International Institute provides educational and job placement services to about 6,000 immigrants and refugees a year. The Institute is raising money to move to a larger building at 3654 South Grand, donated by NationsBank.
Refugees, Crosslin said, are unlike today's legal immigrants, who often have years to plan their move and well-paying jobs awaiting them. In the case of the Bosnians, even some of the usual religious support systems for refugees aren't there.
"Bosnians are mainly a-religious but claim Muslim as their religion. The traditionally Christian structures which assist in resettlement don't see these new arrivals as part of their congregations," Crosslin said. That, in turn, has increased the International Institute's responsibilities.
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