On May 16th, 2025, neighborhoods across the North side of St.

Louis were devastated by an EF3 tornado.

One of those neighborhoods was Penrose.

- I was numb.

When I first saw the destruction of the neighborhood, I was numb.

I saw people whose roofs, just like the whole roof was sitting in the street, or parts of their roof were sitting in the street, or parts of their houses had collapsed, and trees had fallen down onto cars, onto houses.

Last summer, we spoke with handyman Calvin Motley.

Immediately after the storm, he used his skills to help his neighbors repair and rebuild their homes.

He also helped create the organization STL Rebuild, along with his friend, Mark Timmerman.

Yes.

So at the beginning, it wasn't even an organization.

It felt like a movement that was starting on TikTok.

Mark is an attorney and also a co-director and secretary of STL Rebuild.

The organization initially started with a GoFundMe, but a few months ago, it officially became a non-profit.

Calvin is a co-director and president of the new non-profit.

Over the last year, he says he's repaired at least five homes and cleaned up dozens of vacant lots in the area.

Well, we did a lot of work fixing up houses, patching roofs, cutting trees, cutting the grass.

I think last year I cut like 30 lots, including these 10 here that we're standing on.

And this year I'll pick up a couple more lots.

The GoFundMe, as well as volunteers, helped sustain the organization's work over the last year.

Calvin says he's hopeful about the neighborhood.

After May 16th, it's a great improvement.

And I still see there's some people that are just starting to work on their houses and the buildings.

So I'm I'm encouraged by it.

STL Rebuild took a break over the winter, but their work is continuing in new ways in 2026.

This is the garden.

And it's 370 feet by 100 feet.

So it's almost an acre.

Right now, it may not look like much, but Calvin says the garden will take about three to five years to complete.

He plans to grow everything from vegetables to fruit to fungi.

He's also planning to use his construction skills to build a greenhouse, an aquaponics building, a pond and more.

This is what we're calling a permaculture garden.

And that's where we're not going to create any waste here.

We're going to use everything we possibly can and just keep recycling it and producing the soil, composting.

There's going to be bees.

There's going to be birds.

There's butterflies, everything.

We want everything that can be here to help the plants grow and improve the quality of the neighborhood.

Calvin has already built a free little library on the lot.

'Cause I think that a lot of the things that we can help with in this neighborhood is getting a higher educational attainment and keeping like the STEM to STEM things like science, technology, engineering.

While Calvin works on the garden, Mark is focusing on the future of businesses in the area.

Last year, I was going to Penrose often enough that I, it felt like a second home, the neighborhood, and I just fell in love with the people that I was meeting.

And I could see the future of Penrose being really bright if it just had people come and invest.

He says he was inspired by the reactions of local business professionals to the STL Rebuild TikTok account.

Everyone, every kind of profession was responding to Calvin and responding to Penrose and responding to the dream to rebuild and see something new develop.

That got me thinking about working there and moving my firm there.

Timmerman Law is currently located in Soulard.

The new firm will be on North Newstead and Lee in Penrose.

And then the law firm idea turned into much more.

We were thinking about having a law firm for criminal defense, for civil rights, for personal injury, and also just a resource for the community if they need to advocate for anything from the city or if they just need to learn about the legal methods to achieve their own dreams.

And so a part of the corner, the dream became to build out more of the corner to have a small business incubator, to have a coffee shop, to have a barber shop, to have a place where we can sell the fruits and vegetables and provide them to the community.

It's all part of the basic plan.

We have several other initiatives that we'd like to do too.

We'd like to increase the home ownership.

We wanted to actually do some rebuilding, some rehabbing of properties and getting, creating a path to home ownership for people that may not have otherwise been available to.

Mark says STL Rebuild's mission has expanded from tornado recovery into a wide range of services that reflect the needs of the neighborhood.

And while many changes will take time, the first step is beautifying the area.

I think once the green spaces started to be cleared and mowed and trees that were overgrown even before the tornado or bushes, once that became cleared out, you could see the beauty of the land.

I think it naturally became, let's just make the spaces around these houses and these structures, let's make it as beautiful as possible.

So I think that's what it naturally pivoted to the garden.

- And though there's a lot of work ahead, Calvin says he wouldn't wanna be doing anything else.

- Another thing people ask me about is, aren't you ready to retire?

Really, this is not that much different than what I had envisioned my retirement would be.

I had always thought I would do a homestead in the rural area, but an urban homestead is just as good.