Sponsor: Community Development Administration
Procurement Type: Request for Information

Starting Date: 01-17-2025

Summary
In response to historic flooding in July of 2022, where the St. Louis region received 25% of average annual rainfall in the span of 12 hours, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that the City of St. Louis will receive $25,834,000 in funding to support long-term recovery efforts following the 2022 Missouri Severe Storms and Flooding event DR-4665-MO through its Office of Disaster Recovery (ODR) within the Office of Community Planning and Development. Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funding is designed to address needs that remain after all other assistance has been exhausted. The City of St. Louis’ Community Development Administration (CDA) is the lead and responsible agency for administering the CDBG-DR funds allocated to St. Louis.

Through this RFP, the City seeks to fund two planning activities to assess disaster recovery needs and mitigate flood hazard risks throughout the City; a Regional Flood Mitigation and Green Infrastructure Plan and a River Des Peres Feasibility and Design Study. Acknowledging that historic inequity manifests as deficiencies in the built environment, the City is funding planning activities that will support efforts to identify and prioritize high-needs neighborhoods, particularly renter households, LMI individuals and households, housing-cost-burdened and low-income households, individuals with disabilities, racially and ethnically concentrated areas of poverty, and other underserved communities. The City is using its EJI data, among other data and information resources, to identify and target high-needs neighborhoods and will continue to develop detailed demographic data analyses of the city to support geographically targeted outreach, data collection, and distribution of resources.

Regional Flood Mitigation and Green Infrastructure Plan: The City, in coordination with members of the Green City Coalition, will procure a planning and/or landscape architecture firm to create a plan that assesses flood hazard risk of the watershed that includes the City of St. Louis and presents a cohesive, city-wide strategy for the design and implementation for improved stormwater management and green infrastructure. Extreme heat mitigation and biodiversity will also be important priorities for green infrastructure investment. Anticipated flood risk reduction strategies include targeted interventions—on both public and private lands—such as rain gardens, new quality green spaces, catchment basins, tree planting and reforestation, street and alley impervious surface improvement, community education, and resident connect with nature and natural systems.

River Des Peres Feasibility and Design Study: The City will procure a planning and/or landscape architecture firm to create a feasibility and design study to guide restoration of portions of the River Des Peres that will reduce flood risk and improve environmental quality of this historic urban river. Once an open river traversing the City, the River Des Peres now functions as a combined sanitary sewer and storm drain since being channeled and covered in the 1930s. The capacity of the system to manage increasing flood waters is inadequate, and the City is currently exploring strategies to address both flood risk and ecosystem degradation. The plan will assess current flood management capacity and projected needs; it will assess stresses to local ecosystems and opportunities for community amenities. The plan will provide recommendations for capital improvements that add capacity to reduce flood risk, restore levies, install monitoring systems, and assess and optimize design options for an urban park. The plan will also include an assessment of land within the river’s floodplain to identify specific opportunities for shifting land use in a manner that reduces future flood impacts.

Estimated Timeline
Issuance Date: January 17, 2025
Questions Due: February 10, 2025
Q & A Posting: February 12, 2025
Proposal Due: February 18, 2025