If all goes according to plan, a hydroponics factory could soon be located on Martin Luther King Drive. It’s the newest effort by St. Louis nonprofit Beloved Streets of America to revitalize the street.

A walk down the 6-mile city street named for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. yields plenty of images that would surely unsettle the civil rights leader: shuttered storefronts, open-air drug markets and a glut of pawn shops, quickie check-cashing providers and liquor stores.