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Wagner Electric Company closed its Hillside Works in Wellston, Missouri, an impoverished black community, in 1981. The company gave the property directly to St. Louis County to be developed as an enterprise zone, but the site proved to be contaminated by toxic waste. In time the Environmental Protection Agency negotiated an agreement to partially clean up the site, but the site remained largely undeveloped. Long after Wagner Electric began operations, blacks from contiguous areas in the city of St. Louis moved into Wellston when prospering white workers moved to the suburbs. The new residents entered the working-class suburb as the demand for unskilled industrial labor diminished, and the town lacked the political wherewithal to influence the course of events following Wagner Electric's decision to leave town.