It has been stated often enough that it qualifies as cliché, but some clichés take root because they are true: Downtown St. Louis is the doorstep to not just the rest of the city but the entire metropolitan area. It is what the rest of the nation and the world thinks of when it thinks of St. Louis. It is also — even in its currently diminished stature — the region’s most important economic driver.
That doorstep today is tarnished and crumbling, beset by vacant storefronts, empty offices and a stubborn sense of unconfronted lawlessness and regional abandonment.
The good news is that the city currently has a huge trove of uncommitted funds from the NFL Rams settlement that could be directed in part to revitalizing Downtown with infrastructure renovation and economic aid to businesses. And, just as importantly, it has a business community that says it’s willing to more than match that funding as an investment in this crucial stretch of St. Louis.
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So what’s the problem? The same problem as always lately, it seems: city leadership that vacillates between dysfunctional inaction and outright hostility when it comes to prioritizing the rejuvenation of Downtown. The most recent illustration is the public spat between Board of Aldermen President Megan Green and a key Downtown business organization.
The friction between Green and Greater St. Louis Inc., the business organization that includes some of the region’s largest employers, comes down to a question of priorities in deciding how to spend the $250 million that the city still has from the Rams settlement.
There has been talk of simply sitting on the money for now, letting it accrue interest until there is a comprehensive plan for using it. This Editorial Board supported that idea last year primarily out of concern that the city’s current leadership would otherwise fritter the money away without using it in an impactful way. The unrelated but instructive controversy lately over the bungling of a city program dispersing tens of millions of pandemic dollars for North Side economic development has done nothing to dispel those concerns.
But Greater St. Louis makes a good case for using a big chunk of that money to quickly upgrade Downtown infrastructure — streets, sidewalks, buildings — and other projects to make the areas more business- and resident-friendly.
The organization has long stressed the unique economic status of Downtown. One measure of it is the fact that, while less than 5% of city government expenditures are targeted to the area, Downtown generates close to 20% of the city’s general revenue. Beyond numbers like that are intangible benefits of a vibrant Downtown to the city’s global image and self-image.
Greater St. Louis’ proposal would target about $100 million of the Rams money for Downtown revival, while spending another $130 million on infrastructure in poor north and southeast neighborhoods. That looks like a reasonable balance between bolstering the economic epicenter of the region and addressing the historic neglect of residents in the city’s most underserved areas.
Green and her progressive allies would rather establish a municipal endowment fund to focus ongoing spending on things residents have voiced support for, including water main replacements, traffic calming, subsidized child care and raises for city workers.
None of those priorities are senseless — water infrastructure upgrades in particular are going to be necessary one way or another — but they aren’t potentially transformative to the regional economy in the way a revitalized Downtown would be. Adding to that potential is Greater St. Louis’ vow to more than double the $100 million in Rams money for Downtown with private investment.
Yet even that promising development has become tangled in the thicket of parochial city politics. As the Post-Dispatch’s Jacob Barker reported last week, Green’s response to the organization’s vow of matching funding was to question why that offer hadn’t been made before. In fact, it had been, in a letter last month to Mayor Tishaura Jones, who is generally allied with Green.
Beyond that apparent lack of communication and/or urgency, Green’s stance indicates she doesn’t accept that a successful Downtown is fundamental to the success of St. Louis as a whole — that she sees the Downtown corridor as just another competing interest with no more urgent claim to attention than any other area of the city.
Earlier this year, when Greater St. Louis complained that its proposals for use of Rams money to bolster Downtown was apparently being ignored by City Hall, Green’s office responded with a shrugging statement assuring that, “Their priority will be heard just like the rest of them.” Green herself echoed that myopic mindset in a recent letter criticizing Greater St. Louis’ lobbying efforts and alleging the organization “sees itself and its interests above the many residents and stakeholder groups.”
It’s perfectly legitimate that various ideas for how to use this money should be aired and debated. But the “interests” of Downtown St. Louis aren’t merely another chair at the table; they are intrinsically bound with the interests of the city more broadly — including its “many residents and stakeholders,” no matter what part of town they happen to live in. The fact that Green and her allies appear to so completely not get that is beyond concerning.
