The Future of St. Louis

St. Louis has the makings of a world-class city, according to executives involved in the region’s resurgence. They recently shared their positive outlooks about how the city can thrive and what its leaders and residents can do to get there.

Robert Bobroff, market president at the St. Louis Business Journal, moderated a panel discussion at Ballpark Village in downtown St. Louis on “The Future of St. Louis” with the five executives, who included:

• Brian Hall, chief marketing officer, Explore St. Louis;
• Tracy Henke, chief operating officer and deputy executive director, Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Center St. Louis (AMICSTL);
• Donna McCarty, vice president of Client Services, Westway Services Group LLC;
• Kathleen Klein, community director, T-REX; and
• Zack Boyers, chairman and CEO, U.S. Bancorp Impact Finance.

BOBROFF: How can business leaders make change, both personally and professionally, to drive community impact in the St. Louis region?

BOYERS: For our region to lean into its potential and make it a reality, I believe it will take leaders really pushing in differently. As individual actors, leaders can model what it looks like to balance humility with boldness. When we think about the region’s trajectory and how we want to make positive change, we have to listen and learn about things that are likely outside the everyday businesses we are experts in. That involves identifying diverse voices and ensuring that those voices are informing us as we endeavor to be bold.

As a leader in an organization, an employer with more than 500 folks in a group we call Impact Finance, including more than 250 people here in the St. Louis region, we have a particular role at U.S. Bank of financing activities that enable positive social and environmental impact, and we have a passionate group of employees that make that happen.

And that team of passionate, committed people who are engaging in the work of the region deserve our support. We want to support their efforts whether that’s shoes up as volunteers, serving on boards, joining neighborhood associations or anything of the sort. It’s important that leaders explicitly model, encourage and support those kinds of activities.

And finally, all of us who lead and are generally successful at the things we know how to do need to consistently challenge ourselves and modify the lens to see if there are different ways of doing those things -whether that’s who we’re doing them with or who they are intended for.

U.S. Bank has invested over $1 billion in the St. Louis region over the last 20 years, and that’s catalyzed billions more dollars of community and economic development activity. But we continue to challenge ourselves to do that better by asking if we’re making the impact we intended. Are there better ways to do it so the results are more sustainable? And fundamentally when we grow, are we growing inclusively? Those are the kinds of questions we can ask ourselves and I think everybody in the business community can join in doing the same.

HALL: I think every business leader and resident in this community can do a better job of advocating for St. Louis. We are sometimes too Midwest nice and too humble. We believe too much about what’s being reported on the region, but we need to open our eyes and understand what we have, the quality of life that we enjoy, and radiate that enthusiasm to our networks of people around the world. I think we should have some swagger and confidence because the renaissance underway in St. Louis is exciting and our future bright.

The second thing that would be enormously instrumental from a hospitality perspective, is that many of our corporate citizens that hold events around the United States, or the world, could hold their events here more often. When major St. Louis employers do that and contract with hotels and America’s Center, we create more vibrancy, not only in the downtown area, but throughout the entire community. We have a campaign called “Hometown Heroes,” and we publish case studies about the impact events have on our community. Anheuser-Busch is a recent case study of an organization that kept their meeting here and we’d love it if more corporate leaders followed their lead.

KLEIN: When you’re talking about that Midwestern humility, we need to understand that we can have nice things here. It’s an interesting thing that I find with my peer group, or maybe this is a Midwestern millennial thing, but when good news happens, there’s almost an attitude of “Well, we’ll see how long that lasts.” We can really lean into some major successes happening right now.

HENKE: To drive community impact, a good leader must have empathy, and that means listening and being sensitive to those in the community, reaching out, and not always surrounding yourself with the same voices, because you get the same results. As we’re trying to drive positive community impact, let’s have empathy, and it is important to leave personality conflicts at home. We must always keep in mind our shared goals of improving, growing and working towards making a positive impact.

MCCARTY: As a St. Louis outsider, in conjunction with what I’ve heard about the city over the past two years, people have become more enthusiastic about revitalizing St. Louis, and I really enjoy coming here to visit. From a Westway standpoint, we were a bit concerned about bringing our business to downtown St. Louis, but we believe business has increased and I think it will continue as businesses continue to invest in St. Louis.

BOBROFF: How do we leverage the metro’s strengths to help drive our region’s future?

HENKE: I agree that we need to radiate the good news when we talk about our region. I’ve been all over the state and I’m a walking billboard for Missouri. A great attribute is location, location, location. Because of our location, the entire world is our backyard; we can ship product anywhere across the globe with our waterways, railways, highways and airways.

In addition, we have a Midwestern work ethic – we work hard and we have a tremendous workforce that performs. We need to talk about how cost effective it is for businesses to be here and the lower cost of living for families compared to elsewhere. The culture, sports, green space and more all make it a tremendous place to live, work and play. We should spend more time figuring out how we talk about, advocate and spread that word rather than highlight the negative because there’s so much good.

BOYERS: It’s frustrating for many of us who are in love with this town that these attributes haven’t translated into consistent growth and the influx of people we would expect to see. We can modify how we get the message out and the message itself by inviting innovation, change makers and new ideas in a more deliberate manner. I think T-REX has played its part in that ecosystem, inviting and building a place for those ideas. Detroit, for example, has challenges at least as big as ours, but to address them they recognized that they had to deliberately invite change makers and new ideas from all over the world. They announced that their city is the place to try something new. I feel like we can tell that version of our story and welcome that kind of activity perhaps differently than we have.

HENKE: That’s what we’re going to try to do with the Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Center St. Louis (AMICSTL). The St. Louis metro area was built on manufacturing. You can look around at how city neighborhoods grew up around different manufacturing districts – for shoe, garment, beverage and more. Today we have General Motors, Boeing, Anheuser-Busch, additional beverage distributors, pharmaceutical production and manufacturing out in the surrounding counties on both sides of the river, so it makes sense for St. Louis to have a facility such as AMICSTL that will not just attract businesses and entrepreneurs and grow opportunities but will also help attract people.

BOBROFF: What is the role of tourism in shaping the future of St. Louis?

HALL: I strongly suggest that tourism is the leading edge of economic development. You’re not going to want to come here to work, pursue a career opportunity, go to college or start a company until you first come here and have a tourism experience. Tourism is the precursor to a deeper experience in this place. As we’re sitting here looking out these windows at Ballpark Village, we’re seeing thousands of downtown hotel rooms that welcome some 30 million guests to the St. Louis region every year, courtesy of all the leisure marketing activity we conduct and conventions and meetings we host at America’s Center and hotels throughout the community. Four of five of those guests rate their experience in St. Louis as very good or excellent. Nine in 10 indicate that they’re going to tell their friends and family members about their experience and share it on social media. I argue that those 30 million people will help us achieve that tipping point we’ve long anticipated because seeing is believing. When first-time visitors experience St. Louis, their jaws drop.

Each year we bring about three dozen national journalists to St. Louis on familiarization visits, and they’re blown away by the entertainment options, four stadiums in the core of downtown, the innovation scene that’s taking hold, creativity and the arts and a food scene that’s one of the hottest in the country. Third-party endorsement is very important to radiating the enthusiasm we have for this community because journalists are carrying the water and spreading the word for us. That’s what makes me particularly bullish about our future.

To help tell our story, we turn to wellknown St. Louisans. We first reached out to Sterling K. Brown about six years ago, thinking we had little chance of securing him for our campaign. We thought he would be too expensive because his career was starting to take off as he was starring as Randall in “This Is Us.” Not only did he agree to participate, but he didn’t want compensation. Instead, he asked us to make a donation in his name to the Mathews Dickey Boys and Girls Club.

To this day, St. Louis celebrities participating in our campaign are receiving no compensation. We’re making donations for Andy Cohen, Jenna Fisher, John Goodman, Nikki Glaser, Ozzie Smith, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Becky Sauerbrunn, Jason Tatum and now John Hamm is up to bat. We think the warmth and hospitality of St. Louisans is a defining characteristic so who better to carry St. Louis’ message in our commercials than St. Louisans?

HENKE: Let’s make certain we find new mediums to reach people who aren’t necessarily watching the programs or seeing it in specific magazines. Let’s figure out how they receive information best because it’s absolutely imperative. It will not only help with growth but also help individuals who already live here to tell the story.

HALL: I agree with you completely. Do you know what the number one source for advice on travel and tourism decisions is? It’s friends and family.

BOBROFF: How does the mission of T-REX fit into the greater story of St. Louis’ future?

KLEIN: When T-REX was founded, it was meant to serve as a catalyst for growing economic density in downtown St. Louis. We had a special focus on this area that seemed like it needed the most help, and an opportunity to activate what we had, which were these historic, really beautiful, well-preserved buildings that were empty. The economic development leadership of St. Louis at the ti me were our founders and it was very experimental and project based. Let’s just throw something on the wall and see how it sticks.

No one anticipated that people wanted affordably priced office space, but the bigger shock was that there was a community of innovators that already existed here that didn’t necessarily have a spot to land and comfortably work together. When we grew this organically from three to 60 companies in about three years operating out of the old Rail Exchange building on Olive Street, we were shocked and recognized that we needed our own space.

That’s why we landed in the Lammert Building on Washington Avenue. Amazingly, we were able to buy it. No one would’ve ever thought that a little, 3-year-old nonprofit would be able to buy a building on Washington Avenue. Zack knows we had a lot of help buying a building that was under semi foreclosure. It was one of the coolest projects ever and U.S. Bank and others who believed in it were very involved. We had some really amazing outcomes, although no one set out to necessarily have those outcomes. We just wanted to try to catalyze something.

T-REX has grown so much under Patty Hagen’s leadership. When she came in 2014, she recognized how to utilize all the existing St. Louis assets, including our world-class universities, hospitals, the startups and bigger corporate folks in town.

How can we bring them together? How can we just be a listening ear and receive them and figure out how we can leverage what they offer and more than anything, how can we be of service to them? There were a lot of collaborative efforts, and I see so many great things happening that I’m excited about. I’m so stoked about the geospatial industry. Some of the smartest people I have ever met that are 10 or 20 years younger than me are coming through and looking for a spot to land. The fact that they stayed in St. Louis and we’re lucky enough to have them in T-REX is amazing.

I feel as if we’re running parallel to the St. Louis story. We know what exists here, and we’re not going to force something; we can leverage what we have. And the universities are talking about our future workforce. We don’t have tons of corporate entities that have stuck around, but the ones who have seem to be really committed to being here. So how can we better support them?

BOYERS: From my perspective, T-REX with you and Patty’s leadership, has helped us exercise collaboration muscles that we were not using as much. I really appreciate T-REX being a place where people can come together, not just physically, but around building something together that is greater than the sum of its parts.

KLEIN: We do offer low-cost office space, which is really important to our mission, but we’ve also branched out to have more tenants in our building, including the NGA. We have a partner intermediary agreement with the NGA where we deliver some of the more difficult projects that they wouldn’t be able to tackle because of the nature of the red tape in which they operate. We have so many different projects going on with different partners that I feel like the office space factor is almost secondary to those collaborations.

BOBROFF: How will the services that Westway provides impact small businesses in St. Louis? And where will the biggest impact of those services be felt?

MCCARTY: The unique multi-tenant secure facility model means Westway provides the upfront capital and manages ongoing operations of the secure space while offering a tailored solution to both large corporations and smaller firms. Westway provides everything for medium or small businesses so they can avoid all of the red tape involved in building their own site. 

Westway is here to adapt to your requirements. Whether you require just a single seat to gain access to bids and proposals or an entire suite to accommodate your growing team, our scalable secure space solutions have you covered. When businesses come in, they can hit the ground running and are able to leverage the U.S. government (USG) opportunities and get into that business, which means they could bring their corporate environments here. They come here to utilize our facilities, but then they get to physically see exactly what St. Louis offers; not what they’re hearing. In terms of the small and medium business aspect, we operate the secure space, which significantly lowers the cost barrier for them. With the turnkey space and the services we provide – security, IT and other infrastructure – they can get one cubicle, a two-person office or go into multiple suites if they’d like. It causes a huge differentiator for the city and region, not to mention operating costs they don’t have to maintain. Westway takes care of all of that for them.

BOBROFF: How do we deploy capital in new ways to drive inclusive and sustainable growth?

BOYERS: At Impact Finance and at U.S. Bank, we’re always about more than the transaction itself. If we’re investing in affordable housing, for example, we are also ensuring that specifically targeted services are offered on site that enable the residents not only to have safe, secure and high-quality housing, but also address whatever other needs they may have to enjoy economic opportunity and mobility more broadly. We’re a renewable energy investor, and in addition to the large utility scale investments we make to address climate change, we’re also focused on community solar opportunities that not only address issues that affect the planet, but also reduce the energy price burdens that people with low to moderate incomes have to carry.

There’s an intentionality in everything we do, and when we think about deploying capital, we need to up that level of intentionality. To understand whether the impacts match those intended, what we learned is that we needed to develop capabilities in impact measurement and management to answer the question. Are we effecting the change we set out to, and if not, how are we using that knowledge to iterate and modify the way our products and services hit the street from a capital deployment perspective?

We also recognize that in some ways business as usual, which may stable versions of success, is also just the status quo, so we have to interrupt the systems and processes that are ingrained. One way we’ve done that is by creating new roles called Impact Capital Managers in all of our product areas – affordable housing, New Markets Tax credits and CDFI financing and environmental finance. This group wakes up every day with the express intent and responsibility to figure out how we can deploy capital where it does not naturally flow or where the market’s not working and then interrupt those dynamics so that it does.

I would invite other banks, community development financial institutions, the public sector, economic development actors and other anchor institutions to review how we are spending our money and deploying our capital. I know that good work of this kind is happening in a number of places, but I would encourage all of us to interrupt systems in order to have a greater and more profound impact over time.

HENKE: That’s an interesting way to put it. St. Louis is an amazing philanthropic community, but are all those resources having the impact we want them to have?

AMICSTL is purposefully located in historically disadvantaged North St. Louis, specifically in the Vandeventer neighborhood near Lewis Place, Sherman Park, the Ville and other neighborhoods, which has spectacular architecture and wonderful people. When you think of an area that needs an investment impact, it’s this area. It’s why AMICSTL, SLDC, the city and others are collaborating so closely to create opportunities that will hopefully lead to generational wealth for individuals and families that will result in community wealth for these neighborhoods that need it.

BOBROFF: How can geospatial technology be leveraged to directly help people in our most under-resourced communities in St. Louis?

KLEIN: We’re oft en looking at geospatial from the industry perspective so it can be easy to lose sight of what this tech actually involves and what you can do with it. More than anything, it’s important to recognize that the defense application of geospatial tech is like the smallest slice of the pie.

Initially, geospatial technology was developed to aid in emergency services, asking questions like “Can a firetruck fit under this overpass?” or “are the fire hydrants working where we’re going?” and other unique, location-specific questions that are imperative in keeping people safe.

Mainly, I think it’s important to emphasize that the origin of this type of technology is not rooted in spy activity or surveillance. The more we can understand the vastness of Geographic Information System (GIS) application, the more we can make actionable change in our community.

A friend of mine named Jon Leek has built a map of vacant buildings in North St. Louis, which spurred the development of the STL Vacancy Collaborative, an online resource where, through a series of filters developed by information Jon tracked using open-source, publicly accessible data, answered questions about which vacant properties place the highest or lowest burden on the community.

Some data points he tracked were if the property required mowing, if police were called on it and how many complaints were associated with it. Each of those data points was applied to each property, which of course helped assess the burden and thus the immediacy of actions needed to address it.

Then he put all the information on a map. He said, “If we’re going to solve a problem, we first have to understand the problem.” Geospatial technology is adding color to our community in so many ways, positive and negative, but really helping us see where we need to bring help or highlight things that are working well in such a beautiful visual way.

I also recall the recent GEOINT conference in St. Louis at the convention center and speaking with a gentleman who had a shoebox-sized satellite that was very cool. Although he knew the NGA was here, he asked why he should move to St. Louis. But this is the perfect place to deploy this stuff . How much more exciting is it to do that in an area that needs help where you can actually see the measurable impact? He could make a difference. I’m not excited about a city that has functional public transit, perfect roads and everything working perfectly, and then a new technology being deployed there. How are we actually going to see whether it’s working in an exciting way?

I’m thinking about addressing some of our issues in more under-resourced neighborhoods. We have been utilizing geospatial technology to better target the areas that need things. We’re talking about food deserts, areas of our city that still need wireless internet infrastructure, how that layers with other utilities that need attention. Handicap accessibility, public transit and so many other important data points that affect how people interact with their community deserve attention and can be contributed to by anyone through open-source technology.

I’m so tired of talking about crime through the lens of geospatial tech. How do they define geospatial science? It’s the data associated with anything that occurs in space and time, so it’s anything you want to track.

HENKE: It is sensors, it’s healthcare and more. Think about our broader metro and how geospatial is used in agriculture. It helps measure, because we don’t have time to go check a thousand acres to see if it’s got enough water or is producing what it should. You use geospatial technology instead. It’s why ag tech and geospatial have partnered. The broad and growing opportunities of geospatial is why geospatial is an industry vertical at AMICSTL. We do a lot of research in the metro related to geospatial, but we need to do more. We need to research, manufacture and deploy it here and sell it everywhere.

HALL: When it comes to tourism, we have geo-fenced all the hotels in this community. We know when people are coming, where they’re coming from and how many days they’re staying. Naturally, it’s aggregated data for privacy so we don’t know anyone’s specific details. We’ve also geo-fenced all the points of interest, and I can tell you over a period of time how many people stayed at the Hilton at the Ballpark and went to the Gateway Arch, City Museum, Busch Stadium and Forest Park. That’s invaluable information all made possible by geospatial technology.

BOYERS: When we think about geospatial as an industry cluster, for us to really exploit and build on it for our economic development future, we have to lean into this idea of shared prosperity along with equitable and inclusive economic development and make sure we don’t miss the moment. The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) made a very intentional decision to put its headquarters here – a place that has seen massive disinvestment for far too long. We’ve got to bring the best of what we have from a community development expertise perspective – our abundance of really amazing people and experts in this community – and marry it to the economic development and business community’s efforts to build on that cluster. We just need to prove we can do it.

KLEIN: Even before we get to the cluster, it’s making sure that we are educating kids earlier because young people are interacting with data and creating their own data more than ever before. We have this moment where the geospatial industry is, or even the science of it is exploding and happening in real ti me right now. We really feel strongly that St. Louis can be the geospatial capital of the world. We have the infrastructure to support it, the NGA is here and we have so many people who are super energized and excited about learning more. What’s really cool about geospatial is that we are swimming in this kind of data all the ti me. We’ve got a head start on everybody else, so we need to take advantage of that and stay ahead of other cities.

MCCARTY: I believe the NGA is becoming a powerhouse for geospatial innovation and development in St. Louis. Leveraging their contracts and technology, I believe that business will continue to steadily move back into St. Louis. What this means for underserved communities is job opportunities for people that were born and raised here. More businesses, more capital and greater influence from the NGA lead to outreach programs that start in schools in and around St. Louis. Showing the next generation the technology they could potentially work on is the first step to rejuvenating the underserved communities of St. Louis.

BOBROFF: What is your “Why the St. Louis metro?”

HENKE: I was asked this question shortly after I moved back to the metro, and there are so many reasons. It is a great place to raise a family or be with family, a cost-effective place to do business and, next to Washington D.C., we have the most free attractions in the country. You can go to the Art Museum, the History Museum, the Zoo, see sports, enjoy the Brickline Greenway that is being built and Forest Park. But you can also go out to Augusta, the first federally designated viti cultural area in the country or to Eckert’s Farm in Illinois or take the Katy Trail across the state.

HALL: I refer to it as world class without the worry. We have nightlife, entertainment, sports, amazing cultural resources and an incredible food scene. But we don’t have the downsides many associate with large cities like high costs, competition for resources where you have to wait in line, and we certainly don’t have the traffic congestion you find in cities like Chicago. One of my favorite things is telling everybody that you can get anywhere in St. Louis in 20 minutes.

HENKE: It’s thinking of the broader metro and all the activities like the wineries and agriculture. Visit Marcoot Jersey Creamery on the Illinois side or Ted Drewe’s here, but just go explore. My husband and I just had an absolutely amazing meal at Root Food + Wine in Augusta. Chef Philip Day was nominated earlier this year for a James Beard Foundation award for Best Chef, Midwest. Our entire bi-state metro has so much to offer.

HALL: I like that word – exploration. The feedback we receive from people who visit and experience St. Louis is surprise and delight. Those are powerful emotions. The Huff Post called us a best kept secret, a hidden gem of a city. As the chief marketing officer for the region, I’m sick and tired of being hidden. I want everyone to find us. But in the meantime, when people get out and explore, they’re surprised and delighted by the region’s treasures.

KLEIN: An experience we’ve had at T-REX as we engage with our partners from DC, for example, is almost this let-your-hair-down vibe that happens when folks come for meetings. You might want to call it accessibility, but I’m reminded of the time NGA Director Vice Admiral Bob Sharp came in in plain clothes. We held a ceremony celebrating his visit, and he met my dog and sat on the floor with him. There were folks there within the military who had never seen a superior do that before. Every time he came back, he did the same thing. There was kind of this lack of formality. There seems to be this ease of communication and less stress here; it’s a slowed down pace.

BOBROFF: What is behind the renaissance taking place in St. Louis?

HALL: If you look at this as a cocktail recipe for the renaissance taking hold in St. Louis, there are four key ingredients. The first is innovation, which is running rampant throughout the community. It’s certainly with Tracy and what she’s doing at AMICSTL, it’s with T-REX and the 250 companies that are starting up in our downtown innovation district. It’s with CORTEX, 39 Degrees North, our food scene and our cultural venues. Innovation is the new us.

Number two, the raw ingredients that are fueling innovation are coming from our educational institutions throughout the community, of which there are 40 colleges, universities and tech schools with a combined enrollment of 150,000 students. We’re very much a college town.

The third ingredient is quality of life; the fact that somebody can buy a condo downtown for under $200,000. It’s the affordability of a single-family home in St. Louis. It’s the fact that so many of our world-class attractions are free. It’s the food and beverage scene and all the amazing restaurants that people can enjoy in this community. Our quality of life cannot be understated.

And then the fourth ingredient is investment. Ten billion dollars of capital has been infused into this region over the last decade. We’re reimagining our entire community from the Gateway Arch grounds up and out. So you combine those four ingredients, and you’ve got a world-class city that is on the move and approaching a tipping point.

HENKE: One other thing I want to add to your recipe is individuals, like those at this table and others who are driving the renaissance. You’ve got to have individuals, some of whom we don’t even know yet, who are passionate, love this metro and are committed to driving change and having the inclusive growth we aspire to have.

BOBROFF: How does Westway’s presence in St. Louis and location at the Globe Building give companies an advantage?

MCCARTY: The Globe Building offers a unique combination of massive internet connectivity and redundant power feeds. It also has robust physical characteristics, including a secure parking structure for all its clients. A lot of people that come into the city don’t want to park in open lots; they want to be secure wherever they’re parking their cars or walking.

The building houses geospatial sector leaders, a secure community and a secure facility along with the NGA campus and the flourishing Downtown North Insight District. It positions St. Louis as the leading contender in attracting geospatial intelligence and related industry because of its location. By lowering the logistical and the financial barriers, St. Louis is poised to become a melting pot for geospatial innovations driving regional economic growth and enforcing its reputation as a future globally competitive hub.

The building’s proximity to NGA is definitely a plus. Within the Globe Building, we can seat over 400 people just on our floor. It’s really close to T-REX and Moonshot Labs, which are right around the corner. It’s walking distance from where we need to be from a classified standpoint to an unclassified innovation hub to where they all talk, mingle and get together.

KLEIN: It is so major for us. In addition to supporting our early-stage advanced IT companies or tech startups, we have this heavy emphasis on geospatial excellence in our building. We don’t have a ton of space, but we have a little bit of a scrappy vibe and are economically accessible for people. Oftentimes companies might be seeking to contract with the federal government, or the NGA, thinking about having a small footprint, but they really need access to exactly what Donna’s talking about. They don’t have that in this building, but it’s right across the parking lot, which is really what’s sparked this Downtown North Insight District. That amazing collaboration between Kitty Radcliffe, Patty Hagen, John Bergland and Steve Stone, all people representing different buildings, and saying, collaborate, leverage our different strengths and go with it, has been massively successful.

MCCARTY: We can’t collaborate as much in the unclassified environment because of the nature of what we do. However, when they’re talking about innovation and collaboration from an unclassified standpoint, we can direct them to The Globe Building or the T-REX site.

KLEIN: How many people in commercial real estate can say comfortably that they work next to somebody who could be a competitor and they figure out how to make it work? I think that’s a very St. Louis quality.

BOBROFF: Can you share some additional examples in which Impact Finance is investing and collaborating in the community?

BOYERS: From an investment perspective, we’ve had the opportunity to partner with some of the region’s most essential non-profits, T-REX being one of them. But there are others more recently like the Tabernacle Community Development Corporation home ownership project in North St. Louis, the Urban League and Delmar Divine, which we’re proud of for completely reimagining what was once the Delmar divide. I also referenced countless other ways our employees collaborate in the community, from boards to neighborhood associations to volunteer activities.

And as I noted, we’ve gotten intentional over the last 10 years since the killing of Michael Brown here in St. Louis. It was a reflection on the need to focus on equity and economic inclusion, and in partnership with the St. Louis Development Corporation (SLDC) and others, we have done things like work with Great Rivers Greenway to center and advance equity through their enormously exciting work on the Brickline. Additionally, we’ve worked with the Brown School at Washington University to support their Racial Equity Fellows program, supporting students who are working in nonprofits for some of their course credentials. We’re trying to build capabilities and help infuse capacity where it can have significant impact.

I have a colleague who’s been instrumental in the work of the Urban Land Institute, and we recently partnered with Greater STL Inc and SLDC to bring a panel of experts from all around the country to develop recommendations for what to do around Keiner Plaza and the Gateway Mall. Those are the less obvious ways we can leverage our expertise and connect with partners around the country to support and ultimately improve St. Louis.

And we also collaborate as informal partners. Some of the relationships we need to continue to invest in require having honest conversations about what our priorities are and what we are doing to bring them to bear. How are we deciding what those priorities are and who’s deciding? There’s a version of collaboration that continues to be essential for us to ask and answer those questions with greater intentionality and effectiveness.

KLEIN: I would say, what’s it going to take? But also stick with it when it gets hard because there are some conversations being had for the first time ever in St. Louis. We’ve got a historically underrepresented group that has not felt a part of this for a very long time, and it’s painful to have some of these conversations. We have to recognize that it’s going to be that way, but we just have to stick with it if we’re going to make awesome change here.

BOBROFF: Why is it still important to support local small businesses, geospatial and otherwise?

KLEIN: Small businesses have always been important to St. Louis. All of our really great large companies like Anheuser-Busch and Purina started as small businesses. They would not have gotten where they are right now if they didn’t have other small businesses supporting them. We’re talking about manufacturers, suppliers, restaurants and stores surrounding them. Big businesses help a lot with job creation, but they’re not going to provide a community with everything it needs, and a lot of the vibrancy of St. Louis is hinging on those hidden gems that you can’t find anywhere else. Small business owners should not be looked to as a money-making opportunity. They need a lot of support until they get their wheels under them, and they’re not going to get it right when they first get started. If we give them some space to fail safely with mentorship, investments and just sticking with them to see what they need to thrive, they can be successful.

HENKE: Small businesses truly are the economic engine. People have great ideas, but people with ideas that don’t have access to funding, mentorship and resources to figure out if their idea will work, fail. Manufacturing calls it the valley of death, so one of the things AMICSTL is working on is leveraging the tremendous resources available among our university partners. They have equipment sitting idle if they’re not in class that small businesses can possibly access. We’re creating collaboration and access for individuals with ideas that don’t have the financial runway to buy a $250,000 piece of equipment to test their idea, but maybe they have a small amount to give to a university to pay for use of equipment and the university can use it as an opportunity for applied learning for students.

At AMICSTL, we will be working to increase the likelihood of success of small manufacturing businesses. Just imagine the conversations that may happen when you bring researchers together from automotive and aerospace and construction, geospatial and healthcare, and how it will de-risk innovation, accelerate innovation and provide an opportunity for entrepreneurs to grow faster and succeed.

Some businesses are always supposed to be small businesses, and we want that, but they also have the opportunity to grow if they want. We have tremendous support in this region with different incubators and programs to help small businesses learn, access capital and get mentorship. At AMICSTL, we will make certain to share information about these programs too.

BOBROFF: How does Westway Services attract small businesses and help the geospatial activity grow in the region?

MCCARTY: About two years ago, the USG met with Westway, a company created for small businesses back in the DC area, because they liked how our business model is geared towards small businesses. We decided to come to St. Louis because it is cost effective for businesses and the services we provide is a secret weapon for St. Louis. Small businesses foster innovation for the USG and the geospatial community. Our model attracts small businesses by providing a low-cost, turn-key secure facility that connects those businesses to the larger USG and intelligence communities. Our model is extremely scalable for small businesses that secure government awards, which fosters and allows growth by bringing additional jobs to the city.

Our contract with the USG requires Westway to set aside a minimum of 25% of our facility for small businesses, and that number is currently sitting at 55%. Whether they’re working on a program or trying to do business development in this area, we’re a hub for them.

BOBROFF: Describe the work of the St. Louis Civic Pride Foundation.

HALL: We have 2.8 million souls that call our metro area home. Just imagine if we converted a large percentage of them into evangelists for our region to network with all the people they know around the world to help spread the word about St. Louis. And if they were to invite people to come to St. Louis and experience our community, we could make a profound difference and accelerate our growth.

Explore St. Louis founded the St. Louis Civic Pride Foundation to turn our residents into ambassadors for the region. One of our signature programs is the Explorer Event Series where we showcase cool people and places around the community. These are free networking and familiarization opportunities designed to highlight the new and innovative experiences available in our region. The lineup has included the National Blues Museum and CITYPARK where we had 300 people checking out the Mich Ultra Club before the stadium even opened. We visited the WWT Raceway and had an event on the infield watching cars run around the track. We experienced the Kirkwood Performing Arts Center, The Armory and Third Degree Glass Factory. Magic Mini Golf in The Loop just took place, and the Danforth Plant Science Center is coming up in August. I invite everyone to learn what is happening in the community because there’s no better way to do it than getting out and exploring. A key point is our promotional efforts are not only about tourism. For example, we believe St. Louis’ innovation community is a great story in its own right and we refer to it often when attracting large conventions. Recently we pitched a scientific group and pointed to Danforth and talked about the fact that we have more plant science PhDs in St. Louis than anywhere on the planet. Jaws drop. It puts more dimension to the destination beyond just having cool things to do.

BOBROFF: How do we foster broader collaboration and support good ideas?

HENKE: We need to invite new people to the table, listen to them and not assume that we always know what’s best. AMICSTL doesn’t even have a building yet, but we’ve been hosting our own regular community engagement sessions and participating in sessions in the Vandeventer, Academy, Sherman Park, Lewis Place and Greater Ville neighborhoods because want to listen to them, involve them and work together to have a broad regional impact. We go and listen because we don’t want to have a building that’s isolated in a community. We want to be part of the community. We need to recognize that everybody can have a good idea. Let’s be willing to fail forward and fail safely then try something new if an idea doesn’t work.

BOBROFF: What can organizations, including businesses and civic institutions, do to work collaboratively and achieve regional progress?

BOYERS: We really do have to think regionally. I might sound like a broken record, but I think that too oft en the challenges the city faces are seen as “city challenges.” You could hope for the most perfect people in all the roles throughout the city of St. Louis, but those are still going to be regional challenges that either will or will not get successfully addressed.

I have stolen a little bit from the principles of Forward through Ferguson, with which we have had an ongoing organizational relationship since its founding. They promote what they call radical collaboration. Among other things, this idea pushes us to collaborate not just with the organizations or people adjacent to us, the ones we know, but also to cast a wider network and collaborate differently. Partnership requires both support and pressure, and I think an honest, healthy collaboration will apply more pressure and an awful lot of support.

HENKE: I’m going to paraphrase St. Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann who said the city of St. Louis is the front door to the region. You’re not going to get to the living room, family room or other rooms if you don’t walk through the front door. We need to realize that many people throughout the region understand the problems and support the region, so they need to be invited to be part of the conversation.