urbanSTL

Tom Osha, managing director of innovation and economic development at Wexford Equities, said Cortex is in negotiations with two Fortune 100 companies to set up shop in the Cortex innovation district in Midtown.


http://m.bizjournals.com/stlouis/blog/b ... 462&r=full

shadrach wrote:

Presbyterian wrote:Wexford is developing tech space for another 2000 jobs on Duncan in CORTEX.

Long-rumored Google? Or something else?

Over drinks at Sasha's two weeks ago (consider the context) a trusted, plugged-in friend told me 'a major startup is relocating their headquarters to Cortex and to look for an announcement in a month and half.'

Between sips I blurted out 'Calico.'

But that's all he knew. Or willing to share. Good gravy!! It would be a perfect fit and change the city overnight.
Alright, I'm gonna stop dreaming. Happy Friday.

Of all the 13,000+ jobs CORTEX will have, how many will be employing local talent vs. moving people here from out of state?

There are only a handful of Fortune 100 companies that make sense for Cortex. Maybe 8-10 research companies that stick out: Boeing, DuPont, Dow, Pfizer, Merck Abbott Labs, ADM, Google.

wabash wrote:There are only a handful of Fortune 100 companies that make sense for Cortex. Maybe 8-10 research companies that stick out: Boeing, DuPont, Dow, Pfizer, Merck Abbott Labs, ADM, Google.

Well DuPont already has a presence at Cortex. ADM is headed for Chicago. Pfizer laid off a bunch of people not too long ago and is suburban based.

I remember a couple of months ago GoneCorporate said that Google was ready to make a presence in the area. Now that Google is looking to buy Square, a start up founded in St. Louis, they may be scouting our start up scene for potential investment opportunities. I honestly feel that St. Louis is on the cusp of a major tech boom and the major tech player that bets big on St. Louis first will make any investment back tenfold. I wouldn't be surprised if many companies start putting major back office operations in the area. St. Louis has a lot of potential and is way cooler than cities like Austin and Raleigh/Durham that get a crapload of positive national press, imagine what will happen when St. Louis gets rediscovered. We could see a lot of coastal transplants ranting and raving about how you can get a brownstone for pennies on the dollar here. Most outsiders have no concept of what St. Louis is really like and assume we are Indianapolis with an Arch and baseball team.

I want to go out on a limb and say the region is going to land a Google branch and Boeing Innovation Center.

^Boeing is an interesting thought but not sure what to think as they announced a major reshuffling of their commercial engineering force. Believe they are relocating 1000 engineering jobs out of Washington to Long Beach-Southern California to be their global customer service base. Unions calling it job cost saving move. Boeing calling it a means to attract and retain your workforce. I'm pretty sure having access to LAX international flights is also playing a big part.

On one hand, basing an IT out of St. Louis makes sense as it centrally located between their commercial units in Washington, LA-Long Beach (maybe Jet Blue wants to do a STL-Long Beach flight) and Charleston while being located in the city where its defense unit is based. Cost of business is certainly cheaper and you don't need to send engineers all over the world. On the other hand, I really don't see as a good fix for CORTEX and they have multiple facilities available to them already.

Pfizer makes a lot of sense to me in terms of them eventually moving out of the campus they sold to Monsanto. It would be an opportunity to consolidate their suburban locations in one spot as well as be collaborate with Dupont, Wash U, etc. in research campus setting. Maybe their ready to bring back a bigger research presence now that Wexford from Mass is becoming a big developer of space.

^ Thanks for the correction, for some reason I thought Wexford was out of Mass.

Cortex WILL get the Boeing Innovation center but I do not think this is a game changer (granted it is better than the moving to Chicago), as they are already in STL. I think we need to see a corporation from out of town move into Cortex. Google, Yahoo, Square, would all be great, however, I would take Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce.

^ I actually think us landing the Boeing Innovation Center at Cortex is a gamechanger. Boeing has a heavy presence in the suburbs, but this will be really big for the city. Having a big name like Boeing in Cortex gives the district even more credibility on a local, national, and international level. I do agree, landing Google, Yahoo, Square, Microsoft operations would be awesome. I'm waiting on GoneCoporate to respond, he sad a few months back that Google was looking at the area.

I am pretty sure it is coming to Cortex. I would be shocked if it does not.

I wonder if Monsanto has future plans for a CORTEX location. Also, does the projected 13,000 CORTEX employees include Midtown Station/IKEA? I would think not. And another thing: once the CORTEX area is finally close to being totally built up, what's next? I mean it's planned for 7 phases, to be finished in 2025, if I am not mistaken. But what after? Will there be any parking lots left there to build over? Could it expand south down Vandeventer? Perhaps as they run out of land they will start building taller if the demand is there, right?

I would not be surprised if Monsanto opened offices in Cortex. I think the IKEA numbers do count towards Cortex totals. I believe Vandeventer south of 40/64 will see increased economic renewal once IKEA gets completed. It will not take 10 years.

Isn't CORTEX's long-term plan supposed to take until 2025 to be complete?

I'm pretty sure all of that will be finished before 2020. I hope we hear more about Midtown Station soon, too. With IKEA set to break ground in two months, the time is near that PACE should start releasing more information. How many people are supposed to work there? I really hope the Midtown Trestle isn't put on the back burner. Imagine being a SLU student from another state and you get off at the CORTEX station and ride your back to school the on the trestle! What would that do to our image? How would that alter their friends' perception of STL back home? I tell you what, it would be a lot better than "Oh yeah, my school sits next to an abandoned industrial site..."

http://www.stltoday.com/business/column ... 391f0.html

expect to here more soon

^ Sounds like CORTEX is taking the same approach for building residential units that McKee is taking by bringing in home builders, developers for his Northside project. My bet is CORTEX will get this site built before McKee gets the dozen or so houses built (or maybe it was more) that he was talking about late last year or early this year but could be wrong. Helps when you can put out the fact that their is a good chance of phase IV 500,000 sq feet of development that will support well paying jobs. However, I don't have a clue on how far McKee is along with his plans and who knows how much CORTEX is asking for in their proposed lease.

Personally I would like to see CORTEX be all about jobs with some hotel rooms/extended stay lodging/retail in there. Let multi residential infill CWE, Midtown, FPSE with hopefully some single residential units coming back to near north side within McKee's footprint.

Cortex is pretty well established as to where McKee's north side isn't. Theirs already well paying jobs in Cortex and with the possible rumors of a couple of fortune 100 companies eyeing STL's Cortex this will justify putting more residents into the already burgeoning area.. I'm Pulling for McKee love to see his project succeed not just for that area but all of North STL.