This announcement needs its own thread. Hopefully we can post for years to come what they can bring to the region. The new STL development group combines the STL Chamber, Alliance STL, Civic Progress, Downtown STL Inc, and Arch to Park into one flagship brand working together.
Brought it over here. Good idea to start a new thread!
I’d be nervous if I were peer regions. This is going to be a strong group that is maybe 2x as comprehensive and impactful as neighboring regions leading economic development groups. Jason as leader makes this even more lethal.
Whether publicly or behind the scenes, Civic Progress has been making bold decisions on behalf of St. Louis for 67 years. Putting itself out of business so the region can move forward is perhaps its boldest move yet.
Could not agree more with the above sentiment from Nicklaus.
This is sobering. Ray Hartman points out that 30 years ago, the St. Louis area had 2.5 million people, while Atlanta had 2.7 million. Today, we have 2.8 million, while Atlanta has 6 million. Clearly, we've got to change the way we do things around here.
In college we had a paper we studied from the 1970’s trying to predict which city would be the “Queen” of the south; Atlanta or Birmingham. It was determined that Hartsfield Airport was the primary factor for Atlanta’s growth.
In college we had a paper we studied from the 1970’s trying to predict which city would be the “Queen” of the south; Atlanta or Birmingham. It was determined that Hartsfield Airport was the primary factor for Atlanta’s growth.
Dallas airport was a factor in explosive growth as well. If Columbia-Waterloo had happened, who knows how STL would have been affected. Metros at 5+MM are mega-hubs and entrenched. We could have been that. Not an option now. Or, is it? Could trains in tubes be the 3rd opportunity as a major transport system? We've already screwed up the trains and planes part. Worth pondering.
Atlanta also has a longer warmer weather season and is a 5 hour drive from the ocean. These are facts that are outside our control and play a very big role in Atlanta's growth (in addition to a large airport that is a hub and on the east coast for easy Europe access.). Also, whether we want to admit it or not, the low tax approach of the republican governments in the sunbelt really affects business decisions. Then these things all start building on each other and it kind of because a self-fulfilling prophecy. The irony, of course, is that our state got the worst parts of conservative government, focusing solely on the culture stuff and couldn't put a meaningful case together to get companies to locate to STL or KC. In that absence, our local civic groups could also never pull their sh*t together.
Atlanta also has a longer warmer weather season and is a 5 hour drive from the ocean. These are facts that are outside our control and play a very big role in Atlanta's growth.
How does being 5 hours from the ocean play a very big role in Atlanta's growth?
Atlanta also has a longer warmer weather season and is a 5 hour drive from the ocean. These are facts that are outside our control and play a very big role in Atlanta's growth.
How does being 5 hours from the ocean play a very big role in Atlanta's growth?
It's a natural attraction. Like mountains. It makes it an attractive place to move a workforce to and an attractive place to settle after college, which results in strong workforce. Not that different from nice weather.
Atlanta also has a longer warmer weather season and is a 5 hour drive from the ocean. These are facts that are outside our control and play a very big role in Atlanta's growth.
How does being 5 hours from the ocean play a very big role in Atlanta's growth?
It's a natural attraction. Like mountains. It makes it an attractive place to move a workforce to and an attractive place to settle after college, which results in strong workforce. Not that different from nice weather.
I can see living on or near a coast being a big factor for people - Miami, San Diego, Charleston, etc.... But the ocean hasn't played a "very big role" in Atlanta's history or growth.
Same goes for any number of cities within 5 hours of a coast - Phoenix, Vegas, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Birmingham, San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Reno, etc.... It's just not a big factor economically or as an amenity for residents.
Atlanta has better weather, is near mountains, is near-ish to the ocean, has always been the preeminent transportation HUB of the southeast, and has stolen hundreds of thousands of jobs from places like StL with right-to-work policies. Atlanta also boasts two massive public research universities within the city limits to go along with Emory, Spellman, Morehouse, and Mercer. And on top of that, UGA is only 70 miles away. Another factor in Atlanta's growth that shouldn't be overshadowed, imo, is its emergence as the epicenter of black culture in America.
We should be trying to figure out why growth in the last 30 years has gone to Columbus, Minneapolis, KC and Indy, but not Stl, Cleveland, Det, Cincy and to a lesser extent Chicago.
Another factor in Atlanta's growth that shouldn't be overshadowed, imo, is its emergence as the epicenter of black culture in America.
This is true, a few of my AA friends have left stl for stl bc of this
Meanwhile you got clowns here associated with the Citizens for A Greater Downtown CID doing everything possible to get black people out of downtown.
In college we had a paper we studied from the 1970’s trying to predict which city would be the “Queen” of the south; Atlanta or Birmingham. It was determined that Hartsfield Airport was the primary factor for Atlanta’s growth.
Also remember that the Atlanta metro has several large and long-time local corporations and very wealthy individuals who donate and invest in the city.
14 Fortune 500 and 24 Fortune 1000 companies, including Home Depot, UPS, Coca-Cola, Delta, Southern Energy, NCR, Genuine/Napa Auto, Newell Brands, plus some large private companies like Cox Enterprises, Chick-fil-A, and subsidiaries with a large, local corporate exec and employee presence like Turner Broadcasting, Georgia-Pacific, and SunTrust Bank.
I like Atlanta, but I much prefer the historic cities such as STL. ATL's population growth is almost exclusively outside of the city limits. Also, per capita STL has about the same amount of fortune groups in our MSA. The weather there is nicer, but not by a huge factor. 3 years ago I saw more snow in December in ATL than I did all winter in STL. They also had the Olympics there.
I agree it's better to compare more northern/legacy/historic cities to St. Louis.
I really don't understand how Cleveland keeps getting brought up, their MSA population has gone down in the last 30 years. I think STL has 10x more going for it but Cleveland is doing a great advertising campaign which I think we can improve on. Although when I used to visit friends in Ohio I'd see a TON of ad's for Missouri which included a lot of shots of STL.
In college we had a paper we studied from the 1970’s trying to predict which city would be the “Queen” of the south; Atlanta or Birmingham. It was determined that Hartsfield Airport was the primary factor for Atlanta’s growth.
Also remember that the Atlanta metro has several large and long-time local corporations and very wealthy individuals who donate and invest in the city.
14 Fortune 500 and 24 Fortune 1000 companies, including Home Depot, UPS, Coca-Cola, Delta, Southern Energy, NCR, Genuine/Napa Auto, Newell Brands, plus some large private companies like Cox Enterprises, Chick-fil-A, and subsidiaries with a large corporate exec and employee presence like Turner Broadcasting and Georgia-Pacific.
NCR is a relatively recent addition from Dayton and Newell Brands left Atlanta for Hoboken, NJ but decided to move back last year. Apparently Norfolk Southern will be moving its headquarters to Atlanta from... Norfolk, which is a huge win for Atlanta. So the momentum continues.
It sounds like Birmingham was almost on that level - although perhaps with fewer multinationals. From wikipedia:
Birmingham has seen a noticeable decrease in the number of Fortune 500 companies headquartered in the city, due to mergers, moves, and buy-outs. In 2000, there were ten Fortune 500 companies headquartered in the city, while in 2014 there was only one, Regions Bank. Birmingham also used to be home to more than 30 publicly traded companies, but in 2011 there were only 15.The number has increased since then, but not significantly. Some companies, like Zoës Kitchen, were founded and operated in Birmingham, but moved their headquarters before going public. Birmingham has been on a rebound, though, with the growth of companies like HealthSouth, Infinity Property and Casualty Corp., and Southern Company.
I like Atlanta, but I much prefer the historic cities such as STL. ATL's population growth is almost exclusively outside of the city limits. Also, per capita STL has about the same amount of fortune groups in our MSA. The weather there is nicer, but not by a huge factor. 3 years ago I saw more snow in December in ATL than I did all winter in STL. They also had the Olympics there.
I agree it's better to compare more northern/legacy/historic cities to St. Louis.
I really don't understand how Cleveland keeps getting brought up, their MSA population has gone down in the last 30 years. I think STL has 10x more going for it but Cleveland is doing a great advertising campaign which I think we can improve on. Although when I used to visit friends in Ohio I'd see a TON of ad's for Missouri which included a lot of shots of STL.
Idk if this was directed at me, but I wasn't bringing up Cleveland for any direct comparison to StL. There's no question that nineties and oughts ravaged Det, Cle and Pitt much worse than StL.
Unfortunately the growth of this city is stunted by the city and racial divide. This has been talked about so greatly but also so greatly ignored. Big corporations are scared to set foot in this city or the surrounding areas because they don't want to be attached to stupidity of the metro area. All of the different municipalities are just looking out for themselves and not the growth of the metro area in total.
It's unfortunate to see certain people continue to move further and further out, away from the city just to escape being near certain people. The divide we have is worst than any city in the country and we still are wondering why we are not developing, that large corps. are not moving here, that we keep losing large headquarters. We cant even agree to come together as one large metro city to get anything done.
So we know the reason why we keep failing and falling behind other cities and we need to fix it or get left behind.
^Greater St. Louis Inc. seems like a good sign / starting point of coming together.
^^Cleveland sticks out to me as really underperforming - even by rustbelt standards. Pittsburgh has had a bad two decades, but seems to be turning the corner. Detroit is on its own scale, facing some truly intractable problems as it's lost over 2x the number of people St. Louis has. But Cleveland has underperformed all of its peer cities except Pittsburgh. Canton and Youngstown, two of its smaller satellite cities, have faired even worse.
I'd like to post a few excerpts from the Hartmann article I linked above (for those who just want the Cliff's Notes version):
"Jason Hall has his work cut out for him.
Hall was named last week as CEO of Greater St. Louis Inc., an amalgamation of five business and advocacy groups — most notably including Civic Progress — into one organization that at last can speak with clarity and diversity for the business community. It represents a serious step forward, not just for business types, but for the community.
No doubt it will take more than restructuring to turn St. Louis around. The systemic problems related to crime, education, racism, elitism, urban sprawl, transportation, the environment, an inept political class, a declining corporate base and a lack of civic cohesion are not getting fixed overnight.
"We've got to up our game here," said Andy Taylor, founding chair of Greater St. Louis Inc. "It's very apparent that some of these other cities (in the Midwest) are ahead of us."
That admission by the region's premier civic leader was astonishing to those of us old enough to remember a generation of Taylor's predecessors with no such humility. Taylor, executive chairman of Enterprise Holdings, seems to get it. That shows with the CEO selection of Hall, who at 45 doesn't look or sound anything like any key player before him from St. Louis' stodgy and aristocratic business elite.
Like it or not, American cities rise or fall based upon the quality, character and performance of their respective business elites. That's doubtlessly annoying to those resentful of the disfigured capitalism of our times, but it is real. And our team hasn't been so good.
Atlanta had done it with attitude. Here's a little more from that piece, citing a celebratory editorial in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It had noted that the two key figures were the "salt and pepper" team of Billy Payne a white civic leader and Ambassador Andrew Young, a Black civic leader. "Atlanta was selected, not in spite of its biraciality, but in important part, because of its biraciality," the newspaper wrote.
It's going to keep going in the wrong direction until the powers-that-be in St. Louis recognize something that their counterparts in Atlanta figured out a long time ago: that the sharing of power — racially, economically, politically and culturally — can create a spirit, and unleash an energy, that as the fellow from Atlanta put it, is 'just about unbeatable.'
They don't think of doing things from the top down in Atlanta, like they do in the rich-white-male-only Civic Progress elite in St. Louis. They talk about unity and spirit and biraciality. We bicker and make jokes about East St. Louis.
In St. Louis unity doesn't ever seem to extend beyond one's own limited circle of activity, beyond one's economic or ethnic or political sphere. . . Maybe that will begin to change with a civic reset. Hall, a native of Granite City, sees St. Louis through a much more regional lens than most. More important, he seems quite serious about diversity of all sorts in the process and about focusing on the future with respect to growing the economy through an emphasis on new technologies and the like.
Good luck to Jason Hall and company. This isn't going to be easy".
I like Atlanta, but I much prefer the historic cities such as STL. ATL's population growth is almost exclusively outside of the city limits. Also, per capita STL has about the same amount of fortune groups in our MSA. The weather there is nicer, but not by a huge factor. 3 years ago I saw more snow in December in ATL than I did all winter in STL. They also had the Olympics there.
And you can't overestimate just how huge those Olympic Games were for Atlanta either. The Olympics brought a ton of tourist revenue, Federal dollars, too many infrastructure improvements to list, and corporate investments in hotels and entertainment; much more than most Olympic cities, actually. It was one of the few Summer Olympics to turn a profit.
The global positive impression and recognition of a well-organized and well-supported Olympics transformed Atlanta's image from sleepy, backwater, relic of the old south to a thoroughly modern, international city. Of course now, there's a lot of reason to believe they probably bought the selection committee, but whether Atlanta won the selection competition legitimately or not, it would never have happened without all of the local corporate support and an international corporation like Coca-Cola taking the lead.
What do all of these combined organizations hope to do? Advocate for regional mergers (one St. Louis city/police/school district/taxation structure/electorate), drum up convention business, advocate for existing local businesses expanding? Bring new corporations to the region? Put STL first over the burbs/end sprawl? What have these individual groups accomplished in the last ten years? What do they hang their hat on, and what should we be hopeful for now the they are combined? I'm hopeful as consolidation tends to bring strength and cooperation. How big is this?
