Smurfit-Stone to build new St. Louis headquarters

St. Louis Business Journal

03/04/05



Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. plans to consolidate its St. Louis-area headquarters employees into a new building in Creve Coeur, Mo., it said Friday.



The packaging company said it has signed a letter of intent to lease 140,000 square feet at CityPlace in a new building expected to be completed by the end of 2006. It plans to move its 500 area headquarters employees currently in Clayton and Chesterfield, Mo. and Alton, Ill., to the new facility.



Patrick Moore, chairman, president and chief executive, said the company has outgrown its facilities since it set up a headquarters in Clayton nearly 20 years ago, and having them in one facility would be more efficient and effective and help attract and retain employees.



Chicago-based Smurfit-Stone Container employs more than 1,500 in the St. Louis area and manufactures corrugated container and containerboard.



Source

Why don't they just officially move the headquarters here. It is here for all intents and purposes. I'm sure they just have a Chicago address for the prestige.



Article from the PD



St. Louis County lures 300 jobs from Alton

By Eric Heisler

Of the Post-Dispatch

03/04/2005



Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. will move 300 jobs from Alton to Creve Coeur as part of a deal with St. Louis County that could net the company up to $4.2 million in tax breaks.



Those workers will move into a new 10-story headquarters building just off Interstate 270 and Olive Boulevard, where they'll be joined by 200 employees from Clayton and a dozen or so from Chesterfield, under the deal unveiled Friday.



Smurfit-Stone, a Fortune 500 producer of boxes and other packaging, is making the move to unite workers scattered throughout the region, company officials said.



Smurfit-Stone eyed other sites, they said. But the tax breaks helped to seal the deal for St. Louis County, luring the 300 Illinois jobs and keeping the 200 Clayton workers, county officials said.



"Of course I'm excited," said County Executive Charlie Dooley. "When someone tells you they're going to move jobs someplace else, you take it very seriously. We need to do this to expand our tax base and keep our tax burden low."



Smurfit-Stone, an $8 billion-a-year company, is officially based in Chicago. But the Creve Coeur building will act more like a headquarters. Chairman and Chief Executive Patrick J. Moore will have his office there, and Smurfit-Stone will have more employees in Creve Coeur than in Chicago.



Currently, the company's area base is in Clayton, but its office staff is spread out in at least five buildings in three cities.



"We decided that as we continue to try to increase our business, we need to have everybody in the St. Louis area under one roof," said spokesman Tom Lange.



That resulted in a search that scanned many locations. Sites in Edwardsville and Alton, where predecessor Jefferson Smurfit was based, were among the finalists, Lange said.



Smurfit-Stone will begin moving workers into the new building at Creve Coeur's CityPlace in 2006, Lange said. The company should save $280,000 to $420,000 annually because of the tax breaks, county officials said. Construction will begin later this year.



Smurfit-Stone will take up two-thirds of the building. The company's presence will mean an investment of up to $41 million, county officials said.



While it's not technically a St. Louis-area company, Smurfit-Stone would rank fifth among the region's publicly traded companies, just ahead of Monsanto Co.



CityPlace, which is being developed by Koman Group, currently is made up of four buildings at Olive and I-270. A $100 million expansion will add the Smurfit-Stone building, a smaller office building, some condos and retail, Koman Group said.



The Smurfit-Stone deal will go before the County Council for approval as early as next week, Dooley said.



The tax breaks will mean a 50 percent discount on real estate and property taxes on the building over the next 10 years. Part of the tax breaks hinge on whether Smurfit-Stone later invests in new machinery, county officials said. Without that investment, the tax breaks would equal $3.3 million.



Reporter Eric Heisler

E-mail: eheisler@post-dispatch.com

Phone: 314-340-8183



source

This is great news, though they should just move there HQ from Chicago to here. This is a nice addition to Creve Coeur and will be a cornerstone in their Central Business District development. Thats in the planning phase.

Is the building up of Creve Coeur's business district good?

I mean Clayton stole from Downtown STL, and now CC is taking from Clayton. What's next? Will Chesterfield become urban? Once Creve Coeur was like Chesterfield is today in some respects. If City Place was to expand north I would be saddened because it means less development in STL City and the taking over of Orchard Lakes subdivision where my violin teacher and the home of many well off minorities in Parkway reside. Of Parkway areas this is the most diverse which are the neighborhoods that fead children into Craig elementary. We want the CWE, Downtown and many other places to grow more urban not for Creve Coeur to go beyond its boundaries to prevent such. There is a limit for suburbs and Kirkwood is more apt to be urban than Creve Coeur.



So is it good?

Maybe if CC's urban development stopped after a few projects more.

10-intuition wrote:This is great news, though they should just move there HQ from Chicago to here.

I agree. I'm reserved, but I think it's envitable.

good lesson.

I once cringed when listening to a speaker refer to St. Louis as an "exit ramp economy" with no true central business district. It's great when a company moves into the St. Louis area, but I'm beginning to wonder about the future of downtown as an office/business district.



What downtown needs is a new, large class A office building. Companies that move often can't find the contiguous space they need downtown. Building a new building to suit often takes a lot of time, money, and cutting through red tape. Would Express Scripts or Smurit-Stone be considering a downtown location if new office space were available? Maybe.