The St. Louis Council of the Boy Scouts of America plans to sell its current Central West End property and search for a new headquarters.
The Boy Scouts’ Greater St. Louis Area Council owns its longtime home at 4568 W. Pine Blvd., which it has occupied since the 1960s, and will search for a new headquarters building to buy that would total around 25,000 square feet, said CEO Joe Sadewasser.

The organization didn't give an asking price for its current property, which the city appraises at $759,000. The new building could be in either the city of St. Louis or St. Louis County, but should be a central location near major roads since the council has groups across the region, in Missouri and Illinois, Sadewasser said. It serves about 25,000 Scouts, making it one of the five largest local Boy Scouts organizations in the country.
Other nonprofits have cited financials considerations in looking to pitch their Central West End properties as redevelopment opportunities, but Sadewasser said that's not the case for his group.
The organization has considered making a move and upgrading space for about a decade, and the time seems right to find a more modern space with better technology for hybrid meetings and access for the organization’s nearly 100 full-time employees, Sadewasser said. Not all the employees work out of the Central West End, since the organization has other offices and covers a broad geographic territory, and many work a hybrid schedule, he said.
“Our building itself just doesn’t meet the needs anymore of what we need to do,” Sadewasser said. “Everybody’s so busy in today’s world. So we really want to leverage the facility and the technology connectivity to be able to make it easier to spread the impact, advance our mission, and that’s what gets us excited. How do we rethink our ability to serve the community? I think this gives us the opportunity to do that.”

Membership in the St. Louis Council has increased since the pandemic and is still growing, Sadewasser said.
The council considered renovating its current building, but as a nonprofit had to weigh the cost to fully modernize the building compared with moving, Sadewasser said.
There’s no time deadline for the move since the council owns the site and has no loan or lease on the property, he said. The organization also does not want to move more than once, and hopes to occupy the new site for decades, Sadewasser said. The plan to sell its primary headquarters does not affect the organization’s other offices or camp sites located throughout the region, he said.
The organization has hired commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield to conduct the site search to find the new regional office location, according to a news release. Brokers working on the project are Mike Hanrahan, Matt Stephens and Jack Gentile.