A city of St. Louis board has completed the acquisition of a former electric company headquarters in north St. Louis to use as a workforce development hub.
The Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority, the city’s urban renewal board, this week acquired the 15-acre former Killark Electric headquarters at 3940 Martin Luther King Drive, consisting of a 150,000-square-foot building and 29 vacant parcels. An LCRA spokeswoman declined to disclose the purchase price.

After Killark vacated the site in 2018 to move to Fenton Logistics Park, the property was most recently owned by Dismas House, the operator of a halfway house at a separate site in north St. Louis. Funds to purchase the building came from federal pandemic funds passed through a city agency, the St. Louis Community Development Administration, according to a news release. The resolution that the LCRA approved in May to acquire the property had a price tag of $4.25 million for what was called the “Killark Properties Acquisition, Stabilization and Redevelopment Program.” A 5.57-acre property that was part of the acquisition was appraised at $440,000 this year by the city assessor’s office.
The LCRA is staffed by the city’s economic agency, St. Louis Development Corp., which will operate the workforce development hub after stabilizing and transforming the property, according to the release. A spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the cost of the project.
The hub will be a center of training for manufacturing and other high-paying, in-demand jobs, according to the release.
“We are so proud to plant our flag in the heart of North City as an anchor along one of the corridors where our redevelopment and Economic Justice efforts are centered,” SLDC President and CEO Neal Richardson said in a statement. “This is a long-term investment in the future of St. Louis, and we look forward to opening our doors to the community in 2024.”
The SLDC will partner with other agencies in the region so that the facility’s programming “complements and leverages” existing training efforts, and the agency plans to use the workforce hub as an extension of the $55 million future Advanced Manufacturing and Innovation Center. Various business leaders are working on that project, which will be built nearby, next to the campus of Ranken Technical College.