urbanSTL

dbInSouthCity wrote:Second thing was Bob of LHM wanting I see STL county government relocate to downtown

And him working with Andrew Bailey (now at the fbi) to combine city and county crime data

This would be game changing to fairly square up and rank our crime rate with other places. I believe St Louis may be the only city in the Midwest that includes zero inner suburbs within its city limits — set in 1876. Not sure about Chicago. As AI says, media ranking of crime by city limits for small core cities with larger metros is invalid. But they all do it anyway.


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Combing city and county crime statistics is huge!  I've been wanting to see this for years.  This can't happen soon enough. 

https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/new ... stats.html

dredger wrote: ↑

Dec 10, 2025

stlokc wrote: ↑

Dec 10, 2025

I don't really understand AI and I crack jokes about how little I understand it, but using AI or some other means, I wonder if there is a way to create a list of every business in St. Louis County that is owned by somebody who lives in St. Louis City. 

Don't really see this as a constructive avenue to pursue.  First, more of the same culture of dividing.  Second, wouldn't county and surrounding region/communities just do the same thing?

You are such weak sauce. Milquetoast.

StL County’s entire economic model is based on sucking capital out of the city. Good for the City for fighting back.

Love to see Bob taking the business lead on Downtown. About time someone in our Biz community did.

Love to see the extra beat policing. Mounties are a great choice.

stlokc wrote: ↑

Dec 10, 2025

I don't really understand AI and I crack jokes about how little I understand it, but using AI or some other means, I wonder if there is a way to create a list of every business in St. Louis County that is owned by somebody who lives in St. Louis City. 

Or another query could be a list of companies in the county that were either founded or at one point headquartered downtown (or even just the city itself).  Monsanto (Bayer), Edward Jones, Armstrong Teasdale, Energizer, Edgewell Personal Care, RGA, and (recently) Peabody Energy are all firms that at one point called downtown home - though some were many many years ago.  I'd imagine there are many more.

This thread is really aspirational today.
(1) St. Louis County will move County office to the City, not within the County.
(2) St. Louis County will submit crime data significantly higher than their own to benefit the City.
(3) St. Louis County will sit while Downtown plucks companies out of Chesterfield.

I think all of those sound reasonable and better for the region but ask a lot from a fairly rigid or selfish population and politicians.

Might be weak sauce but as I sit on a plane that is about to land at DFW and see a booming region that embraces Dallas, Forth Worth and every other community and read a great article about Columbus OH in Wall Street Journal calling it in part the one metro area that remotely comes close to matching the boomtowns of Southeast.    

Go on, great idea, and let the region try to screw each other even more while the metrics are on sub par as a whole and at best treading water. 

Yes, I do agree with your comments on what Bob w LHM advocating.   

MRNHS wrote:

stlokc wrote: ↑

Dec 10, 2025

I don't really understand AI and I crack jokes about how little I understand it, but using AI or some other means, I wonder if there is a way to create a list of every business in St. Louis County that is owned by somebody who lives in St. Louis City. 

Or another query could be a list of companies in the county that were either founded or at one point headquartered downtown (or even just the city itself).  Monsanto (Bayer), Edward Jones, Armstrong Teasdale, Energizer, Edgewell Personal Care, RGA, and (recently) Peabody Energy are all firms that at one point called downtown home - though some were many many years ago.  I'd imagine there are many more.

Here is ChatGPTs partial list of St. Louis County companies.

Alphabetical, with HQ municipality in parentheses)
• Alberici Corp. – construction & engineering (Overland) 
• Amdocs – telecom/IT software & services (Chesterfield) 
• Arch Resources / Core Natural Resources – coal / natural resources (Creve Coeur) 
• Ascension Health – Catholic health system (Edmundson) 
• Bayer CropScience (formerly Monsanto) – ag biotech & seeds (Creve Coeur) 
• Belden – industrial networking & cable (Clayton) 
• Boeing Defense, Space & Security – defense & aerospace (Berkeley) 
• Bunge (Global operations HQ / Bunge North America) – agribusiness & food (Chesterfield) 
• Caleres – footwear (Clayton) 
• Cass Information Systems – payment & info services (St. Louis County) 
• Centene Corporation – health insurance (Clayton) 
• Clayco, Inc. – design-build / construction (Overland) 
• Core & Main – water & wastewater infrastructure distribution (unincorporated St. Louis County) 
• Daugherty Systems – IT consulting (Creve Coeur) 
• Dierbergs Markets – grocery chain (Chesterfield) 
• Doe Run Company – mining & metals (Maryland Heights) 
• Drury Hotels – hotel company (Creve Coeur) 
• Edgewell Personal Care – consumer products (Chesterfield) 
• Edward Jones – financial services / brokerage (Des Peres) 
• Emerson Electric Co. – industrial technology & automation (Ferguson) 
• Energizer Holdings – batteries & household products (Town and Country) 
• Enterprise Holdings (Enterprise / National / Alamo) – car rental & mobility (Clayton) 
• Equifax Workforce Solutions – HR / payroll data services (Maryland Heights) 
• Express Scripts – pharmacy benefit management (unincorporated North St. Louis County, near UMSL) 
• Graybar Electric Company – electrical & data networking distribution (Clayton) 
• Hussmann Corp. – refrigeration equipment (Bridgeton) 
• Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals – specialty pharmaceuticals (Hazelwood) 
• Maritz – sales & marketing services, incentives (Fenton) 
• McCarthy Building Companies – large construction contractor (Ladue) 
• Mercy Health – health system (Chesterfield) 
• MiTek – building products & software (Chesterfield) 
• Nidec Motor Corporation – electric motors (Ferguson) 
• Olin Corporation – chemicals & Winchester ammunition (Clayton) 
• Panera Bread (St. Louis Bread Co.) – bakery-café chain, now headquartered in Fenton after moving from Sunset Hills 
• Post Holdings – packaged foods (Brentwood) 
• Rabo AgriFinance – ag finance (Chesterfield) 
• Rawlings Sporting Goods – sports equipment (Town and Country) 
• Reinsurance Group of America (RGA) – life & health reinsurance (Chesterfield) 
• Save-A-Lot – discount grocery chain (St. Ann) 
• Schnuck Markets – regional supermarket chain (Maryland Heights) 
• Soft Surroundings – apparel & home goods retail (Creve Coeur) 
• SSM Health – health system (Creve Coeur) 
• Suddenlink Communications – telecom (Town and Country) 
• Tacony Corporation – sewing & floor-care products (Fenton) 
• TDK Technologies – IT consulting (Chesterfield) 
• Vi-Jon Laboratories – personal care manufacturing (Overland) 
• World Wide Technology – IT services & integration (Maryland Heights) 


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All of this sounds very promising & exciting… all I would like to see is. Downtown St.Louis be a better downtown St.Louis doesn’t need to be 24-7 life like some of the big cities but a city that’s alive in its own way. The upcoming years sound great


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Bob and Steve O are all in on a number of fronts in downtown. A lot of is still behind the scenes locally and state level.

dredger wrote: ↑

Dec 10, 2025

Might be weak sauce but as I sit on a plane that is about to land at DFW and see a booming region that embraces Dallas, Forth Worth and every other community and read a great article about Columbus OH in Wall Street Journal calling it in part the one metro area that remotely comes close to matching the boomtowns of Southeast.    

Go on, great idea, and let the region try to screw each other even more while the metrics are on sub par as a whole and at best treading water. 

Yes, I do agree with your comments on what Bob w LHM advocating.   

You see a region booming because of (1) oil and gas and (2) its state bordering Mexico making it the #1 US beneficiary of NAFTA.

I really like the idea of small and under the radar office presences for the suburban companies in Downtown. I think it could really help some of these companies with employee attraction and retention for those who don't want to live in a suburban hellscape or commute 30-45 minutes to get there. Kind of a compromise between remote working and working from the office, it would give employees a choice of where they would like to work. I would bet a decent % of workers at most of these companies would be interested in an option to work at a downtown satellite office.

During the past mayoral election I felt it as a toss up for my vote between TJ and CS, what pushed me to Cara was the ringing endorsement of the business community. It felt like a carrot being held up that there could be an effort to return businesses to downtown should she win.

Now the results are still yet to play out, but I think her tenure will be defined by if she is able to get the downtown business community growing again. If she pulls it off, great. If not, then she will probably be viewed as another failure. The tornado has already likely put population growth out of reach for her tenure so downtown is her one big chance.

I think you’ll see stuff built on top of garages in downtown before end of this decade

Took the family to a quick pit stop at WinterFest on Friday before going to Brewery Lights. It was great to see people out and enjoying downtown. Kiener and CityGarden looked beautiful; the dead/dark bloc containing Twain made for a rather unpleasant contrast.

dbInSouthCity wrote:I think you’ll see stuff built on top of garages in downtown before end of this decade

I’m not aware of any parking structures capable of this outside the Park Pacific….

I believe the Kiener Garages were built with this in mind. 

The Kiener garages were built to be able to support a structure on top. I used to have an image of a massing model way back in the day, but who knows where that is now. With their current age, I'm not sure if this would still be feasible without substantial upgrades, and they are still terribly ugly without a reskin.

Unfortunately, I don't believe the Park Pacific garage was ultimately built for anything on top. They cheaped out and built a pre-cast structure that is only meant to support itself and the vehicles.

Honky Tonk closes on S 4th. Such good momentum in our little music quarter/blues on broadway thing we had going and the momentum is gone. Obviously lost Billy’s on Broadway quickly, Unfortunately, there are a few awesome people trying to make downtown music work in an old StL fashion (just imagine if our whole south downtown still had all of these row buildings, so sad we destroyed them), but there are several horrible horrible property owners in the same area who only try to get buildings to burn down or be demoed so they can sell parking or to fast food or some other slop.

Stinks that what I thought could be a cool little corner never got to its full fruition because we refused to make the area cleaner and more accessible to pedestrians and let neglectful property owners win.

dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑

Dec 19, 2025

Met with Paul Larson today. As most of you know, they bought their Downtown HQ in January 2020, then COVID hit.

Paul said they’re finally seeing real positive traction Downtown after a rough 2021–2023. He’s opening a fast-casual spot in the building and is generally bullish on Downtown in 2026.

We need more leaders like him

What does "real positive traction" mean ?

STLAPTS wrote: ↑

Dec 19, 2025

dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑

Dec 19, 2025

Met with Paul Larson today. As most of you know, they bought their Downtown HQ in January 2020, then COVID hit.

Paul said they’re finally seeing real positive traction Downtown after a rough 2021–2023. He’s opening a fast-casual spot in the building and is generally bullish on Downtown in 2026.

We need more leaders like him

What does "real positive traction" mean ?

Overall, with entertainment district/security, downtown TIF on the way, soon to be filed state bill regarding development, office bleeding has mostly stopped to Clayton, some will steal leave but most are shuffling around downtown when leases are up.