Entrepreneurial American Community Award

For having one of the most remarkable city center transformations in the nation.

In the late 1990’s, the downtown of the City of St. Louis was struggling to keep up with the spreading suburbanization and relocation of people, entertainment, retail, and business. To counteract this problem, a public/private partnership was formed in 1997 to develop a five to seven-year plan for revitalizing downtown St. Louis, which became known as the Downtown Now! Action Plan. Led by the City of St. Louis, the St Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association, Downtown Saint Louis Partnership, St. Louis 2004, and a non-profit created later named Downtown Now!, the effort has been a stunning success and has led to a vibrant revival of the downtown area.

Since the plan was officially adopted in 1999, there has been one of the most remarkable center city transformations in the nation, with $3.3 billion in investment downtown, and another $1 billion projected. In addition to the groups involved in the plan, Mayor Francis Slay has been a key leader, helping to attract new investment and revitalize historic neighborhoods throughout the City of St. Louis. There has been major growth of new residential development, which has added over 1,300 units downtown in the last five years. With the State of Missouri's aggressive 25% historic tax credit, many of these new residential projects have come out of the reuse of historic buildings, thus filling spaces that have laid empty for years, and prompting many new retailers and restaurants to open businesses in downtown.

Three keystones spurring current development have led to other remarkable changes. Today, the Washington Avenue corridor, formerly a garment district, is bursting with new loft space and businesses that take advantage of the old abandoned warehouse space. The Old Post Office has been renovated for mixed-use, and includes space for Webster University, the Missouri Court of Appeals, and other offices and retail. Finally, St. Louis will open a new baseball stadium in March of 2006, turning the location of the old stadium into a mixed-use district with a public plaza for gathering before and after games.

The Downtown Now! Action Plan was created to mobilize St. Louis to carry out change instead of just talking about it. Nationally-syndicated urban affairs columnist for The Washington Post Neal Peirce, who once observed that the urban core was near death, recently celebrated the renewed spirit of the region’s center city. “Now, praise the Lord, your center city certainly does seem to be on a recovery path,” he noted. “The big, visible headline of your change is your downtown.” He described the turnaround of downtown St. Louis over the past several years as the most significant he has ever witnessed. Indeed, it is the spirit of St. Louis and all of the organizations involved in guiding development that has successfully re-energized the downtown area and the entire St. Louis region.