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Above: Some of the members of the Steering Committee for Discover! 370 study a map of Missouri's High-Tech Connector. (left to right) Dr. Harold Law, president DATA; Laura Pendino, St. Peters director of Communication; Shirley Foster, St. Peters economic development coordinator; Hyatt Bangert, vice president Millstone Bangert; David Leezer, St. Charles County director of business development; Nadine Boon, director of economic development for the city of St. Charles; and Rocco Russo, vice president of real estate lending for Enterprise Bank.
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Communities on both sides of the Missouri River are singing “Hands Across the Water” to grow technology investment along Highway 370.
By Kevin Kipp
Be careful what you ask for around St. Charles, because there’s a good chance you’ll get it.
That’s what Nadine Boon and Hyatt Bangert learned this year. She’s the economic development director for the city of St. Charles. He’s a vice president at Millstone Bangert Inc., and the lead person developing that outfit’s 472-acre Fountain Lakes Commerce Center.
Fountain Lakes is rising from the former flood plain at the intersection of Elm Street and Highway 370, on the city’s northwest shoulder.
When Boon & Bangert got together to discuss how they could promote the development, they heard a knock. It was opportunity, and before they could say “my-tailor-is-rich,” an initiative was born to promote Missouri’s newest transportation corridor: Discover! 370: Missouri’s High-Tech Connector.
“This thing just grew arms and legs,” Boon beams. “It took on a life all its own.”
First Boon and Bangert pressed into service Keith Schneider, vice president of Colliers Turley Martin Tucker, and Craig Felzien, External Affairs Manager at Southwestern Bell.
Then the city of St. Charles’ Economic Development Commission bought in at the urging of Dr. Harold Law, president of DATA, a high-tech defense contractor.
Schneider who represents Fountain Lakes, also sits on Boon’s commission. He says the group heard Law loud and clear: “We all agreed that 370 has a lot of virtues for development, and for high-tech development in particular.”
After Law’s counsel, Boon talked with Greg Prestemon, president of the Economic Development Center of St. Charles County, and he said, “Let’s go.”
Craig Felzien, talked to Brian Pratt from the City of Hazelwood and St. Peters alderman Betty Woelfel, and they said, “Let’s go.”
Ed Pundmann, of Pundmann Ford, Shirley Foster, economic development coordinator for St. Peters, Pratt, and Boon presented the idea to the RCGA’s Dick Fleming, and he said, “What a great addition for the region!”
Soon the initiative had backing from Kevin Kast, President/CEO/Market Executive at SSM St. Joseph Health Center; Ray Harmon of Hasco International/First Foto; Solutech’s Randy Schilling; former St. Charles Chamber president Jan Beardsley, Minuteman Press; real estate attorney Keith Hazelwood; Enterprise Bank’s Rocco Russo…and others.
How to explain High-Tech Connector’s popularity?
Add it up, Schneider says, and then rattles off half-a-dozen reasons, including: “The infrastructure’s in place, the fiber optics are in place, you have executive housing right there, and already they’re other high-tech business on the Connector. High tech attracts high tech.”
And so, “Companies like Boeing, Patriot Machines, Franklin Electronics, Western Union, and Mallinckrodt in St. Louis County reinforce the value of their locations by attracting other technology-invested companies,” he says.
At a Discover! 370 breakfast in St. Charles in early November, one speaker after another hailed the area’s potential for the hundreds of business and civic leaders who assembled to discover 370.
Boon estimates that some 5,000 acres can be developed along the six-lane, 12-mile roadway. She provided this summary:
According to SWB’s Felzien, the St. Peters Centre special business district, just south of 370’s merge with I-70, and Fountain Lakes are both SWB-certified FiberParks: Fiber’s in the ground, ready to go.
Moreover, a looped, backbone fiber network was installed along the entire length of Highway 370, Felzien says. “What Southwestern Bell’s investment means is that any new business needing high-speed, high-tech applications can get connected before their ribbon-cutting.”
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Park, Municipality
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Acres
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Park 370, Hazelwood
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340 acres
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370 Corporate Center, St. Charles
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77 acres
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Elm Point Business Park, St. Charles
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400 acres
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Fountain Lakes Commerce Center, St. Charles
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472 acres
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St. Peters Centre, St. Peters
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581 acres
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St. Peters Development District, St. Peters
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1,100 acres
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Developable tracts, St. Charles County
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2,000 acres
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SWB is discussing the possibility of certifying Park 370 in Hazelwood as yet another FiberPark.
Boon estimated that total investment in the area could exceed $1,000,000,000 (yes, b as in billion), and yield 10,000 new jobs.
Its desirability to technology-invested companies, as Schneider suggests, has to do with what’s readily available to businesses: housing, infrastructure, markets, and so on.
Prestemon from the EDC (a partnership organization of local government and the private sector in the business of creating jobs for St. Charles Countians), added another key element to the list: “This initiative highlights an area that will see dramatic level of investment over the next five-to-10 years, as it’s discovered by growing businesses who want access to a skilled work force.”
Boon says that with higher education in the metropolitan area graduating 10,000 a year, and with all five of St. Charles County’s public school districts rated Triple-A, it’s likely that the talent will keep coming.
Boon notes that in its 1998 Education Quotient survey to determine where promising work forces are being trained, Expansion Management magazine rated 1,000 school districts. The St. Charles School District scored 140 of a possible 150 points. That was good enough for a “Gold Medal” and a three-way tie for 28th place overall. Nationally.
“Meeting the gold standard means it’s definitely a high-quality district,” Boon says, “and even though these districts will jockey around for position year-to-year, it’s interesting to see some gold medal districts that we outscored.”
She checked some highlighter marks in her dog-eared copy of the magazine: Beverly Hills, Calif.; Greenwich and Westport, Conn., Arlington Heights and Palatine, Ill.; Rockville, Md.; and along Route 128, Newton, Lexington, Brookline and Wellesley, Mass.
Eat your heart out, Boston.
“They’re all fine districts; Wentzville [school district] earned a gold medal, too,” she says. “What businesses looking at this area probably want to know is that all five districts in St. Charles County have high graduation rates, above-average scores, and strong college placement.”
And they’ll be able to get to work conveniently, Bangert points out. After his company moved 800,000 cubic yards of fill to build the interchange at Elm and 370, and then completed the highway west to I-70, he can be excused for some justifiable pride in the “new-and-ready-now” aspects of the road.
“We became aware of the property that is now Fountain Lakes being for sale when we were moving all that fill,” Bangert says. “In 1997, we went to work evaluating the feasibility of a development.”
That 800,000 was just a warm up. Raising the property out of the 500-year flood plain would require 3.5 million cubic yards of fill. Besides 325 acres of developable land, Millstone Bangert also created almost 150 acres of city park with bike trails, fishing lakes and wetland areas.
Russo, from Enterprise Bank in St. Peters, says he’s thrilled that municipalities and business leaders on both sides of the Missouri River have decided to work together. “Since Hazelwood signed on, whenever I’m heading to a 370 Connector meeting, I start humming that old Beatles tune ‘Hands Across the Water’ to myself.
“I can see the time when instead of rush hour going one way in the morning and back across in the afternoon, that traffic will just get a little heavier in both directions around 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. The earth won’t spin off its axis if St. Louis Countians commuted to work in St. Charles County.”
“I think that banker’s on to something,” Fleming muses.
Kevin Kipp runs Bubble Communications, a creative services and community relations firm in St. Charles.
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