Mike Trask
of the St. Charles County Business Record broke the story on
September 29. Twenty-one CEOs constituting Partners for Progress
each pledged $15,000-a-year for four years to underwrite an
effort to guide the county’s growth and ensure its prosperity
for the future.
Asked if any comparisons should be made to Civic Progress, Harlan
Pals, co-chair of Partners for Progress and president of Pals
Financial Group, says, “You can say that if you want, but it’s
really not accurate. Ultimately we want to involve the major
employers and their employees in four initiatives, and deal
with these issues along with other partners.”
The issues are affordable (Pals says, “appropriate”) housing,
transportation, education and training, and venture capital.
The “other
partners,” Pals says include local officials and the St. Charles
County Economic Development Center, where he is board chairman.
“We’ve struggled with transportation and housing…hometown problems,”
Pals says. “We’re also facing broader issues that affect economic
development, like workforce issues.”
Workforce issues—workers’ skills, their availability, or the
amenities they demand—“are the current battleground in economic
development,” says Greg Prestemon, president of the EDC. “We
need to put things in place now for five or 10 years down the
line. Public transportation, for instance: how do we move people
around the county?
“Or take housing,” he continues. “If a teacher in the Francis
Howell district can’t afford to live here, that’s not right.
St. Charles County has made a name for itself as an ‘opportunity
county.’ We need to work on keeping that.”
Pals says, “The new jobs are in technology, but we also need
to fill service and manufacturing jobs. That means we have to
have a range of amenities for our workers like appropriate housing,
training and transportation.”
Kevin Kast, president and CEO of SSM St. Joseph Health Center
& SSM St. Joseph Hospital West, acknowledges that the skills
of his organization’s 1,400 employees run the gamut: “Our physicians
are the most highly skilled and trained individuals in the region.
And they’re supported by cutting-edge technology that depends
on highly trained professionals. You simply have to have that
kind of talent to deliver the high level of care we enjoy in
St. Charles County.
“But to keep our doors open, hospitals need a range of abilities
and employees,” he says. Doctors to dishwashers. “Affordable
housing options and transportation services are especially important
to the county’s future.”
Jerry Scheidegger, president of the Corporate Group (and, with
Randy Schilling of Solutech, one of two native Partners), suggests
that the organization might exert some political influence.
“We want to help local government find answers that’ll have
a positive impact. We need good relationships with elected officials,
a two-way, open-door policy so they’ll know we support them
when they make the right decision that may also be the hard
decision.”
Good, Pals says, because the starting point of Partners for
Progress, “is the firm belief that people in this community
have the ability to solve these problems for the community,
and that means everybody needs to be on board.
“In the past,” he continues, “some of our elected officials
have resisted taking on initiatives like appropriate housing
or transportation for political reasons.”
Recent relocations by WorldCom and MasterCard to St. Charles
County have changed the political calculus in favor of those
issues, Pals believes. That means both opportunity and need
“to augment economic development assets,” he says.
Mentioning several other big companies new to the county, Prestemon
says, “We haven’t seen a scale of investment this huge for a
couple of decades. These are global operations with roots throughout
the St. Louis region. These new players have given us a perspective
on growth and development. They’ve helped us develop constructive
strategies for growth.”
But, Pals says, Partners for Progress isn’t just about St. Charles
County. “We are as interested in solving problems for the region,
as we are for the county.”
For instance, the group has become a substantial investor in
the RCGA regional economic development effort, Campaign for
a Greater St. Louis.
Or consider the venture capital fund that Partners for Progress
is working to establish, Prestemon suggests.
“We know our county isn’t big enough to have its own venture
capital fund,” he says. “But the metropolitan region is. If
we get the fund established, it would assist developing technology
companies here, as well as in St. Louis, St. Louis County and
Southwestern Illinois.
“In fact, I expect that the majority of the capital would be
invested outside St. Charles County, and we continue to work
on it,” Prestemon says. “Do we want the rest of the region to
be successful? Absolutely.”
“This is a significant initiative,” Scheidegger says. “It’s
my feeling that it’s only the beginning of what you’ll see coming
from this group.”
Kevin Kipp runs Bubble Communications, a creative services
and community relations firm in St. Charles.
