By Kevin Kipp
The city expert agrees with the banker agrees with the union official agrees with the city expert.
Folks who know and know of W. Thomas Reeves say he’s the man for the job...the executive director’s job at Downtown Now!
First, here’s Thomas J. Pickel, St. Louis Development Corporation board member and executive director of DeSales Community Housing Corporation: “It’s a good appointment for that position. Tom brings a strong lending, business and development background to it. We’ve done a lot of planning up until now. Now it’s time for action.”
And here’s Terry Nelson, secretary-treasurer at the Carpenters District Council: “Reeves is a good guy, he’s a knowledgeable guy, he’s a capable guy. He knows the flavor of the city. I worry about where’s the financial wherewithal, but he can get the job done if he has tools.”
And finally, here’s Rocco L. Russo, vice president at Enterprise Banking in St. Peters and, like Reeves, a Mark Twain Bank alumnus: “He made the final decisions on whether [a deal] was the right investment or the wrong investment. If you look at the history of Mark Twain, we made very few wrong investments. Tom’s value to the job is his knowledge of St. Louis, downtown in particular, and what can work and what can’t work economically.”
Russo and the others are singing praises of Reeves’ track record in the world of banking: 17 years at Mark Twain as Senior Vice President and Chief Lending Officer, followed by a couple more years at Mercantile, chairing the Executive Loan Committee and overseeing all real estate lending in three states.
The central business district geography where Reeves acquired his banking experience also underlines his qualifications for the transition to this post in the not-for-profit sector.
Reeves allows, “I’ve been around [downtown] circles for years. I know a lot of people, and have done a lot of deals there.”
Among the deals he’s cultivated and helped bring to fruition as a banker are the convention center hotel, the Westin Hotel at Cupples Station and the Drury Hotel in the venerable Fur Exchange building.
Results like these are the action Pickel is looking to proceed from Downtown Now!’s ambitious CBD revitalization plan.
How ambitious? Try $1.2 billion in new investment in five to seven years; some 45,000 new jobs and 25,000 new residents by 2025; and net tax benefits of $2.4 billion.
The foundation for all that will be layed by concentrating public and private efforts in what Reeves calls “four key focus areas”: Laclede’s Landing, the Washington Avenue loft district, the Arch grounds and Gateway Mall, and turf around the Old Post Office.
Asked to name his favorite component of the plan, Reeves ducks deftly: “Each one has its own fascinating and challenging pieces.”
He allowed however that one alligator in the swamp merits particular heed. “We need to stay focused on the downtown convention hotel.” (The deal, as this is written, says Reeves, “is nearing completion.”)
Reeves also understands Pickel’s concern that it’s about time for St. Louis to start doing, instead of talking about.
“We’re great at planning and discussing. We just have real trouble taking the first step,” he says. “Part of that has been that we had a lot of groups working on different things they wanted done.
“Each commissioned their own study, and developed their own plan, and since they were working separately, the tendency was to shoot at each other’s plans. We’d talk about all the reasons something couldn’t get done, as opposed to finding a common way to work together and actually accomplish something.”
Novel concept, skeptics might jab: Results matter more than planning. But even though banking is results oriented, Reeves appreciates how important process is to the prospects for success of the Downtown Now! plan.
“It has been an amazingly collaborative effort,” Reeves adds, citing the involvement of the private sector (especially banks and large downtown interests like May Company and Southwestern Bell), unions (sources identify Nelson’s Carpenters pension fund as a party to financing the convention center hotel deal), St. Louis 2004 and the RCGA.
“They really added a lot of strength to what the city was trying to do by itself,” Reeves notes.
He also points to the various organs of city government itself—the Mayor’s, Treasurer’s and Comptroller’s offices, SLDC, the Board of Aldermen—who seemed willing to work together.
Reeves acknowledges that the plan is ambitious, and that success relies on the broadest possible collaboration and buy-in. “This is a regional challenge,” he says, “not just a city issue.”
The inclusive, comprehensive nature of the planning effort, Reeves believes, protects the plan from internecine torpedoes.
“If we’re all working inside the same submarine, who’s left to launch torpedoes?” he reasons.
Out-of-work planners, perhaps.
Kevin Kipp runs Bubble Communications, a creative services and community relations firm in St. Charles.
