Hall of Fame baseball legend and St. Louis native Yogi Berra once said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might end up someplace else.”
Energized by the prospects of the region’s exciting potential, the Regional Chamber and Growth Association’s (RCGA’s) Strategy Advisory Team has charted a course for the St. Louis region, defining what role it will play in the New Economy. The highly successful and nearing completion, “Campaign for a Greater St. Louis” has helped pull the region from an economic and employment slump, spurring the creation of more than 90,000 net new jobs in just four years. It’s an amazing community-wide accomplishment that has had positive effects throughout St. Louis’ 12 counties — now it’s time to keep this momentum going.
While the St. Louis region has turned around and charted strong growth over the past few years, so have a number of other regions. Resting on past successes isn’t enough for any region wanting to compete in the new economy. To compete as a top-tier region in the 21st century economy, we will need momentum, energy and commitment. The St. Louis region is poised to take a leadership position on the world economic stage, and “Shaping A Greater St. Louis” offers the direction, strategy and vision to get us there.
The eight “Shaping A Greater St. Louis” initiatives form an integrated strategic agenda for the region, detailing a “New Commitment, New Energy, New Economy.”
New Commitment
Forward St. Louis: Speaking with one unified voice to regional, state and national legislators strengthens the entire region’s influence. Forward St. Louis will enable the region to establish a unified foundation for positive, constructive legislation that supports the growth of the St. Louis region and a positive business climate.
Regional Business Council: Growing mid-size companies will provide the backbone for regional growth in the 21st century. The Regional Business Council will unite and civically engage executives from mid-cap and emerging businesses to act on high impact issues that develop and sustain our community as a highly competitive region.
New Energy
Revitalizing the Region’s Central City: To create a robust regional economy, it is vitally important to have a strong center that attracts residents, workers and businesses, reinvigorates its infrastructure and supports healthy surrounding neighborhoods. A revitalized central city will provide a focus for cultural, social, financial and business activity in the region. The RCGA will bring a committed region with perspective to these efforts.
Community Capitalism: Intellectual and entrepreneurial capital is the lifeblood of a growing economy, which draws its success from the creativity and full participation of the entire regional business community. Throughout the St. Louis region, RCGA will encourage and support expansion of all businesses — including those owned by women and minority entrepreneurs and those in distressed areas, where economic disparity has created roadblocks to these entrepreneurs and underinvested areas from realizing their full economic potentials.
Region-wide Infrastructure: Our economy needs a well-planned and predictable physical infrastructure in order to flourish. Having already successfully advanced important projects such as the airport expansion, the Page Avenue extension and the new Mississippi River bridge, the RCGA will now devote itself to a region-wide infrastructure enhancement effort. This effort will combine a strong regional private sector perspective with a unified plan and network of civic support to move the plan into action. Through this effort, the region will be assured of critical ongoing improvements in regional surface transportation, aviation, ports, freight and telecommunications.
New Economy
Distinctive Industry Clusters: The RCGA will focus efforts on developing the strong base of St. Louis businesses and industries already here that will be critical to a successful 21st century economy. The RCGA Technology Gateway has already established the value of a “cluster approach.” Beyond our continuing efforts in overall business and job growth, three to five distinctive industry clusters (such as life sciences and information technology) will be fully developed to leverage substantial investments and expertise in order to expand and grow these industries. The RCGA will work aggressively to identify the capital, workforce, economic development, legislative and regulatory issues affecting these industry clusters.
Work Force Development: Qualified workers—including those needed by targeted industry clusters—are key to the regional economy’s health, growth and competitiveness. To further this initiative, regional efforts will focus on attracting and retaining talented, qualified workers to the area, as well as training and upgrading the skills of existing workers. In this regard, we will work to recruit people to the region as well as jobs and investors.
Regional Economic Growth and Vitality: Competitive economies depend upon the constant infusion of new ideas, people and enterprises to build mass and momentum. The goal of this initiative is to attract, retain, create and expand strong businesses that add vitality to the entire region. Here, we will sustain and expand the momentum of aggressive marketing of the region as well as the effective “deal making” capacities of the RCGA and its economic development partners throughout the region in the network.
Each Strategy Advisory Team member brought a unique perspective and expertise to this effort, and each member has his or her own perspective on the relative importance of specific initiatives. John Bachmann, RCGA chair and managing partner at Edward Jones says, “It would be difficult to single out one initiative as the single most important effort. Having said that, I think that the underlying issue is one of the sustained creation of quality jobs, jobs that will allow for upward mobility.”
Bachmann believes that these jobs need to put people on the road to higher pay as they develop vital skills. The limited-advancement, minimum wage job makes raising a family difficult, and the region can enhance its “family friendly” image even further by stimulating higher value jobs.
Sister Mary Jean Ryan, FSM, president and CEO of SSM Health Care agrees all eight “Shaping A Greater St. Louis” initiatives are parallel and interdependent. “It’s hard to prioritize [the initiatives], frankly, because they form a whole. They’re systemic. One impacts another, impacts another. To take them apart, or to separate one, would destroy the integrity of the others.”
Falcon Products, Inc. chairman and CEO Frank Jacobs is looking forward to recruiting area business leaders for the Regional Business Council. “One of the main things we’re trying to do is engage the area’s business leaders in actively working for regional prosperity. We need the participation of these dynamic, successful people with demonstrated business skills, and we need to encourage them to use those same abilities to build the entire region.”
Dick Beumer, vice chairman of Jacobs Engineering Group (Sverdrup), believes this is a win-win situation for both the business leaders and the residents of the region. “These business leaders have a vested interest in advancing the region as a whole. Even if their customers are all over the country, their employees live here, and they still need to attract the best workers to advance their businesses, so this is a natural partnership.”
The awareness is there, however, that a trained workforce prepared to compete with the rest of the world requires regional cohesiveness. “We’re not talking about competing within the region any more,” says David Darnell, president Midwest Region, Bank of America and member of the Strategy Advisory Team. “We’re looking at competition all over the U. S. and globally. So it’s not just Dallas, Chicago, Minneapolis and Seattle; it’s also Singapore, Geneva, London and Frankfurt.”
Richard C. D. Fleming, president and CEO of the RCGA, believes the region’s key to the 21st century is reflected in the new RCGA mission statement: “The mission of the St. Louis RCGA is to unite the region’s business community and to engage dynamic business and civic leadership to develop and sustain a world-class economy and community.”
Energized by the Committee’s work and the new initiatives, KPMG managing partner Ralph Clermont says, “What’s especially encouraging is to have seen all these different people come together, and through their commitment to our regional health, work together for a common purpose. That’s good news for the region.”
Bruce Holland, president of Holland-Hinrichs, agrees that the most exciting part of the new campaign is the collaboration. “I believe an incredible energy is going to come out of this campaign. By focusing the energy and efforts of our civic and business leaders, we’re going to make great things happen in the St. Louis region.”
A major focus of the campaign is to encourage civic and philanthropic interest in regional projects. “If we can increase the pool of strong business leaders working on making the region a better place to work and live, we will create a more networked and united regional business community prepared to act on regional matters,” says Don Wainwright, chairman and CEO of Wainwright Industries.
The progress envisioned by the committee is a long-term proposition. “What impressed me the most is that we can’t be in such a hurry to achieve everything overnight,” says Ruth McGowan, president of MarjeM Diversified. “Instead, we have to work at it steadily and every day. These initiatives will require a total commitment and long-term effort—decades—to achieve their fullest potential.”
“Regions must think and act like regions,” says Steve Cousins, partner at Armstrong Teasdale. “St. Louis needs to change the way we keep score.”
