The St.
Louis Regional Leadership Exchange goes global—to Toronto.
By Pam Droog
For the first time, participants in the annual St. Louis Community
Leadership Exchange Tour will venture beyond U.S. borders to
gain an international perspective on regional issues. After
successful visits to Cleveland, Seattle, Baltimore and Denver,
125 area business, civic and government leaders will travel
to Toronto, Canada, October 5-7.
“With today’s emphasis on a global economy, it was timely after
four trips to American cities that we go to our first international
destination,” says Dick Fleming, president and CEO of the RCGA.
Why Toronto? A major attraction is that region’s recent “amalgamation,”
in which numerous local municipalities were combined into a
single city of 2.5 million people with one mayor. Fleming stresses,
“No one is suggesting we should literally use the Toronto model.
But given the hundreds of years of discussions between St. Louis
City and County, we thought it would be interesting to visit
a city that had taken up that issue.”
RCGA chairman John Bachmann, managing principal of Edward Jones
and a Leadership Exchange co-chair, agrees. “Toronto is an area
that encompasses a number of different communities that on the
one hand keep their independence but speak with a common voice.”
He adds, “Physically it’s a beautiful city. It’s truly the kind
of place you go to when you want to see best practices.”
Some of Toronto’s “best practices” include its multicultural
diversity, efficient mass transit and a strong mixed-use center
city. “These are all issues that St. Louis is dealing with,”
Fleming notes, as well as central-city revitalization. “One
reason their downtown is so vital is there’s a lot of housing,
at all income levels, so people are on the streets all the time,”
says Patricia Whitaker, president of Arcturis and a co-chair
of the Leadership Exchange. “There’s an infrastructure for living
there, including grocery stores, theater, restaurants, things
you don’t have if there are no residents.”
Each Leadership Exchange represents hundreds of hours of hands-on
planning. Fleming explains, “After we select a city, we visit
more than 50 people there, asking who should we talk to who
will give us the straight scoop on how you dealt with certain
issues? When we hear the same names over and over, we contact
those people and build our agenda.” RCGA staff members make
several trips to the city to fill in the details.
“Anybody who goes on one of these trips really needs a couple
of days in advance to rest up,” Bachmann advises. “The moment
you get off the plane, it’s nonstop touring facilities, visiting
schools, meeting officials and more, from early morning to late
at night.”
The Toronto trip will be no different. Among the highlights
will be sessions with current mayor Mel Lastman and former mayor
David Crombie. “He was mayor under the old format but was a
major advocate of amalgamation,” Fleming notes. Crombie is currently
working on Toronto’s bid for the 2008 winter Olympics. Toronto
resident and city planning legend Jane Jacobs, author of the
l960s classic and recently updated The Life and Death of Great
American Cities, will participate in a “conversation” with urban
planner Ken Greenberg and Toronto Globe & Mail columnist John
Barber. “Jane Jacobs is 87 and a real character. She rarely
makes public appearances,” Fleming says. “This is the opportunity
of a lifetime for anyone who’s read her work.”
The group also will hold one of its sessions at the top of the
1,136-foot CN Tower (for comparison’s sake, the Gateway Arch
is 630 feet) and check out the citywide “moose” exhibit, similar
to Chicago’s recent “cows.”
The Toronto trip is certain to measure up to the successes of
prior Leadership Exchanges, and make its own impact. Speaking
of Baltimore, for example, Whitaker says, “The revitalization
of that city depended on the involvement of private citizens
along with politicians. It was clear if they hadn’t been as
heavily involved, the city would not be where it is now.” Of
Denver, Bachmann notes, “That was a city on its way down. The
economy had been built on oil and when oil prices cratered,
the city lost its momentum. But it picked itself up, redeveloped
the downtown, built a major airport and got a very diverse community
to work together. When you go to Denver today you can sense
how all those elements work together.”
However, Whitaker says, “You have to see these things for yourself.
The trips let me know that cities with the same problems as
St. Louis did something about them. We have unlimited potential
here to solve our problems, too.”
Bachmann agrees. “I think part of what happens on the trips
is you see things that wouldn’t have occurred to you. It’s not
all bricks and mortar, but relationships, how organizations
within a community work together, and how communities then work
together. It’s a powerful story and very similar in each city.
I always come back with pages and pages of notes.”
People also come back with new or stronger friendships. “One
of the side benefits of the trips is getting more face time
with people at senior levels in their companies,” Whitaker says.
That’s just as valuable as anything the group sees or learns
on a Leadership Exchange, Fleming believes. “There’s an intangible
value to 125 leaders having a beer at 11 p.m.,” he says. “Many
would never have had the chance to interact in day-to-day life.”
In addition, most of the people who went on the first trip to
Cleveland have gone on subsequent trips. “That creates a frame
of reference and continuity,” Fleming says. And that “core regional
community” is what’s at the heart of the Leadership Exchange.
“There’s something extraordinary about getting 125 leaders to
look at St. Louis from the perspective of another city,” he
says—especially, an international city like Toronto.
“It’s a wonderful first step for traveling beyond the states
and logistically less challenging than if we’d go to Singapore.
But ultimately,” he says, “we’ll get there, too.”
Pam Droog is a St. Louis-based free-lance writer.
