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SAN
DIEGO, MISSOURI?
By William Poe
AREA LEADERS WILL FIND THAT SAN DIEGO AND ST. LOUIS HAVE SURPRISINGLY
MUCH IN COMMON.
At first glance, San Diego and St. Louis would appear to be about
as similar as their respective Padres and Cardinals baseball teams.
That is to say, they share little resemblance at all.
But looks can be deceiving. Once you get past the disparate observations
that one city has miles upon miles of pristine Pacific Ocean beaches
and near-idyllic weather, while the other has miles of Mississippi
River industrial frontage and sometimes challenging summer weather,
San Diego and St. Louis actually share some similarities. It seems
that they’ve had dogs fighting some of the same battles and barking
up some of the same trees of opportunity. And that is why more than
100 St. Louis area leaders are this month spending several days
in San Diego.
The
Salk Institute, San Diego, Calif. |
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“Both cities are working to revitalize their downtowns; both have
lost jobs in the aerospace industry, and both are investing mightily
in life sciences,” notes RCGA Chairman Douglas H. Yaeger, head of
The Laclede Group Inc. and co-chair of this year’s RCGA Leadership
Exchange trip to San Diego. “Some of that city’s recent experiences
can help guide us in St. Louis.”
Joining Yaeger as co- chairs for the 2003 Leadership Trip are: Edward
Jones managing partner and immediate past RCGA chairman John W.
Bachmann, St. Louis Black Roundtable chairman Rev. B.T. Rice; and
Arcturis president Patricia Whitaker.
DOUG
YAEGER
president, Laclede Group Inc.
co-chair, RCGA Leadership Exchange trip to San Diego
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The San Diego Leadership Trip comes on the heels of earlier Leadership
treks to Cleveland, Seattle, Baltimore, Denver, Toronto, and Boston.
Each year, St. Louis business, civic and government representatives
travel to one city to seek out the best practices of other metropolitan
areas and discover ways to apply those successes to the St. Louis
community.
“Our meetings, briefings and networking will support the various
community development efforts under way by the RCGA, Focus St. Louis,
the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council, Metro and others,” Yaeger
says. “We will focus on the long-term systemic issues of the St.
Louis region, learn how others, are addressing the same problems,
and determine what ideas we can use here.”
The yearly Leadership Exchange trips have three main purposes:
• to observe best practices in another community, usually one with
key similarities to St. Louis.
• to interact with others from a different region, creating new
alliances, networks, business relationships, and partnerships.
• to introduce leaders from our region to one another, thereby strengthening
the region’s network of civic leadership and the regional community.
Each year, the Leadership Exchange visit is the culmination of hundreds
of hours of hands-on planning and usually one or more pre-visits
by RCGA staff to plan agendas and sweat the pre-exchange details.
“We want to hit the ground running,” Yaeger explains. “The more
people we can meet; the more places we can see; the more reports
we can collect, the more we learn. We really make the most of our
three-day visit.”
In San Diego, a few of the people St. Louisans are meeting with
include Jessie Knight Jr., who is the RCGA’s President and CEO Dick
Fleming’s counterpart at the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce;
San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Editor Bob Kittle; Joseph
Panetta, president and CEO, BIOCOM (San Diego’s dynamic life sciences
driver); former San Diego major and current Rush Limbaugh colleague
Roger Hedgecock; UCSD associate vice chancellor for public programs
Mary Walshok; Malin Burnham, chairman, John Burnham & Company Insurance/Burnham
Real Estate Services and civic leader; Julie Meier Wright, president
& CEO, San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation; George
Mitrovich, president, City Club of San Diego; Peter Davis, vice
chairman, Unified Port of San Diego; San Diego Padres president
Dick Freeman; transportation leaders: Sarah Layton Wallace, founder
and director of the California Rebuild America Coalition; Donna
Alm, vice president marketing & communications, Centre City Development
Corporation; and Gary Gallegos, executive director of the San Diego
Association of Governments. The spotlight is on San Diego’s 25-year
life sciences success story, its mass transit system, downtown housing
and revitalization, and infrastructure agenda.
Like St. Louis, San Diego has a major investment in its downtown
convention center and environs. The west coast city also boasts
Horton Plaza, a downtown multilevel shopping and dining complex
as popular now as St. Louis Centre once was, the 16-block Gaslamp
Quarter historic area that evokes memories of our own Gaslight Square,
a large manufacturing base and significant tourism, and a burgeoning
bio-technology and life-sciences economy. San Diego even has a major
park, much like our Forest Park, in which major cultural institutions
and its nationally ranked zoo are found. And, like St. Louis, San
Diego has had to cope with declining employment in aerospace and
defense; the challenges and opportunities of recent multi-ethnic
immigration, and homelessness in and near downtown.
The primary attribute that St. Louisans would not recognize about
San Diego is the resort-like climate, where the temperatures are
always mild and the sun is usually shining.
William V. Poe is principal of Poe Communications, a St. Louis
advertising and marketing communications firm. |
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