Myopic Destiny

Missouri officials announced plans to sell two Missouri state office buildings located in downtown St. Louis—including the historic Wainwright Building—and to move many of the effected 600 state employees to Chesterfield.   The ostensible reason for the move was explained as ‘primarily financial’.   However, the underlying motivation for the move appears vindictive at worst, narrow-minded at best.

Many of the overwhelmingly Republican politicos in Jefferson City derisively refer to St. Louis as a “Democrat-run” city, implying that the genesis of the City’s well-known problems—crime, poverty and crumbling infrastructure—stem from its’ present-day governance. This biased conjecture ignores the City’s history that shaped today’s urban setting.  

In 1876, St. Louis seceded from the County, and failed to expand beyond its present borders, an anomaly rarely witnessed in history.   Indeed, European nations engaged in successive wars to expand their borders and financial base.  The United States adopted a credo of Manifest Destiny with the expressed goal of expanding the nation from sea to shining sea. 

Not so, St. Louis.   Yesteryear’s civil leader looked west to the then hinterlands of  St. Louis County, and in a short-term financial decision associated with the burden of ‘carrying’ the County declared: “No thanks.  We don’t want more land”, and limited the City to a constricted future that one might call Myopic Destiny.  This far-reaching decision, or indecision, bedevils St. Louis to this day.

As time elapsed, what should have been obvious began to take shape—a growing population spreading westward, beyond the city limits.  A city that peaked in 1950 at 800,000 people living in a densely populated but aging housing stock now calls home for 300,000 residents.  Many moved to the County, now populated with three times the residents.  

Meanwhile, inner city housing stock, much of it two and four-family flats, has suffered decades of exodus and decline.  Many of those who remain suffer from a long history of systemic racism, and live in an impoverished setting that begets criminality.

Unquestionably, St. Louis suffers from too much crime and violence, much of it enhanced by the proliferation of guns in the hands of reckless teens who grow up in poverty.  Other cities suffer similar urban woes, but their larger urban areas with more economically diverse neighborhoods score better overall statistical numbers.  For example, Kansas City proper totals 319 square miles as compared to St. Louis’ total of 62. 

Indeed, small city boundaries skew St. Louis’ crime statistics.  If the County inner-ring suburbs were a part of the City, the overall crime rate figures would tabulate at a reduced rate.  Instead, St. Louis appears ‘more’ crime-ridden compared to elsewhere.

The City’s reduced tax base must not only support a large percentage of poor, but also finance a crumbling housing stock and a century-old infrastructure.  Meanwhile, St. Louis suffers still another body-blow when right or wrong it lost a chunk of its’ tax revenues when city employers whose employees now work remotely from  homes outside the city limits no longer need pay city earnings taxes.  

Despite all this, the City remains the linchpin of the Greater St. Louis Metropolitan area.  Most amenities that make St. Louis unique—Forest Park and the Zoo, museums, major league sports teams, theater, and what’s left of its’ red-bricked neighborhoods and unique entertainment crooks and crannies—are located within that 62 square mile boundary. 

The State of Missouri’s intended move of its’ employees to Chesterfield undermines a city that sits on the edge of a financial precipice.  Furthermore, it adversely impacts both the quality of life and economic vitality of the entire St. Louis region, and by extension Missouri’s long-term tax revenues.  Moving state employees west not only diminishes the City’s tax base, but also removes the all-important downtown foot traffic.  Promoting unused space in our convention center remains problematic when the business district only pulsates during sporting events.

As been said, history may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.  Our state politicos mirror our near-sighted City’s forefathers who made a ‘financial’ decision when seceding from the County. If the State aims to ‘save money’ and stifle the “Democrat-run” city, then what would a future “Republican-run” city do without adequate financial resources? 

What’s bad for the City bodes ill for the County.  Irrespective of party affiliation, the St. Louis County Council, local municipal leaders, and especially our local state representatives should actively oppose the State’s decision to abandon the City.