Revisiting St. Louis City and County: The idea of a merger | Renewing the Gateway to the West

Could a consolidated City and County of St. Louis be the next urban success story?

This has been suggested by the new County Executive, Sam Page ("St. Louis County executive floats city rejoining county amid budget crisis," St. Louis Business Journal).  From the article:

St. Louis County Executive Sam Page is expected Thursday to call for St. Louis to consider reentering St. Louis County as a municipality, framing the idea as part of a broader push to consolidate services and respond to mounting budget pressures in both jurisdictions.

In prepared remarks for a press event Thursday, Page said county budget cuts and rising costs have forced service reductions and opened a need for a larger public discussion about how the city and county can sustain core services without new taxes.

“Faced with the Council’s budget cuts and forced to reduce services, one path forward is to find more ways to consolidate key city and county services,” Page's prepared remarks said. “The city could even re-enter the county as a municipality.” Page said the idea has “a lot of political support,” though he also described it as a proposal meant to spur public feedback rather than an immediate policy push.

Sadly this historic building--yes, seriously damaged but repairable--near Downtown St. Louis was demolished instead of preserved. 

“These are big ideas. They won’t happen this year. They will not happen while I am county executive,” he said. “But let’s look at the challenges the county and city are facing and tackle them together.”

Like Baltimore, the City and County are separate jurisdictions, and the City is not counted as part of the County.  

Like Baltimore, St. Louis is a once industrial and financial center that continues to shrink, with a population of about 280,000.  In 1950 the population was almost 3x, 860,000.  

It was the 8th largest city in America, without the County as part of its population.  The County had about 406,000 residents.  So today

Outmigration has been great for the suburbs ("The 16 Best Suburbs in St. Louis, MO," Gateway Realty Group), while St. Louis is  --and Gateway Realty Group is based in the suburbs, and "appropriates" the "Gateway to the West" tagline not to promote the city, but the suburbs.

Anheuser-Busch when it was very successful.  The decline in sales of mass produced beer has led the company to close three production facilities.  But not in St. Louis ("Brewery Closures Hit Anheuser-Busch Facilities In Three States," CRE Daily).

Broken by business mergers shifting headquarters to other states and countries.  St. Louis has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs because business consolidation.  

Once a major rail town, railroads in other cities became much bigger and St. Louis was relegated to a secondary position.  It was once one of the largest stockyards--meat producers--in the US.  No more.

May Company Department Stores became Macy's, newly headquartered in NYC.  Boatman's Bank became part of Bank of America, headquartered in Charlotte.  Anheuser-Busch still produces beer, but is now a subsidiary of a company in Europe. 

Not only did those companies leave, the ancillary jobs that served those firm like supply and logistics, advertising production, etc., left also.  These days, St. Louis no longer has a vibrant Downtown, although it remains attractive with an array of historic buildings.

Assets.  The city has assets: Washington University at St. Louis and St. Louis University as a couple of anchors.  It lost its pro football and basketball teams long ago, but still has baseball and hockey.  The Ballpark Village development around the baseball stadium is a national best practice example of "sports and entertainment districts" alongside stadiums/arenas.  Plus there is the Gateway Arch National Park, the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers--still a source of barge freight traffic, an acceptable but needs to grow light rail transit system, etc.

The opportunity for repositioning and a reenergized revitalization program.  The County's population is just under 1 million.  

Together they would be about 1.3 million in population, fighting with Dallas to be the 9th or 10th largest city in the US.  It would move up from 82nd.  And would allow for a big repositioning.  (Note that the combined population today is barely more than the population in 1950.)

"St. Louis was near the site of the 1804 Lewis and Clark Expedition launch, and the city later served as a gathering place for pioneers collecting supplies for trips to the American West, earning the city the nickname 'Gateway to the West.'"

A few years ago, a similar merger effort failed.  It's complicated, would require votes by the city and county and probably the State Legislature.  But it would make "the City of St. Louis" larger, with the ability for a new position beyond shrinkage.

I wrote two entries outlining what I saw as an ideal revitalization plan.

-- "St. Louis: what would I recommend for a comprehensive revitalization program? | Part 1: Overview and Theoretical Foundations"
-- "St. Louis: what would I recommend for a comprehensive revitalization program? | Part 2: Implementation Approach and Levers"

I ranked city/county consolidation as number one.  While Indianapolis and Jacksonville are also combined city-counties, and have leveraged this to great success--Indianapolis has an advantage of having some large corporations still like Eli Lilly and is the state capital, a combined St. Louis would be larger than both.

It might not be enough to turn the city's trajectory but it's a start.  By consolidating services it should save some monies, and allow for a higher amount of bonding authority.

I would introduce consolidation along with the vision of OKC's Metropolitan Area Projects program: Oklahoma City.  MAPS comprises the large infrastructure projects that have helped redefine Oklahoma City as a major city on the western side of the Midwest.  

Fans watch an entertainer at Scissortail Park before Game 2 of the NBA basketball playoff series between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the New Orleans Pelicans at Paycom Center in Oklahoma City, Wednesday, April 24, 2024. Photo: Bryan Terry/Daily Oklahoman.  

Over four tranches, plus two similar projects for the basketball team/arena that technically were separate from MAPS, projects include a streetcar, a pro basketball arena that landed the now Oklahoma City Thunder NBA team, which won last year's championship ("Big League City: Smaller Cities"), a water course on Oklahoma River that is internationally known, physical investments in schools (they needed to invest in programming too...), and a new community with a revitalized canal called Bricktown, among others.

Bricktown Canal.  Wikipedia photo by Kerwin Moore.

It's funded by an add on sales tax.  And the model of big deal infrastructure projects has also been used to fund major streetscape projects throughout Downtown ("Change isn't usually that simple: The repatterning of Oklahoma City's Downtown Streetscape").  

The process is discussed in the book Next American City: The Big Promise of Our Midsized Cities, and referenced in Big League City: Oklahoma City's Rise to the NBA, the story about landing the Thunder basketball team..

OKC is only the 20th largest city in the US, but it is fortunate to be a major city, secondary to Houston, in the oil and natural gas biz.

Conclusion.  A St. Louis MAPS program + Consolidation would be killer. 

The St. Louis brand once was strong, as indicated by the branded "City of St. Louis" streamliner passenger railroad train of the Wabash Railroad, which before multiple mergers, was based in St. Louis.

And at least political and business leaders in St. Louis have the vision and guts to bring up consolidation.  It's not really discussed much in Baltimore or Pittsburgh, two places that need that additional oomph from being larger.  Although compared to Baltimore, Pittsburgh is on a better trajectory ("Big Ideas for a Better Pittsburgh | and a point about world class cities").