One month ago, Stan Kroenke, the billionaire real estate and sports tycoon, as a place to do business: “Compared to all other U.S. cities, 50ȻƵ is struggling. One recent study reports that 50ȻƵ ranks 490 out of 515 U.S. cities and 61st among the 64 largest U.S. cities in economic growth in recent years.”
This was part of his successful pitch to relocate the 50ȻƵ Rams to Los Angeles. Now we learn that of an effort to turn an 1,800-acre swath of Missouri River farmland and flood plain into something akin to what he plans for the Rams in Inglewood, Calif.: A mixed-use shopping and office venue that might also make a dandy site for a (soccer) stadium.
Oh, hypocrisy. Thy name is Stan.
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There are many reasons to think the proposed development in Maryland Heights, between Missouri Highway 364 (the Page Extension) and Interstate 70, is a terrible idea. Kroenke’s involvement, as an investor with his longtime business associate, attorney Alan Bornstein, is the least of them. Bigger issues:
• They’re not making any more farmland. Maryland Heights already has an underutilized mall, West Port Plaza, that could use the Kroenke touch.
• Much of the site is flood plain. Yes, the has been raised and strengthened to 500-year standards. But climate change means more volatile weather. Five-hundred-year floods .
• Howard Bend, along with other Missouri River levees (including the Monarch Levee that protects Kroenke’s Chesterfield Commons development), push more water downriver faster and higher. If you live anywhere near the confluence of the Missouri and the Mississippi, you’re all too aware of that.
• The Howard Bend project would require what Bornstein called a “public-private partnership.” That means tax subsidies, probably large ones, that will take money away from Pattonville schools and other taxing entities.
• Maryland Heights should ask Hazelwood how flood plain retail tax-increment financing deals have worked out. In the early 2000s, Hazelwood granted huge subsides to developers of a mall then called 50ȻƵ Mills. In 2008, the mall’s appraised value was $117 million. Last year it was $40 million. It in November for $9 million.
• Studies by the l and the showed that between 1990 and 2010, retail projects accounted for about 80 percent of $5.8 billion in tax-increment financing in the region. The retail TIFs resulted in negligible job growth.
Maryland Heights can ignore all of this. 50ȻƵ County’s 90 municipalities have the final say in granting subsidies. Cities need revenue and don’t mind cannibalizing other suburbs to get it.
Regional governance would help. 50ȻƵ could grow in a way that not even Stan Kroenke could ignore.