Esri And Block Join Other Global Geospatial And FinTech Leaders
Locating In St. Louis’ Newest Innovation District
Global GeoInt leader Esri recently located its key St. Louis offices to The Globe Building in the Downtown North District
St. Louis’ Geospatial and High-Tech Ecosystem continues to blossom — as Esri has recently moved to The Globe Building, joining a diverse array of key Geospatial Intelligence, FinTech, MedTech, and other High-Tech firms in St. Louis’ newest and fastest growing innovation district, the 18-square block Downtown North Insight District.
The District is also the St. Louis home of BLOCK (formerly called Square), co-founded in 2009 by St. Louis natives Jim McKelvey and Jack Dorsey, which is one of the leading fintech, mobile payment, and point of sale firms in the world. The San Francisco-based global financial technology leader serves some 56 million users, and 4 million businesses, with an annual payment processing volume of US$228 billion as of 2023.
Esri is the 6,000-employee global market leader in geographic information systems (GIS) software, location intelligence, and geospatial analytics — what they call “The Science of Where.” Their new St. Louis offices are located in the 720,000 SF high-tech renovation of The Globe Building.
The emerging Downtown North Insight District consists of 18-square blocks in St. Louis’ downtown
The District, The Globe, The Post, and Esri’s new offices are just blocks from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s (NGA’s) new $1.75-billion, 100-acre campus for 1,000-acre new headquarters employing 3,100 intelligence workers.
In an interview with St. Louis Public Radio, Esri Director for National Government Patty Mims commented, “There is really no place in the U.S. or the world that has the enthusiasm, dedication and interest in developing a geospatial community than St. Louis.”
The Downtown North Insight District also includes the largest multi-tenant secure facility in the country outside the DC area — a 75,000 SF “SCIF-capable” renovated former cold storage building managed by Wexford. This particularly specialized users from closing deals until secured security work.
The region’s ecosystem continues to build momentum. As Founder, Owner and Principal Consultant of PLUM RUN, LLC (and former CEO of the US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation), Keith Masback noted:
Esri’s Director, Global National Government Patty Mims
“There is a lot of ‘secret sauce’ in St. Louis can and must fully bring to bear… a 75,000 SF multi-tenant secure SCIF. This would be virtually impossible to replicate anywhere else in the country. The Globe Building is the answer for this — along with affordable housing, DC metro area, etc.”
The Globe Building, part of The Insight District, uniquely provides the infrastructure and scale to host multiple secure tenants of the SCIF, while offering tailored solutions to both large corporations and small firms alike.
“While it is prohibitively costly in terms of both money and time for most small and medium businesses to build and operate their own SCIFs, the multi-tenant model significantly lowers the barrier to entry with its turnkey service...It’s a huge competitive differentiator for the city and region.”
As the owners of The Globe Building have undertaken the stunning high-tech adaptive reuse of its landmark building, they’ve described the “new Globe Building” as providing “Big Space, Big Power, and Big Fiber.”
The Globe Building’s unique physical attributes have also provided the necessary conditions for attracting and growing 150,000 SF of Data Centers, as well as attracting and growing Geospatial and other tech firms. From the mid-1990s to today, The Globe has become a preferred location for data center companies, as well as creative agencies, media production firms, and now Geospatial Intelligence, advanced manufacturing and other tech-related firms. They are each taking advantage of being wired into a hub of connectivity with data centers with massive access to redundant power transporting data in and out, and being securely stored.
The Post Building is a stunning 271,000 SF adaptive reuse of the previous St. Louis Post Dispatch newspaper, the The Starwood Group partners, John Berglund and Jim McKelvey
Further highlighting the significance of this secure facility to St. Louis, Sanjay Kumar, Editor-in-Chief of Geospatial World Magazine, noted in his publication for the new release early: “The Globe Building is the first of its kind to house the National Capital Region and underscores the importance of the emergence of St. Louis as the National Geospatial-Intelligence Hub.”
The Geospatial Intelligence industry continues to grow dramatically. FORTUNE BUSINESS INSIGHTS projects the sector “to grow from USD $89.81 billion in 2024 to $262.73 billion by 2032.”
St. Louis, in Downtown North Insight District, The Globe Building, The Post Building, and its District partners are actively pursuing St. Louis’ aspirations to become a Global GEOINT Hub, and to capture its share of this massive industry sector.
