"Opinion: Capital goes where it's wanted, stays where it's well-treated."

The newly built $1.7 billion National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) West headquarters in St. Louis. David Carson, Post-Dispatch

NOTE: I recently posted the attached Op Editorial in the St. Louis Post-Distach

I’ve spent my entire career in economic development. I served as CEO of the St. Louis Regional Chamber & Growth Association (RCGA) for 18 years, as well as serving economic development roles in Baltimore, Atlanta, Denver and Washington.

Throughout those roles, I came to discover the wisdom articulated years ago by the late Citibank CEO Walter Wriston, who observed: “Capital goes where it is welcome and stays where it is well-treated.”

I’ve remained actively engaged in efforts to bring investment and economic development to St. Louis, including supporting the multi-year effort to win the site selection for the recently completed 3,000-job, $1.75-billion new National Geospatial Intelligence Agency's western headquarters in North St. Louis.

In this context, I read with interest the Post-Dispatch editorial this fall on the city’s love-hate relationship with developer Paul McKee and his company, NorthSide Regeneration. "Editorial: The city is right to negotiate with McKee, for now --- but not for long." St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

In the editorial, I noted the obvious omission of the fact that, without the Northside assembly and the tens of millions in investment by the developer and his banker, the Bank of Washington, in an area of our city which had been completely disinvested for over five decades. There would not have even been a site in the city for NGA’s new 97-acre facility.

As NGA was beginning its construction, I recall a poignant on-air dialogue between McGraw Milhaven and Post-Dispatch columnist Tony Messenger on KTRS Radio , in which they noted the perverse irony that the same city officials who were more than happy to take advantage of Paul McKee’s investment in North St. Louis, placed obstacle-after-obstacle in the way of McKee moving forward with his development of the areas surrounding the NGA site once they no longer felt they needed him. As Mr. Milhaven put it, the city “kept him in court for four years and then complained that he didn’t do anything for four years.”

As Walter Wriston might have observed, the Bank of Washington and McKee have not been afforded the “hardy welcome or good treatment” one would expect would be given an investor — really, the only major investor in recent memory — in the future of North St. Louis. That treatment, according to the bank’s court filings, is the reason that the bank took the very rare step of suing the city’s development agencies for fraud.

At a time when St. Louis is facing even greater post-COVID turnaround challenges than most cities — recall that sobering Wall Street Journal “urban doom” article in April — the last thing that St. Louis needs is to pursue heavy-handed, politically-volatile eminent domain actions against the one bank which stepped up to support the massive and unprecedented land assemblage investment that made it possible to win the new NGA facility, saving 3,000 jobs, and now offering the prospect of building a Global Geospatial Hub.

Such short-sighted action would be a horrible economic development message to prospective bankers and investors throughout the world.

Now is the time to look forward: NGA has opened. St. Louis has a new mayor. She has been given the opportunity to build on this asset, with St. Louis actively pursuing its potential to become a Global Geospatial and Defense Hub.

The message to send by the city’s actions in such an effort is that bankers and investors are both “welcome and will be well-treated.”