The Strategy will guide investment and policy decisions by the SLDC, the City, and its public, private, and institutional partners to position St. Louis on a path towards a more equitable and robust economy. The Strategy is designed to help improve the outcomes for all where the distribution of resources, opportunities, and burdens are driven by future possibility rather than race, income, or historic patterns of investment.
We led an effort to engage City residents, businesses and stakeholders through open houses, online engagement, and a lot of focus groups and community meetings. A "meeting in a box" was designed to take information to communities across St. Louis and collect information about the challenges faced in creating a business, finding a job, getting to work, accessing services and more.
This framework seeks to position St. Louis to compete regionally and globally for jobs, catalyze the transformation and growth of St. Louis’ neighborhoods through a commitment to “quality of place” throughout the city, capitalize on core economic strengths to unlock the opportunity for all to thrive, and maintain a more sustainable tax base driven by commercial and residential investment and renewed population growth.
Data, data, data. Our work defined 13 employment areas in the City, each with its own personality. New data was collected to identify existing jobs, business types and opportunities for new jobs and investment.