With about $55 million in Rams settlement funding, new statewide incentives and local legislation pushing it, St. Louis Development Corporation CEO Stephen Westbrooks says the time is right for downtown St. Louis to have a resurgence.
In an interview with St. Louis Public Radio, he said the area's current population of roughly 12,000 residents needs to double for the area to support amenities like grocery stores, restaurants and more.
He said the lofty goal is possible, though, through new momentum from local and statewide efforts.
Last week, Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe and St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer agreed that the "stars were aligned" for a long-awaited downtown revitalization during a bill signing of two major pieces of economic development laws incentivizing redevelopment in the area.
On top of that, the city allocated $55 million in settlement funds from a lawsuit against Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke toward redeveloping larger vacant buildings, such as the Railway Exchange, and to push efforts to redevelop the city's riverfront.
Westbrooks said the challenge now is to capitalize on those opportunities.
"That legislation, if we're able to execute, gives us a running start to facilitate investment," he said. "I think it makes our downtown nationally competitive, just given the breadth of the incentives and state incentives that are available through that legislation."
He spoke with St. Louis Public Radio economic development reporter Kavahn Mansouri about downtown St. Louis and how the city needs to restore north St. Louis and tackle its vacancy problem.
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Kavahn Mansouri: Stephen, tell me a bit about what you're hoping to accomplish leading SLDC.
Stephen Westbrooks: I think one of the things that is increasingly coming into focus and clear is that there's an opportunity for economic development in the city of St. Louis to move away from sort of a one transaction at a time frame and into a more systems-level, consistent, predictable frame that enables capital to be better coordinated, enables better access to that capital.
We may be thinking about philanthropic capital, public capital, private capital that's available to small business owners, entrepreneurs, contractors, those types of businesses, right? So, better coordinating capital, doing business with the city, making that easier, more efficient. Again, there's an opportunity for better coordination, more predictability around the incentives that we sometimes leverage for projects. So there's an opportunity, I think, to move from a one-off transaction way of doing economic development and really building out a system that works for more people, and that's easier to navigate.
Mansouri: What are some of the challenges you foresee for the development corporation?
Westbrooks: One of the things is becoming more of a systems leader and taking more of an approach that maybe a master developer might take, as opposed to perhaps reacting to opportunities that come into SLDC. You know, having an agency that is more proactive in catalyzing new development that might be happening in the city.
I think one of the things I'm very interested in is there's 24,000 vacant and abandoned parcels in the city of St. Louis. Eighty-five percent of those are north of Delmar. The LRA, which SLDC manages — that's the city's land bank — has almost 10,000 vacant and abandoned parcels. That number is likely to increase because of the tornado, but I think we have a huge opportunity to start to figure out how we can systematically start to assemble land and create an inventory of sites that are investable and instead rebuild communities and rebuild neighborhoods.
Mansouri: There's a lot of momentum downtown right now, new legislation and a historic amount of money from the Rams settlement being injected into that area. What are your hopes for that area?
Westbrooks: My hope for downtown is that we're able to capitalize on the momentum. I think that the Missouri Innovation Zone legislation, the Modessa legislation, represents huge opportunities for us to redevelop some significant assets in our downtown, as well as to build the density downtown. I think we're right at about maybe 12,000 residents. I think we need to be closer to maybe 25,000 to really feel like the downtown neighborhood has density that can support typical neighborhood amenities, like your everyday amenities — like convenience stores and, you know, restaurants and the things that make for a vibrant neighborhood. And so that legislation, if we're able to execute, gives us a running start to facilitate investment. I think it makes our downtown nationally competitive, just given the breadth of the incentives and state incentives that are available through that legislation.
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