Action Under the Arch

Once the Gateway to the West, St. Louis became the Doormat of the Midwest in the late '90s. Life had all but left the city — until, that is, Downtown Now, a public/private partnership, laid out an ambitious plan to resurrect the area in 2000. Since then the group has exceeded its hopes of generating $1 billion in new construction investments by threefold. More than 1,000 new residential units have already been built with 90% occupancy. “[The development] is really feeding off of itself,” says Tom Reeves, executive director of Downtown Now. “The momentum is tremendous.” Groundbreaking and ribbon cutting is going on all the time, but Reeves tipped us off to four as-yet undeveloped areas with hundreds of millions of dollars in design and construction work up for grabs.