St. Louis has experienced quite a downtown rejuvenation over the past several years, but the metropolis on the Mississippi known as the Gateway to the West has been pushing west itself, with development reaching well beyond the next river, the Missouri.
      While efforts to rejuvenate downtown continue, driving the St. Louis area's growth has been the industrial, commercial and residential explosion in communities like St. Charles, Chesterfield, St. Peters and O'Fallon. A few years ago, MasterCard located a $90-million global operations center at the nucleus of a 1,000-acre (405-ha.), multifaceted development called WingHaven in St. Charles County, which also sports a full menu of residential choices and a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course.
      The newest project is TriStar Development's $200-million, 168-acre (68-ha.) Progress Point Business Park in O'Fallon, whose first tenant will be CitiMortgage. The company recently announced it would consolidate several national offices in St. Louis, and the 50-acre (20-ha.), 515,000-sq.-ft. (47,840-sq.-m.) project it is pursuing will cost around $85 million by the time it's complete in November 2003. The expansion will not only keep 3,500 jobs in the region, but is expected to create another 1,500 in the next few years. State officials estimate that the overall economic impact of this one decision will be $63 million. TriStar is marketing the rest of the property to other prospective office tenants, as well as to hotel and restaurant firms.
      The company is also building a 35,000-sq.-ft. (3,250-sq.-m.) building in the Univ. of Missouri's Missouri Research Park (MRP), which boasted two major expansions and three new corporate tenants during 2001, resulting in $1.3 million worth of leases. The headliner was the renovation of a production facility into a 120,000-sq.-ft. 11,150-sq.-m.) technology center for investment company AG Edwards, which paid $7 million for the building and poured almost that amount into its upgrade. The company already occupies 1.5-million sq. ft. (139,350 sq. m.) at its downtown St. Louis headquarters, and is expanding that by 1.1-million sq. ft. (102,200 sq. m.).
      Other nearby operations include the $50-million, 300,000-sq.-ft. (27,870-sq.-m.) MCI WorldCom campus and a 110,000-sq.-ft. (10,200-sq.-m.) technology center for Enterprise Rent-A-Car in the Missouri Business Park, located even further west in Weldon Spring. St. Louis-based Monsanto will locate its Integrated Protein Technologies division just west of the park. A 1995 study by St. Louis firm Development Strategies projects the corridor all the way to Wentzville, at the intersection of Highway 40 and Interstate 70, some 45 miles from downtown St. Louis.
      Not all the growth is at the periphery. Duke Realty, the 2001 National Association of Industrial and Office Properties (NAIOP) Developer of the Year, which officially changed its name from Duke-Weeks in July 2001, has taken a significant interest in the St. Louis area, with a hand in the development of six different industrial parks, five office parks and four mixed use parks, most of them located near the I-270 loop that used to define the metro area's outer limits. Projects pursued during 2001 included the signing of a lease by Fujitsu Network Communications, and the construction of several large speculative industrial and office buildings. HAS Commercial also sees the promise inherent in the area, having constructed a 344,000-sq.-ft. (31,960-sq.-m.) office/warehouse facility in Hazelwood.
      Employee assistance and managed health care firm Magellan Health Services just signed a lease for 268,000 sq. ft. (24,900 sq. m.) at TriStar's Riverport Commons development in Maryland Heights, and plans to occupy another 30,000 sq. ft. (2,800 sq. m.) this summer. The deal, worth $47 million overall, was supported by more than $6 million in state bonds and represented a victory for local officials in competition with sites in Utah and Maryland. The project will retain 1,400 jobs and add 500 more.
      Part of the collaborative effort to keep the company was the issuance of local bonds for the construction of the new facility, as well as technical and site location assistance from one of the state's largest employers, utility AmerenUE, which also offered a performance-based energy incentive that reduces electrical costs by 5 percent for five years.
      "We're delighted that the state of Missouri has provided us with this opportunity to expand our operations while remaining in the region," said William Barr, executive vice president, workplace division for Magellan, in January. "This agreement with the county is an example of the type of public/private partnership that provides long-term stability to Magellan as an employer of choice and long-term economic strength to the St. Louis region."