Samples
A Better Place to Grow Up (Chapter 4)
Selling a Vision
The effort to revive Murphy Park is about dreaming and coping. A developer envisions a haven of single-family homes nearby. Teachers struggle with a classroom shakeup.
Chapter 4
Taking care of the gummy stuff
Richard Baron is in the right place at the right time -- 1:30 p.m. on a Thursday in October in Schnucks' corporate headquarters.
But he's blanking on who he's supposed to meet -- one of those senior moments. Fortunately he's got his cell phone. Sitting in the lobby, he calls his secretary.
Gordon Lyons, he's told.
He gives the receptionist Lyons' name and is soon shepherded to his floor.
They take seats around a table in an unadorned conference room. Baron has already set the groundwork for this conference. He's hoping Schnucks will join him in a proposal to redevelop the Pruitt-Igoe site, the city lot that once was home to one of the most notorious public housing complexes in America until it was torn down in the early 1970s.
Baron approached Schnucks after he learned that it might lose its store at 1030 Cass Avenue when the state builds approach ramps to a new Mississippi River bridge. He suggested that Schnucks might replace it with a new supercenter just a mile away on the Pruitt-Igoe site at Cass and Jefferson avenues.
But is Schnucks in for a political headache?
Schnucks opened an inner-city supermarket at Natural Bridge Avenue and Union Boulevard in 1997. Building that store had not been a happy experience. The project had become ensnarled in a dispute between Alderman Sharon Tyus and Mayor Freeman Bosley Jr. and took three years to complete.
Lyons has heard that Alderman April Ford Griffin, D-5th Ward, would rather see light industrial use on the Pruitt-Igoe site. And there had been talk of a golf course.
Groceries need rooftops. "The housing is important to us," Lyons says. "If we find ourselves in the middle of an industrial park . . . ."
"Very frankly, I think this will go away," Baron says. "I've had conversations with people in Washington and at HUD" -- Housing and Urban Development.
"They're the ones who at the end of the day are going to approve this or not. I'm not very concerned about it," Barron says. "They've just put in a magnet school in that neighborhood. They're not going to drop a bunch of 18-wheelers on top of it. I wouldn't worry about it."
Then Baron starts weaving a narrative about the possibilities for the site; how his company, McCormack Baron & Associates, can leverage up to $30 million through the Hope VI program established to redevelop abandoned public housing sites.
Lyons listens respectfully. Baron walked into this meeting with quite a reputation, the Tiger Woods of urban redevelopment.
While home builders in the suburbs played it down the middle of the fairway by building in established neighborhoods and working with conventional financing, Baron had learned how to play out of the rough and sandtraps.
He can do this because after 30 years of dealing with federal and state bureaucrats, he understands the rules, the regulations, the ins and outs of tax breaks, credits and incentives.
He can do this because he has learned how to network with interested civic leaders such as Ben Edwards of A.G. Edwards, Andy Taylor of Enterprise Leasing, David Kemper of Commerce Bank. He has shown them his stunning before-and-after slides, taken them on tours of his projects and had them look into the eyes of the children who would benefit. Then they wrote six-figure checks. Over the years, McCormack Baron has landed $33.5 million in corporate and foundation support for its projects across the nation.
Baron can do this because he understands how companies he works with like to do business, and he keeps them well within their comfort zones.
Baron assures Lyons his company won't get tied up in political knots again. McCormack Baron will carry the ball. "We'll take care of all that gummy stuff," he says. "We just need you guys to be there."
