A. G. Edwards headquarters is an urban liability, not an asset
St. Louis Construction News & Review awarded a new building on the A.G. Edwards campus a Regional Excellence Award earlier this year, stating:
“The technical challenges in building this project were enormous, as is the project’s importance to St. Louis. A.G. Edwards is a major employer, its campus connects downtown to mid-town, and in pursuing this project, the company not only built on its commitment to St. Louis, it also upgraded the environment and infrastructure that will help its neighbors, such as Harris-Stowe State College.”
BULLSHIT!!! Let’s take a look at each of these claims to see the folly of the thinking:
• Technical challenges: I’m not really sure what the challenges were – the building looks as boring as the rest on campus. Certainly no more thought was put into connecting to the city on this building than prior A. G. Edwards buildings.
• Importance to St. Louis & being a major employer: The only importance A.G. Edwards has to St. Louis is the 1% employment tax and real estate taxes. Boasting of such a major company having their HQ within the city gives the boys at RCGA something to talk about.
• Connecting downtown to mid-town: Actually, quite the opposite is true. The massive A.G. Edwards campus is a growing virus in the middle of the city. Yes, they are “investing” millions of dollars in construction funds and they are employing many people. So what. Does that automatically create a connection just because they are between two points? Hardly. If fact, the design of the campus literally creates a disconnect between two areas we should be connecting. I’ll explain in much greater detail below why this campus creates a vacuum that has sucked the life out of this area.
• Commitment to St. Louis: This is the part where we are supposed to bow and thank them for not fleeing to Clayton or the hinterlands.
• Neighbors to benefit from upgraded environment & infrastructure: This is a prime example of the ‘spend millions and other development will be spurred’ fallacy.
I repeat, bullshit. All of it.
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