Unlike Chicago, we cannot have an anti-business mentality.
What I mean here is that Chicago is not necessarily Anti-Business. But being the hub of a 8,000,000 person megalopolis, where commerce from New Orleans to New York converges, businesses want to locate there despite its climate as a Union Town.
St. Louis doesn't have that luxury anymore. St. Louis is an important crossroads, but is not as important as it once was.
That's why St. Louis cannot be a little Chicago.
It's a different type of environment here. People are not begging to get a part of the Downtown St. Louis action. Addresses between Jefferson, Choteau, Broadway, and Cass are not as prestigious properties as those of the Chicago loop.
We have to accept who we are, and perhaps look at other mid-sized metropolitans that have been more successful than we have been.
What can we control? For instance, the weather is on thing we can never have in our favor in the summer time, and as we have learned, we are not immune from the dead of the winter either.
Thus, while we can cover the basics by looking at what other cities have done, we have to look at that vision of the St. Louis region and we have to find a common vision. We have to also incorporate a common vision of our own Granite City sub-region and incorporate it as part of the larger St. Louis area.
It my wildest dreams, as Mayors Hagnauer, Denham, Ware, and Hamm and a representative from Mitchell all site down and chart a common vision, they also look at what's going on in the Metro East and in the entire St. Louis region and find a strategic plan that advances our region and makes us an asset to the entire region.
I firmly believe that ignoring East St. Louis is to our detriment. We can't be responsible for cleaning up their messes, but I believe that East St. Louis touches the Collinsville area to its Eastern extreme, Belleville to its southern Extreme, and Good ol' Granite City to it's North and the big City to its West.
I believe the entire metro East needs to be concerned for East St. Louis. It is the area the touches St. Louis.
It is the very weakest part of the St. Louis Metro area, along with the areas that surround it.
To make the overall picture better, we cannot lack concern for these areas or pretend that they do not exist.
Yes, I am a true believer that there is a high cost to fragmentation, and many of this area have been forced to pay it.