The spirit of St. Louis has been sapping of late, and for this there is no better metaphor than the ghost town known as Lambert–St. Louis International Airport.
International? It seems barely interstate these days.
Want to travel nonstop to Paris? Get your own plane and fly solo like Charles Lindbergh did 84 years ago, when Lambert Field, carved out of rows of corn, was literally at the center of the world stage in America’s seventh-
largest city.
Today, the venerable landmark is a symbol of urban decline, a shell of its former self with less than a third of the traffic that it had just
14 years ago. The underused $1.1 billion runway that displaced thousands still makes any respectable list of government boondoggles gone south.
Something has to be done about this. And while airport officials have gamely been trying to give the terminals something of a face-lift, no serious economic solution has been in sight.
Maybe, and I mean maybe, that could be changing.
A little more than three years ago, a group of local officials decided that something meant developing a “big idea,” and theirs was to approach the Chinese government about transforming St. Louis into an international cargo hub for its burgeoning—albeit not so warm and fuzzy—export business to the U.S.
By early 2009, then–Sen. Kit Bond, the Chinese ambassador to the U.S., and the usual array of self-proclaimed civic leaders were forming the Midwest China Hub Commission. They promised to expand what they said were Missouri’s $1 billion in exports to China, and spoke merrily of returning St. Louis to the 19th-century glory days of fur trading.
This seemed to be nonsense—well-intended nonsense, enthusiastic nonsense, “big idea” nonsense, globally aware nonsense, but still nonsense.
The notion that St. Louis would suddenly emerge overnight as an international trade juggernaut seemed about as likely as the prospect of resurrecting the fur trade. To those who’ve grown a little long in the tooth, civically speaking, it conjured up memories of how the city decided in 1983 to invest something like $300,000 to host the Miss Universe pageant on the theory that it would bring much international attention to St. Louis.
It didn’t.
But give the China Hub dreamers their due: Today, after three-plus years of negotiations between—yes—St. Louis and China, the status of the project has to be upgraded from dreamy to improbable.
And “improbable” deserves a shot, especially when when it might do something to ease Lambert’s plight and potentially impact the local economy as well.
Against all odds, the China Hub effort—now (not so literately) rebranded as the “Aerotropolis”—has resulted in what, by all appearances, seem to be serious negotiations with the right decision-makers in China. Hundreds of contacts, here and in China, seem to have put St. Louis in play as a place where Chinese air-cargo planes might actually be landing in the not-too-distant future.
The effort seems well-timed. The Chinese recently announced they will be investing nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars in new aircraft, and they are said to want a much larger share of the action involved in the shipping of their own air cargo.
Aerotropolis backers say the Chinese now only handle 12 to 15 percent of their own air cargo and want to take that number up to
50 percent. The Chinese also are dramatically increasing trade with Brazil, which is too far to reach without a refueling stop, and local enthusiasts believe that a Midwestern U.S. hub would be an ideal stopover point for that as well.
It does seem quite likely that, for better or worse, the Chinese will soon be landing many more giant air-cargo planes in the U.S., and very possibly the Midwest. The question is where.
Viscerally, it just doesn’t seem real that St. Louis could be the legitimate answer to that question, especially since the competition includes giant airports such as those in Chicago, Dallas, and Atlanta. But the counter-
argument is that this is air cargo—which by definition has to be moved in a timely fashion—and that the congestion that comes with success for the larger airports opens the door for a smaller market like St. Louis or Cincinnati to be a player, especially if it’s well-located.
That’s the hope, at least, and in that context St. Louis’ erstwhile economic weakness—its sadly underutilized airport—potentially becomes a strength. That is, if St. Louis, with virtually no existing air-cargo business to speak of, can overcome the dearth of freight forwarders, warehousers, and associated businesses needed to handle such cargo.
That’s a big liability for St. Louis, and whether it can be fixed is a gigantic “if.”
To keep it real, the negotiations with the Chinese, while positive, haven’t produced firm commitments or contracts, only memoranda of understanding that sound promising but can’t be listed on a bank deposit slip. This isn’t even close to a done deal.
But things have progressed to the point where we have reached the corporate-welfare stage of the proceedings. The bipartisan, multijurisdictional effort has come together—flanked by big business and organized labor alike—with what has become the sacred ritual of American capitalism: the “ask” for public assistance.
The Aerotropolis team is seeking $360 million in state tax credits to be used over, they say, a period of 15 to 20 years, for the purpose of incentivizing said freight forwarders, warehousers, and Lord knows whom else.
This is the stop at which I customarily depart. Sorry, but I’m from the ancient tribe of free-market capitalists, the vanishing breed that actually believes that captains of industry should engage in risk-and-reward free enterprise without acting like what some like to call “welfare mothers.”
Whatever happened to “build it and they will come”? If the Chinese really fly cargo planes to St. Louis, won’t the freight forwarders and others who feed upon such air cargo find their way here to process it? Why should we incentivize them to come here to make money?
The best answer I’ve gotten from the Aerotropolis backers is that it’s a chicken-and-egg question, and that the logistics of air-cargo processing are such that you can’t get freight forwarders to come here if their trucks aren’t going to be filled, and that they won’t be filled until more than an occasional new flight lands, and that the Chinese won’t start landing them in serious
numbers until the freight processing is in place.
And round and round she goes.
Thus, we have the request for tax credits—really a form of public handout—so that the whole air-cargo process can be jump-started. And these credits are paradoxical.
On one hand, the amount is way too high, especially if—as some rightly fear—the tax credits will come at the expense of worthy
St. Louis projects, such as those promoting historic preservation. On the other hand, it’s way too low, representing a drop in the bucket, given the daunting task of developing a major international air-cargo hub from scratch—and how the amount seemingly could easily be overwhelmed by the likes of Chicago.
As to the first half, the opportunity cost of these tax credits, I’m afraid that train has left the station. The so-called “deficit hawks” in the state legislature, who essentially oppose anything that sounds too urban or progressive, are well on their way to defunding such activities. If a “compromise” on Aerotropolis credits gives them political cover to do what they were going to do in any event, so be it.
The second half is trickier. On its face, this smells like a program that will become either a bottomless pit of corporate welfare or one in which the tax credits somehow make their way to well-connected developers and the like, even if the Chinese never land a plane here. And the threat of competition is more than real: Chicago and
other cities aren’t going to roll over and play dead.
Considering that, the backers of Aerotropolis have only one argument—and I mean one—that makes their effort worth trying, even to a corporate-welfare hater like myself. Let’s state it very clearly:
Aerotropolis backers claim that the way the state program is structured, not a dime of Missouri tax credits will be given out on the come. Tax credits will only flow after the Chinese planes start landing, and the revenues (and presumably jobs) actually arrive.
Emphasis is added for a reason. This is the key to the whole deal. If that statement is true—if the tax-credit program, breaking from the custom of state government, is as pure as the driven snow and will only be activated once Lambert has some new activity—then I say go for it.
If not, then it’s probably not worth the risk, because let us not forget: This is a long shot of long shots. And if this fundamental and emphatic claim isn’t true, the whole project can’t be trusted.
At press time, it appeared that Gov. Jay Nixon, a lukewarm Aerotropolis backer, was about to call a special session for September to consider this and other economic-development measures. There, and only there, can state legislators actually insist that the sausage-making part of the process assures that the tax credits are to be handled properly.
Am I confident of a happy ending? Of course not. This is Missouri.
But to those who would give up on this civic dream just because all of the last umpteen dreams turned into nightmares, I’d say this: Let’s hear a better idea, specifically, for turning around Lambert–St. Louis International Airport.
Let me repeat myself: St. Louis needs to do something about Lambert. The status quo is unacceptable, and even if, as I suspect, the China Hub project yields just a fraction of what its backers claim, it will have been worth the try.
Here’s your internal marketing slogan: “Aerotropolis: It’s better than nothing.”
That’s the spirit.
SLM co-owner Ray Hartmann is a panelist on KETC Channel 9’s Donnybrook, which airs Thursdays at 7 p.m.
