Mark Perkins has spent the entirety of his nearly 40-year career managing or administrating municipalities. That all changes for him next month when he takes over as the new CEO of Great Rivers Greenway.
Outgoing CEO Susan Trautman announced last year she was retiring after leading the organization for a decade and a half.
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Perkins joins GRG on August 4 after spending the last two-and-a-half decades as Creve Coeur’s city administrator, roles he acknowledges are quite different from each other.
“Local governments, by charter, have so many responsibilities, and something new comes up every day,” he says. “We might be in a new business that we didn’t realize we would ever be in.”
Insurance, public safety, economic development, and more are all critical to the day-to-day functions of a municipality, he says. GRG, by contrast, has a singular focus: Build bike and pedestrian pathways in St. Louis, St. Louis County, and St. Charles County.
“That is one of the really appealing aspects of this organization and will help keep us focused on what we are here to do,” Perkins says. “We’re here to build a greenway, and it has a lot of benefits, but we’re not necessarily in those other businesses.”
The contours of his new role aren’t entirely foreign, though. Perkins will still be a public employee as the new head of the regional organization behind bike and pedestrian projects in St. Louis, St. Louis County, and St. Charles County, because the agency is funded in part by a sales tax passed by residents in those three jurisdictions. But another source of GRG’s revenue—fundraising—is something entirely new to him, he adds.
Perkins says he’s always held a passion for greenways, having grown up next to the Union Creek Trail in the Kansas City area, and living right next to the Green Bay Trail when he worked in the northern Chicago suburb of Highland Park.
“I could go up and down the north shore of Chicago and connect various cities along there,” he says. “That gave me another sense of how powerful greenways can be to connect a region.”
And he wants greenways to juice the sense of connection throughout the whole region. Perkins’ local perspective and experience comes from suburban St. Louis County, but the organization he’s gearing up to lead is in the middle of a decidedly city-centric project: the $245 million Brickline Greenway connecting Forest Park to the Arch and Fairground Park to Tower Grove Park.
But he says it’s no zero-sum game: The future of all municipalities in St. Louis County (and St. Charles County for that matter) region are undeniably linked.
“In Creve Coeur, we have really understood the value of regionalism for a long time. We need a strong central city,” he says. “The suburbs of St. Louis are not what they are on their own.”
Perkins adds he’s received many messages from local municipal leaders anxious for their own slice of GRG’s signature greenways. In the near-term, most of his focus will be on completing the Brickline, and placing GRG in a strong enough position that voters choose to renew one of the major sales tax propositions funding the agency.
“I believe there’s a lot of awareness about what GRG is doing, [but] there’s still a lot of room to grow in that regard,” Perkins says. “I’m still surprised by some people that I run into in my circles that are not yet aware of all the work that’s been done to date.”
And there’s the issue of continued upkeep as well. “We need to ensure that the greenways we’re building can be properly and adequately maintained, because money is always scarce, not only for [us], but for the municipalities that are our partners,” he says.
Still, Perkins feels vested in making the region stronger. “I’ve lived longer in St. Louis than I did growing up in Kansas City,” he notes. “And St. Louis just has such a strong culture. People here really do care about the region. We certainly have challenges, but I believe that the Greenway is a really bright spot in the region, and certainly will continue to be in the future.”
