Almost a year since Cara Spencer took over as St. Louis mayor, she finally has a permanent leader installed at the St. Louis Development Corporation, the quasi-governmental nonprofit that spearheads development activities for St. Louis.
Stephen Westbrooks was sworn in as the agency’s new president and CEO Monday morning, and, alongside Spencer, fielded questions from a small group of reporters on the organization he officially started leading mere minutes earlier.
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Westbrooks conveyed his excitement for the opportunity, as well as what he’s gathered in conversations since news broke that he would be taking over from Otis Williams, the agency’s former longtime director, who had been leading SLDC in an interim capacity from the early days of Spencer’s administration.
“I’m blown away by the things that are happening that I wasn’t even aware of, and the amount of energy that’s here that I wasn’t aware of,” Westbrooks says. “One of the things I hope to do is make that more obvious to the residents of St Louis, because I think there’s something already to be very proud of.”
He acknowledges St. Louis faces challenges in securing new development, yet contends the city is in a position to build on existing strengths and tailwinds, citing Energizer Park as an example of a new anchor where additional development has popped up in the years since its completion in Downtown West.
“There’s [a] tremendous amount of energy for improving the development ecosystem in the City of St. Louis,” Westbrooks says. “While I’m very cognizant of a lot of the challenges, I know we all are, I think there’s a lot for us to build on.”
For now, Westbrooks’ main focus is getting up to speed on the local development landscape and the vast number of stakeholders, spanning community members and the aldermen that represent them to banks and investors who will fund future projects. Building relationships with members of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen was one thing in particular Westbrooks says will be a new experience.
“There’s a lot to learn, I have a real urgency to learn quickly,” Westbrooks says. “SLDC has a new set of tools that I will want to better understand the impacts of and how they can best be leveraged in service to a healthy development ecosystem.”
But he adds there are elements of the job he expects to be familiar given his past experience, most recently serving as executive director of the southern region of IFF, a Community Development Financial Institution that worked with many local nonprofits in need of funding for real estate projects. “The project complexity, creative financing, aligning capital, are all things that I’ve been doing for a really long time,” he says.
Westbrooks’ background both as a native of St. Louis and experience with nonprofit and private development stood out to Spencer, and she says her decision was validated by the local response his selection garnered.
“The wide range of folks that supported the appointment of Stephen in this role—alderpersons from different perspectives being very excited, Otis [Williams] being very excited, our business community being very excited,” she says. “A whole range of stakeholders really showed up to show support, which is unusual, and really important for the work that is ahead of us.”
To that end, Spencer gave Westbrooks two envelopes just after his swearing in, one with an official pin of St. Louis, and the other outlining her priorities for his first 30 days and first year. She placed an emphasis on deploying remaining American Rescue Plan Act funds, of which SLDC has a sizable pot to manage, along with addressing vacancy and driving development in the corridor hit by last year’s tornado, as well as downtown and neighborhood commercial districts across the city.
“We want to make sure Stephen feels grounded [in] what our direction, our ambitions, for the role are,” she says. “We, right off the bat, want to make sure that Stephen feels empowered and directed to build relationships across a wide spectrum of stakeholders, including [Greater St. Louis Inc.] and [the Regional Business Counci], but also our planning department, community stakeholders.”
Spencer acknowledged there’s a lot for Westbrooks to get up to speed on, even saying “this is Stephen’s first day, so give him a break,” after a direct question on how he would be helping victims from the tornado. On top of that, SLDC is managing the deconstruction of the iconic Club Imperial in North City and the stabilization of Cleveland High School and Marshall School, which the agency just acquired from St. Louis Public Schools.
When asked if he was “looking for bulldozers or buyers” in reference to the latter two, Westbrooks offered a more nuanced view.
“The intention is to do what’s best, but be really strategic about the type of investments that we’re making, and seeing what the real opportunity is on any given site,” he says. “Not going in … already having a clear sense of what exactly needs to happen, but really studying the opportunity and making the best decision based on what the future opportunity is for that building.”
Overall, Westbrooks says he’s confident the city is in a position to overcome the many challenges it’s facing just based on the conversations he’s had in the past month.
“I love the City of St. Louis and I believe in a future for this city that is more than that doom loop narrative,” he says. “It’s clear that there’s a lot of tailwinds for us that we can build on.”
Hear more from Westbrooks in Schmid’s interview on The 314 Podcast.
