Kevin A. Roberts
The old Century Electric foundry complex in Midtown looked, to some who stepped inside it in 2016, like a grime-coated hellscape. “I’d been through a lot of bad buildings,” recalls one development professional, “but that was one of the worst.” Erected in stages from 1929 onward, the complex had changed hands to Federal Mogul Corp. and sat vacant since 2007. Material scrappers had preyed on it. Motorists zipping past on Highway 40 saw the graffiti that blared off the walls.
Steve Smith, meanwhile, saw possibilities. He worked with colleagues at Lawrence Group, his architectural design firm, and New + Found, his development company, to repurpose this industrial site as a mixed-use hub. That hub, City Foundry STL, finally opened last August. It’s already feeding 20,000 people per week in its diverse (and proudly local) Food Hall. Thus what once produced motor castings now churns out mango salmon poke.
“It is one of the deals that fundamentally shifted the market dynamics in Midtown,” says Jason Hall, CEO of Greater St. Louis Inc. “It is cited in almost every deal I hear about as another reason to be in the city. And there are very few people who would’ve taken on a project of that magnitude.”
Smith is a lifer in town and co-founded Lawrence Group in 1983. As a pro-preservation architect, he grew frustrated waiting for historic buildings to be saved by developers, so he slowly became one. Today, his restorations dot the central corridor. Downtown, there’s the gleaming Park Pacific on Tucker; the slender elegance of the Marquette Building on Washington Avenue; and then, on 4th Street, the red-brick Security Building, where Smith’s firm is headquartered—a decision, he says, intended to show that Lawrence Group has put its money where its mouth is.
There are other achievements here and there, such as the South Side National Bank Building and the Globe Building, both at South Grand and Gravois, or The Rand at 4100 Lindell, in the Central West End. But the densest concentration of Smith’s work is in Midtown. Consider the Grand Center Arts District. Smith was the driving force behind the rescue of the buildings now known as Grand Center Arts Academy, the Sun Theatre, and, most recently, the widely hailed Angad Arts Hotel.
His most recent feat in Midtown is City Foundry STL. It wasn’t easy. The environmental clean-up alone took a year and a half. When the pandemic hit, Smith lost about half of his lessees. In 2021, municipal elections brought in a new mayor, Tishaura Jones, a new alderman, Tina Pihl, and a new head of the city’s development arm, Neal Richardson, all of whom expected more explicit “public goods” in exchange for granting developers public incentives. So when Smith went to the city seeking tax-increment financing for the project’s second phase, he struck a deal in which he’s agreed to contribute $1.8 million to affordable housing in nearby neighborhoods. Nahuel Fefer, the mayor’s director of policy and development, reportedly said in a hearing on the deal: “We want to thank Steve Smith for his flexibility, for the sense of social responsibility that flows through his work.” By Smith’s reckoning, this was the seventh mayoral administration to overlap with his 38-year career. He says that he merely did what he has always done: adapt to new priorities at City Hall, so that all sides can get to a win-win.
And Smith truly wants such an outcome, Hall observes. “He takes on deals where he’s clearly not profit-maximizing,” says Hall. “There’s no doubt in my mind he’s thinking of the best interests of the city.” Smith also inspires his peers, Hall says, with an “extraordinary appetite for risk.” (An appetite, by the way, that Smith indulges while riding his many motorcycles.)
City Foundry continues to evolve. Smith says 76 percent of the space is under contract. He’s also working on a plan—still secret at press time—for using the complex’s basements and subterranean tunnels, which he hadn’t even known existed at first because they’d been flooded. Smith’s overarching aim for the complex, and all of his work, has been to replace the narrative of population loss and rustbelt stagnancy with a new one—one that honors our architectural heritage through smart reuse.
“Everything I’ve done around the restoration of buildings is to try to change the trajectory of St. Louis,” Smith says. “If we want to change that trajectory, we need to try bold and different things.” —Nicholas Phillips
