A proposal to temporarily move St. Louis County government employees out of their Clayton office building and into a former St. Ann shopping mall is the debate du jour at the County Council. It’s a drama featuring a lot of familiar names—some adjacent to a previous scandal that rocked the county.
The deal would have the county vacate the 58-year-old Lawrence K. Roos building in Clayton and head to the former Northwest Plaza shopping mall space in St. Ann. The Roos building is not up to fire code and filled with asbestos. Discussions around what to do about Roos have dragged on for nearly four years. In recent months, some members of the council have urged county officials to ink a deal with brothers Robert and David Glarner, who own what is now known as The Crossings at Northwest.
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The Glarners—and their St. Ann property in particular—have a long history with county government. In 2016, then-County Executive Steve Stenger relocated several county agency offices to the former shopping mall. The deal drew scrutiny from both the County Council and the FBI, as the Glarners had been significant donors to Stenger, raising concerns about a potential pay-to-play arrangement. In 2019, after the brothers declined to appear voluntarily, the council subpoenaed them to answer questions about the agreement. Ultimately, Stenger was hit with pay-to-play charges, though they did not include the The Crossings deal.
To help sherpa the current potential deal with the county, the Glarners hired lobbyist Jeff Rainford. Prior to becoming a lobbyist for Clayco Construction, Schnucks, and more, Rainford was in city government working as then-Mayor Francis Slay’s chief of staff. He also sat on the Better Together group, a proposal that sought to merge the city and county and would have installed Stenger as the “metro mayor.” In November he registered as a lobbyist for Specklebelly, the company which oversees the leasing efforts of The Crossings.
Rainford says that the current opportunity in St. Ann has nothing to do with whatever went down in Stenger’s day. “It’s really about, what has the county’s experience been like in Northwest Plaza? And if it’s been good, could it be replicated with additional space?” he says.
In the past year, Rainford has cut donations to three Democratic councilwomen: $500 to Shalonda Webb, $500 to Rita Heard Days, and $1,000 to Lisa Clancy.
He says that the donations to Heard Days and Webb happened before he was hired by the Glarners and before he knew anything about the potential move. “I go out of my way to support African American candidates in the St. Louis region, because I don’t think St. Louis has enough of them, and I think it really holds us back,” he says.
The donation to Clancy came in November, on the same day that the council, in closed session, voted to enter into negotiations with the Glarners over the St. Ann property. Rainford says that he’s long supported Clancy and they’ve only had one cursory conversation about The Crossings. Clancy herself says she’s known Rainford for a long time and his donation has no impact on how she views this potential deal. “If anything, it’s going to be jarring, because I think I’ve probably been one of the most critical people of Northwest Plaza,” she says.
As it stands right now, county officials seem to fall into three camps relating to The Crossings: those in favor of the move, those against, and those who aren’t opposed to The Crossing but want a better deal from the Glarners.
Much of the council’s deliberations over the potential move have occurred behind closed doors, as the state’s open records laws allow for discussions about real estate transactions to happen outside of public view. (Though the Post-Dispatch’s Jacob Barker did press his ear to the door at one such closed meeting, and reported that things got loud and sounded heated.)
Reading the tea leaves suggests County executive Sam Page isn’t opposed to the move but wants a better deal. At a press conference last week, he said that The Crossings was “one potential location” and that it was “big enough to handle most of what’s here [at Roos].” But he qualified that by adding that he needs the best deal possible for the taxpayers’ money. More recently, the man hired by Page to negotiate on the county’s behalf, Gary Earls, emerged from one of the closed door meetings and quipped that the Glarners’ “price is high.”
A county government insider familiar with those closed meetings tells SLM that the three Republicans on the council are basically against the Crossings deal, while Webb and Heard Days are both broadly supportive of the move and want the process to move more quickly.
Heard Days was less committal in an email to SLM, saying that the council is working hard to make a decision soon but is getting “conflicting information” about the various options on the table. (Those options include finding a way to remain in the current headquarters as it is renovated or moving to the Meridian Building, at Highway 40 and Hanley, home to a BJC building and a Men’s Warehouse.)
Webb did not respond to an email seeking comment. But at Tuesday night’s county council meeting, Webb blasted the process’s pace and cost. She said the county’s effort to try to figure out where to temporarily relocate has already cost the county more than $1 million and that she will be calling for an audit.
Fellow Democratic Councilwoman Gretchen Bangert would likely be in favor of the move as well, as it would move 600 employees into a building in her district. And if Webb, Heard Days, and Bangert support the move, the likely fourth vote to get The Crossings proposal over the edge would come from Clancy. She tells SLM she has a lot of questions, not just about a lease with the Glarners, but about any lease. The real problem, she says, is the deficiencies with the current building, so she questions the wisdom of spending millions of dollars on what would essentially be a stopgap measure. The city of Clayton has given the county until the end of 2027 to either fix Roos or get out.
“We’re getting really bogged down trying to figure out, as we should be, what the best deal is for the county if we are going to temporarily relocate services, which appears like that’s what the plan is at this point,” she says. “But we can’t lose the forest for the trees here. There really hasn’t been a lot of problem solving related to the Roos building.”
There had been a proposal to use Rams money and a property tax increase to fund repairs on the Roos building, but the council shot them down.
Clancy adds that an effort to bring the building up to code also seems ill-fated. “Hancock’s been obsessed with getting sprinkler bids,” she says, referring to Republican Councilman Dennis Hancock, who is also running for county executive. But he has not been able to find a way forward with that.
In an email to SLM, Hancock did wonder aloud if it made more fiscal sense to just stay put. “For three years now I’ve been asking a simple question: What will it cost to simply comply with the City of Clayton fire codes,” he wrote.
He said that he’s been told by Page it would cost around $200 million to remove asbestos, replace furniture, and fix “all of the other issues,” such as leaking windows.
Hancock, who has been in the building maintenance industry for 25 years, says that he’s asked around and thinks it would cost closer to $15 million to update the Roos building.
Hancock says he also has questions about Page’s hiring of Earls to help negotiate the contract between the county and the Glarners. Earls is the former county director of operations who has since retired to Arkansas. (His tenure also overlapped with the Stenger era.) Hancock tells SLM he submitted a Sunshine request last week seeking a copy of the consulting contract Earls is currently working under. “I was told that nothing exists. That means either he is working for free, or the administration does not want the Council to know what he is being paid.”
A Page spokesman clarified that Earle is an “intermittent employee,” brought back when needed, and is paid $75 an hour. He’s been paid $3,593 in the past two months.
