Dear Colleagues,
As you might know, St. Louis made national headlines last week in connection with crime. I thought you might like to see, below, the view of this issue prepared by the St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association (RCGA).
While this response will not wipe away the damaging headlines, perhaps you will find it useful in dealing with questions and concerns from those here and those we may be trying to recruit. I have already had some communications from parents expressing concerns, and I expect that others will follow. On the heels of really great publicity from the baseball playoffs and the World Series this was a bit disappointing, but the reality is that St. Louis is, in fact, a great place to live, work and learn. The recently published crime survey about St. Louis is flawed in many ways–the most important of which is that it fails to count the metropolitan area as a combination of St. Louis County and St. Louis City. Had this been done, the resulting data would have given a much more accurate picture of the low crime rate averages for the metropolitan area. The unique separation of St. Louis City from St. Louis County in 1876 has led to statistically inaccurate comparisons with other metropolitan areas. Had such a more accurate and consistent comparison been made, St. Louis would not have been listed in this study.
Mark S. Wrighton
Chancellor
November 3, 2006
Dear RCGA Member:
As the week ends, we continue to receive calls of congratulations from our colleagues around the nation that say, “It’s great about the World Series–but sorry to hear about the crime problem,” and since experts ranging from the FBI to criminologists have roundly denounced this annual city ranking, we’ve worked with Mayor Slay, his staff, as well as our own RCGA research staff to set the record straight.
While the flaws of the study have been widely spotlighted by criminologists and St. Louis City officials, the fact that it was picked up by a number of newspapers around the country suggests that it may be helpful for each of us to have a clear rebuttal to utilize as we are talking to business colleagues and associates about the unfortunate misrepresentation that it makes of St. Louis.
“I am stunned if there is a criminologist out there who will support this.” Those are the words of Scott Morgan, president of Morgan Quitno Press, and very author of the study, as reported Tuesday, Oct. 31, in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, regarding his company’s annual rankings of crime rates in the U.S.
Morgan is right. No criminologist would take this seriously. In the first place, the “ranking” looks only at the City of St. Louis and not at its suburbs, or even the surrounding urban district making up our region’s central city area. This methodology puts St. Louis at a huge disadvantage. Why? Because the City of St. Louis is tightly confined by boundaries established in 1876 and is, therefore, geographically far smaller than most other major cities.
A more legitimate methodology would be comparing whole metropolitan areas, which would place St. Louis 129th among 344 metropolitan areas—below the national average, as Morgan himself cites in the Post-Dispatch story. (http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/1D412D907C5862E186257218001B31E1?OpenDocument)
Also not reflected in Morgan’s “ranking” is the fact that the City of St. Louis is actually in the midst of a dramatic renaissance, as reported nationally over the past several months. A sampling of recent national headlines: “Meet Me in Revitalized Downtown St. Louis” (The New York Times, October 4, 2006); “More say ‘Meet Me in St. Louis’ as City Rebuilds” (USA Today, May 11, 2006); and NPR’s recent feature on “All Things Considered,” entitled, St. Louis’ Rebirth (May 18, 2006) and Lost and Saved: Behind the St. Louis Revival (October 20, 2006).
Dozens of other stories have been generated in the last year by the following facts:
• For the first time since 1950, the City’s population is growing again–that’s not the metropolitan area’s population (it had never stopped growing, and is now about 2.7 million)–but the City’s, which had fallen every year from 1950 to 2000, and which now has been climbing for the last several years.
• Since 2000, some $5 billion has been invested in the City, of which nearly $4 billion has been invested in downtown alone. Of that $4 billion, the largest categories have been new or renovated buildings for market-rate housing (about $1 billion); new sports, art and entertainment facilities (about $750 million); new or renovated hotels (about $500 million); and new or renovated office space (more than $480 million). In addition, more than 60 new restaurants and retail establishments have opened, with dozens more in the pipeline.
• In addition, in recent weeks, plans have also been announced for two major developments that will bring added new restaurants and retail, as well as housing and offices–a $270 million redevelopment of St. Louis Centre, on the northern edge of downtown, and the $388-million first phase of Ballpark Village next to the new Busch Stadium, on the south side of downtown.
Along with this surge of new investment has come a surge and vitality of people. Downtown St. Louis has new life. Its population–8,300 in 2000– is expected to hit 18,000, and even more by 2010 as thousands of new residential units now in the pipeline become available. Reflecting this growth, the average price of a square foot of condominium space, while still a bargain compared to comparable product on the two coasts, rose from $75 in 2001 to $175 in 2005.
Does this sound to you like a place where people believe they are unsafe?
KTVI reporter Charles Jaco featured an excellent segment on Fox 2 News on Oct. 31st, putting the crime rankings in perspective. Among those interviewed were John Philippi, Director of Security Consulting for Ross & Baruzzini, a St. Louis-based firm that does risk assessments for businesses around the world. Philippi noted, “The first set of crime stats I reviewed for St. Louis were surprisingly low compared to other major cities. What was surprising to me was that the St. Louis Metropolitan Area consists of 2.8 million people, and this particular study was based on 350,000 of them. You’ve got some very high saturation points [in a handful of inner city neighborhoods] that are skewing the statistics for the City.”
All in all, it adds up to what nationally-syndicated Washington Post urban affairs columnist Neal Peirce, one of the nation’s leading experts on cities, noted about last Fall, calling St. Louis “one of the most remarkable center city transformations in the nation.”
And happily, it’s not just downtown that’s turning around. All across the City of St. Louis, neighborhoods are being renovated and improved at a remarkable rate. That’s why the population of the City as a whole is climbing again, and why residential property values are up an average 56% since 2001 and an average of more than 30% from just two years ago.
If you have any concerns about what you’ve read or heard about the Morgan Quitno crime rankings, please feel free to contact me. Also, please feel free to e-mail these facts to your business colleagues and friends.
Best Regards,
Richard C.D. Fleming
President and Chief Executive Officer
St. Louis Regional Commerce and Growth Association