The Business Journal hosted a panel discussion on how to tackle St. Louis’ biggest challenges. Panelists (from right to left) included Chris Krehmeyer, president and CEO of Beyond Housing; Eric Scroggins, CEO and founder of The Opportunity Trust; Dara Eskridge, CEO of InvestSTL; and panel moderator Erik Siemers, editor, St. Louis Business Journal
Article by James Drew, originally published in The St. Louis Business Journal
Three leaders of nonprofit groups on Thursday offered a measured critique of the political system in the St. Louis area, saying there’s a need for elected officials to work with the business community to confront the region’s challenges.
Dara Eskridge, CEO of Invest STL, said St. Louis is a “highly unsophisticated political environment.”
Eric Scroggins, founder and CEO of The Opportunity Trust, said the region has a “very limited political infrastructure to be able to source candidates.”
Chris Krehmeyer, president and CEO of Beyond Housing, said elected officials and business leaders have not reached a consensus on what the region’s “north star” should be.
The three spoke at an Advance STL event hosted by the Business Journal and held at the St. Louis County Library’s Clark Family Branch in Ladue. This year’s program is focusing on big region-wide challenges that require big ideas. Eskridge, Scroggins and Krehmeyer, through their nonprofits, are tackling housing, education and equitable growth. They discussed obstacles to progress and offered insights on the path forward.
The moderator, Business Journal Editor Erik Siemers, asked the panelists if area residents are electing public officials and appointing civic leaders in a productive way and whether there’s too much pressure on them to achieve immediate progress.
Eskridge said St. Louis needs to become more sophisticated politically, citing how political leaders in Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee and Cleveland operate on a shared agenda. In St. Louis, some officials operate for “individual gain with no indication of how it aligns to a larger strategy. So we need to become much more politically sophisticated here.” She said St. Louis area residents also need to vote for coalitions instead of individuals and know what the coalition is, if there is one, that surrounds those on the ballot.
“Who do they represent? What are they standing for? We have too many elected officials that we don’t know who’s around them and they probably don’t have anybody talking to them. They have no one guiding them. They’re not anchored in any way. How do we trust someone that has no anchor?,” she said.
Krehmeyer said there’s a need for all sectors of the region to ask tough questions about what the St. Louis metro area stands for, what it believes in and where it wants to go. He said the outcome would be a “north star” that the region could follow to achieve economic growth that benefits everyone.
“Whether you’re an elected politician or a head of a company, we’re all going to agree that’s where we’re heading. And the decisions that we make collectively as a region – folks in the community, folks who have been left behind and everyone else along the way; are we all pointing toward that north star?” Krehmeyer said.
Scroggins said he would argue for a “very measurable, concrete north star.” He said the region needs to be more pragmatic about political change and leadership, saying candidates in the St. Louis area in many cases are those who “raise their hand” and it’s the best job they can get.
“We have very limited engagement both in terms of people showing up to vote but also even people giving in campaigns. Our campaigns end up being a handful of people with some sort of agenda getting behind a candidate to get that person going. That is different than actually having political infrastructure that over time is building and developing candidates who are supportive of and aligning around a north star,” he said.
Siemers noted that on the April 30 Arch City Report podcast, Bob Clark, chairman of construction and development firm Clayco, discussed how the corporate community in Atlanta played a major role in civic progress there.
In St. Louis, Eskridge said, “the business community works outside of the political leadership and kind of appoints itself as the unofficial leaders. That hurts our ability to move forward.”
The panelists were asked about the perspective that St. Louis area residents don’t always adapt to new solutions for challenges facing the region.
Krehmeyer said he heard a phrase many years ago about St. Louis that still rings true today.
“We’re very comfortable with kind of polite mediocrity, right? This notion of it’s OK. What’s wrong with that, right? And the reality is, no, it’s not OK. There’s so many things that should change and can change if we have the collective courage to say it’s in our best interest if everybody in the region gets healthy and strong, that we tackle these problems, that we’re bold enough to try new things,” he said.
Krehmeyer said area residents need to have the courage to do things differently, which means the “powers that be aren’t always going to be the power that be.” It’s difficult because people “like the way things are in their own world” instead of admitting that the metro area has a lot of work to do to confront problems, he said.
“Let’s not wait like Detroit until they hit rock bottom before they figured out to see if we can get better,” he added.
Scroggins said the biggest challenge to change is not admitting that there’s a problem. He said when he founded The Opportunity Trust in 2018 about 11% of children were in a “high-quality” public school in St. Louis.
“And I would say that, and people would say, ‘but this school has a great playground, and I love this school, and my dad went to that school. And, you know, why are you being so negative?’… And there would be such a resistance to having an honest conversation about the problem. We have to address the fact that for generations, children have been graduating from our public school system with insufficient literacy and math skills to operate in our economy – and that is inhumane, actually,” Scroggins added.
Eskridge agreed that the region needs to acknowledge its problems and confront them directly, but it also needs to admit that the answers will come from a different set of people — not those who created the problems over the years.
“We have been a region that has been operating on the vision of a distinct set of individuals. If we want a different future, if we don’t want to repeat the cycle, we need to support new leaders coming forward and put their vision as our north star and say to the others, thank you for your service. Please step aside,” she said to loud applause from the audience.
The Business Journal hosted a panel discussion on how to tackle St. Louis’ biggest challenges. Panelists (from right to left) included Chris Krehmeyer, president and CEO of Beyond Housing; Eric Scroggins, CEO and founder of The Opportunity Trust; Dara Eskridge, CEO of InvestSTL; and panel moderator Erik Siemers, editor, St. Louis Business Journal
Siemers asked the panelists about the work they’re doing to take on large challenges in the region and how they’re crafting a vision to solve them.
Eskridge said Invest STL focuses on the “power of people and their neighborhoods” and that is the group’s “north star.”
“For a place like St. Louis, the thorniest of our challenges show up in many ways over generations in our legacy Black neighborhoods. If we can dig in deep, see the challenges for what they are, but also peel back and see the joy and the brilliance and the will and the dreams that exist in these neighborhoods, and invest deeply in those, then we have a pathway to a better St. Louis.”
She said Invest STL believes it is not possible for St. Louis to be a flourishing place without a “flourishing Black St. Louis.” The nonprofit group has committed to shutting its doors by 2042.
“And in this time, what we want to do is model the better way of investing, the better way of pulling people to the table — corporations, institutions, governments, individuals, residents, and everyone in between. How do we fight for each other versus against each other?” Eskridge said.
Krehmeyer said the work of Beyond Housing is the notion of a place-based strategy, that problems typically reside in areas that have been struggling for some time.
“Our place-based idea is that to solve for the problems and create vibrancy, you have to recognize that the challenges of places that aren’t working well are interrelated and interconnected; that there’s not a housing solution, not an education solution, not a health solution, not a job solution, not an infrastructure solution, not an economic development solution. It’s all of that together, because they’re all intertwined,” he said.
Over nearly 20 years, Beyond Housing, working in partnership with other groups, has invested $200 million in the neighborhoods of the Normandy Schools Collaborative, which covers several suburbs in North St. Louis County.
“We’ve been building homes for homeownership, building homes to add to our rental portfolio of around 800 units now, rehabbing over 1,500 homes. We have staff embedded in the local school systems. We help send kids to college. We have a forestry department where we’re planting trees. We work with municipal governments,” he said.
Scroggins said the two goals of The Opportunity Trust are that every year more kids attend a high-quality public school and the rate of improvement and innovation in Missouri’s public education system is increased, measured by how quickly schools improve.
Before launching The Opportunity Trust, Scroggins said he met with leaders in several cities around the nation who identified two problems that were either holding them back from progress or sustaining it in the public school system.
“The first was, in so many cases, when you’re trying to tackle a big problem, you have a superman syndrome. It’s going to be this next mayor, this next governor, this one philanthropist, this one superintendent. They’re going to come in, they’re going to take the bull by the horns, and they’re going to transform the system. And often those people do, by the way. There’s lots of examples of intrepid leaders making substantial change.
“But what happens is those people’s term ends. And the change that needs to be made takes longer than the tenure of any one of those leaders. And then the second insight was, so often when people are trying to address systemic problems, they invest in programs…And they’re not taking on the systemic issues that are behind those problems.”
The Opportunity Trust was born out of the idea that the region needs an entity that’s creating a long-term plan for change, Scroggins said.
Siemers asked the panelists what progress looks like in 10 years.
Krehmeyer said for Beyond Housing, it’s that the children living in the Normandy Schools Collaborative of North St. Louis County have opportunities to live their best lives.
“We have invested in them enough where when they walk across the stage wherever they’re getting their diploma, they’re prepared for life, have the opportunities to imagine all the things possible that they could do and they can be proud to call a home,” he said.
Scroggins said population growth and diversity could be the correct metric.
“If we look back in 10 years and that is the case – because right now we have the opposite – then we would have known we had done the right thing,” he said.
Eskridge said progress in 10 years also would be the metro area’s population growing because people are staying in St. Louis. She noted how Black people moving out of St. Louis has been a major factor in recent population loss.
“Very specifically, if you understand how a population change is happening, it is being led by Black families, particularly Black women and their children; because this is not a place that serves them. So in 10 years, we’ve seen our population steady and grow because Black families feel like this is a place that honors their future.
“And even more specifically, we see North City, those neighborhoods that were just torn apart by the tornado, we see those families who have committed generations in those neighborhoods committing yet another generation there because we have supported them in rebuilding and re-solidifying their roofs. And as the industry grows up around them, we see that they are becoming wealthy and prosperous and powerful,” she said.
