JEFFERSON CITY • No one spoke Tuesday night against Paul McKee’s request for about $47 million in additional subsidies for his gigantic redevelopment of north St. Louis. And most of the questions the House Economic Development Committee lobbed at McKee were softballs.
But if there was any thought of smooth sailing for the bill in the committee, it was quickly dispelled after the hearing, when Rep. Kevin Engler, R-Farmington, huddled with the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Anne Zerr, R-St. Charles. Engler said the Legislature needs to demand that McKee’s project meet concrete goals before McKee receives any more tax credits.
“We can’t keep pouring good money after bad,” Engler said. A former senator, Engler also warned that his fellow House members shouldn’t “stick our necks in the noose” if fiscal conservatives in the Senate plan to kill the bill like they have squashed other new tax credit programs in recent years.
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At issue is whether to extend the Distressed Areas Land Assemblage tax credit program for six years and authorize an additional $95 million in tax credits for the program, to be split between McKee’s project and a Kansas City project. The program is set to expire in August.
The Legislature custom-designed the program for McKee in 2007 and he has been the only one to use it, drawing about $41 million. The credits reimburse him for part of the cost of buying and maintaining land north of downtown St. Louis.
McKee, chairman of O’Fallon, Mo.-based McEagle Properties LLC, plans a massive redevelopment covering 1,500 acres. He brought his consultants and lobbyists to the Capitol on Tuesday to promote his vision for the project, dubbed NorthSide Regeneration.
“Our goal here when we started 8½ years ago was to bring our city to greatness again,” McKee said. “It takes jobs and job creation to make greatness. I do know how to create jobs,” he said, citing his development of WingHaven in St. Charles County and NorthPark in St. Louis County.
He said NorthSide Regeneration has been delayed by lawsuits contesting the city’s approval of $390 million in tax-increment financing subsidies. A St. Louis judge threw out the plan as too vague. McKee has appealed and is awaiting a decision from the Missouri Supreme Court.
McKee said he and his wife, Midge, have invested $103 million in NorthSide. He has bought 2,200 parcels but said he needs 500 more to have contiguous sites.
Testimony in favor of the bill came from McKee’s banker, L.B. Eckelkamp, chairman of the Bank of Washington in Washington, Mo., who said that ending the tax credit program before McKee has assembled all the needed land would be “a terrible, terrible waste.”
Kansas City leaders also urged approval of the bill. They hope to use the credits to turn the old Bannister Mall in south Kansas City into a high-tech office park. That project is the brainchild of Cliff Illig and Neal Patterson, the co-founders of Cerner Co., a health care information technology firm.
Virginia Young is the Jefferson City bureau chief of the Post-Dispatch. Follow her on twitter at @virginiayoung.
