A local health care giant is poised to get even bigger.
Express Scripts Holding Co. said Wednesday that it’s planning to add 1,500 jobs here over the next five years in a new building on its north St. Louis County campus, as the pharmacy benefit manager expands to keep pace with its rapid growth.
The deal hinges on state and local tax incentives, said Express Scripts spokesman Brian Henry. But if all goes according to plan, construction on the $56 million project could get under way this year and be completed in early 2015.
Express Scripts, a Fortune 100 company with the largest revenue of any company based in metro St. Louis, has grown fast in recent years, culminating in its $29.1 billion purchase of rival Medco last year. This expansion is a natural result of its continuing growth, Henry said.
“We’re a $93 billion company now. We’re responsible for 100 million Americans,” he said. “That means adding people and facilities.”
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He said most of the employees will be administrative and operational positions in a 220,000-square-foot building located in NorthPark, a 550-acre business park just east of Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. Express Scripts has put up two other buildings there in the last few years. The company’s headquarters sits just across Interstate 70 on the campus of the University of Missouri-St. Louis and all told it employs about 4,500 people in the area.
County officials have been talking with Express Scripts since the Medco deal closed last year, said Denny Coleman, president of the St. Louis County Economic Council.
“Our feeling was that there was going to be some inevitable growth of the company,” he said. “We wanted as much of that growth as possible to be here in North County.”
And those talks paid off. Unlike four years ago, when Express Scripts weighed a competing site in suburban Philadelphia before choosing NorthPark for a $74 million drug distribution plant, this time the company was not seriously considering other locations.
“We’re here already. We’re very familiar with the area. We see an opportunity to grow,” Henry said. “This is indicative of a company that’s invested here, that’s grown here, that’s committed to being here.”
Still, Henry said, the deal is contingent on state and local tax incentives and other “due diligence.”
Coleman said St. Louis County would offer its standard package of tax breaks on property and real estate and a sales tax break on building materials. He did not have a dollar figure for the subsidy immediately available late Wednesday, but said the package would be submitted to the St. Louis County Council for approval next week. He pointed out that, while the jobs will be at a variety of income levels, they’ll average $65,000 a year.
Express Scripts “has many locations across the country. We’re very cognizant of that,” Coleman said. “They’re comfortable here and we want to make sure they stay that way.”
A spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Economic Development did not return messages Wednesday afternoon, but the project would likely qualify for state tax breaks and for the Missouri Quality Jobs tax credit, which rewards companies that offer better-than-average-paying jobs.
Express Scripts is the latest in a string of big-name companies announcing expansions in the region in recent months. Just since late April, Monsanto Co., Boeing Co., Charter Communications and Reinsurance Group of America have each announced plans to add hundreds of jobs to facilities in St. Louis County.
“The local economy has had an enormous boost over the last six and even three months,” Coleman said. “This is really the kind of growth we were hoping we’d see coming out of the recession.”
