When the Ballpark Village project at Busch Stadium was in the planning phase, St. Louis city leaders and the developers presented an inclusion plan that many applauded – even some minority advocacy groups.
Yet when the construction phase began, some aldermen discovered that the city’s St. Louis Development Corporation (SLDC) had allowed developers Cordish Company and the St. Louis Cardinals to leave undisclosed millions in construction costs unmonitored when it comes to hiring minorities and women.
Buried deep in Ballpark Village’s development agreement was language that allowed developers to only monitor the “outside shell” of the building and not the inside construction. SLDC Executive Director Otis Williams told The St. Louis American they were well aware of the clause and justified the decision by saying, “You can’t be as restrictive” when competing for national projects.
The aldermen were left completely in the dark.
On Tuesday, November 10, some – not all – aldermen were presented with an inclusion plan for the proposed $1 billion stadium. That was nearly two weeks after the stadium ordinance was introduced.
The inclusion plan – meant to ensure that minority businesses and workers are employed on the project – is six pages long. The plan was not included in the ordinance that will be discussed at Thursday’s Ways and Means Committee meeting. Hence, the plan currently has no legal standing.
“Nothing is included in the actual bill right now,” said Aldermen Antonio French, a member of the committee, who received a copy of the inclusion plan on Tuesday afternoon. “This is not even close to being sufficient. This is what you get when not everyone is at the table.”
Aldermanic President Lewis Reed said he has reached out to members of the Ways and Means Committee so that “a comprehensive and, most importantly, realizable inclusion plan” can be written into the ordinance.
The plan states that the project will adopt the city’s goals for contracts – which are 25 percent for minority-owned companies and five percent for women-owned companies, as well as 3 percent for Missouri-based disabled veterans. On the workforce side, it aims for 25 percent minority workers and five percent women.
It does not specify how many local residents would be employed – in the city workforce ordinance, it is 20 percent, along with 15 percent apprentices.
The plan also promises about $3.5 million in programs for minority recruitment and contractor loan funds.
“The current plan as presented is a nice collection of promises, like many inclusion plans in the past, but completely unenforceable, ungoverned by the city, and would more than likely lead to the same results we have seen over and over again,” Reed said.
Mary Ellen Ponder, the mayor’s chief of staff, told The St. Louis American, “This is the most robust, best-monitored minority-participation plan done in St. Louis.”
The plan states that the construction management team – Hunt Construction Group, Clayco, Inc., KAI Design and Build, and Legacy Building Group (HCKL) – will do most of the monitoring of how many minority businesses are getting contracts and how many minority workers will gets jobs on the stadium. Basically, the contractors will police themselves.
The “owner” of the project is the St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority (RSA), and the plan states that it will set up a committee that reviews HCKL’s numbers.
Ponder said the RSA will hire a third-party consultant to “ensure compliance.” However, the plan only budgets $75,000 annually for RSA to pay a team to monitor the $1 billion project.
On the new Busch Stadium project, the owner – the Cardinals – paid Roberts-Roberts & Associates $200,000 a year as minority-compliance consultants. And that was just one consultant for the $365 million project. On the St. Louis-Lambert International Airport expansion project that cost just over $1 billion, several companies jointly earned $2 million a year to ensure compliance.
Yaphett El-Amin, executive director of the minority-contractor advocacy group MOKAN, said she is not sure who SLDC consulted with on the stadium plan, but the budget for compliance is not realistic.
“We cannot afford not to get this one right,” El-Amin said. “This could be the area that could make all the difference to this project. We can’t support economic development that is developing everyone else’s community but ours.”
A recent disparity study showed that black-owned businesses earned a small portion of the city’s contracts between 2007 and 2012, including for goods and services. During that time, black-owned businesses received 6.43 percent of all prime contract dollars, or $30.4 million. However, businesses owned by non-minority males garnered almost 90 percent of the prime contracts, or $424 million.
“Most in the community feel that we have seen the same players and the same plans leading to the same poor outcomes that were highlighted in the recent disparity study,” Reed said.
While French received a copy of the inclusion plan on Tuesday, Alderman Terry Kennedy said he still had not received anything from the mayor’s office or SLDC when contacted by The American. Kennedy, the leader of the Aldermanic Black Caucus, has been a long-time champion of minority participation and sponsored the ordinance that established the city’s current workforce goals.
Kennedy said Ballpark Village was presented to the Board of Aldermen in the same kind of rushed, last-minute way – which is how the inclusion loophole got past the aldermen.
“By the time it comes to the Board of Aldermen, it is rush, rush, rush,” Kennedy said. “Without staffing, you end up basing your opinion on what you are told – which is not always accurate.”
On these “big deals,” Kennedy said, aldermen aren’t given time to scrutinize the documents which prevents the board from putting safeguards in place.
“The legislative process is not designed for rush,” Kennedy said. “It is designed for deliberation.”
French said this is particularly true for African-American aldermen.
“It tells me that this is business as usual, which is not a good sign for this project – only dealing with African-American officials at the last minute and enough to get the votes,” French said.
“If we are going to do this the way you always have, this project is going to turn out like every other project – which is not having the minority participation and not making a real step in lifting people out of poverty and creating real wealth.”
Follow this reporter on Twitter @rebeccarivas.
