An employee-owned minority business enterprise has been retained as program manager for St. Louis’ new Major League Soccer (MLS) stadium, and the City of St. Louis’ inclusion goals will be set for the design and construction of the stadium.
The MLS4THELOU Ownership Group selected Kwame Building Group as its as representative and program manager, and Kwame’s Chairman and CEO Anthony Thompson told The American that it will pursue the city’s inclusion goals.
The city’s inclusion goals, passed into law in 2018, call for 21 percent African American-owned business enterprises, 2 percent Hispanic American-owned business enterprises, 0.50 percent Asian American-owned business enterprises, 0.50 percent Native American-owned business enterprises, and 11 percent women-owned business enterprises.
Thompson said these goals will be pursued “not just on the construction but also on the design side” and that “a good portion of all the work is still up for grabs.”
The Mortenson | Alberici | L. Keeley Joint Venture has been selected as the pre-construction general contractor. The architects include a partnership of St. Louis-based architecture firm HOK and Snow Kreilich Architects.
Thompson said that the joint venture will be hosting community outreach engagement and planning meetings “so all minority firms have the opportunity to come in and meet the contractors and meet the team and bid on work,” and that they should watch for the announcements of those meetings.
“Remember, this is still in the design phase,” Thompson said. “They are still negotiating and finalizing plans for properties with MoDOT and private property owners while the design is in progress, so there is a lot of opportunity for minority contractors to bid and participate on this project.”
Kwame is serving an integral role in the pre-construction phase, including project planning and scheduling; value engineering and budgeting; coordinating with the city and utility companies; as well selecting project partners and maximizing MBE/WBE participation.
The Kwame project team will be led by Vice President Nonyameko Waddell, who recently relocated to St. Louis from Atlanta to work with Kwame, and Program Manager John Lloyd of Unlimited Partners, who worked with Kwame on the new St. Louis Cardinals Busch Stadium project. The new St. Louis MLS stadium is scheduled to open ahead of the 2022 MLS season.
Thompson said minority and other firms are welcome to contact Kwame but ultimately can do no better than to weight for the joint venture to announce the outreach and engagement meetings and attend them.
He also emphasized that with the MLA stadium and NGA West projects getting started at a time when BJC HealthCare and others have major construction projects underway, now is a good time to look to the trades for work.
“There are a lot of big jobs going up and getting started,” Thompson said. “It couldn’t be a better time.”
Contact Kwame Building Group at http://kwamebuildinggroup.com/ or 314-862-5344.
