On Tuesday, CORTEX president and CEO Dennis Lower asked the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) Commission to activate almost $50 million in tax incentives for two redevelopment areas within the $2.2 billion research park in the Central West End – which will include the recently announced IKEA store.
Just after Lower gave his presentation, the TIF commissioners asked him a question he wasn’t ready to answer – what is your status on hiring minorities and women on the seven current CORTEX construction sites?
Lower said “it’s not our policy” to publicly share numbers on how many minorities and women they have hired for the publicly funded construction projects currently underway.
Lower, who secured a total of $167.7 million in tax incentives from the City of St. Louis last December, told commissioners he wanted to wait until the construction projects were completed to talk about the inclusion numbers.
TIF Commissioners basically told Lower that’s not how it works.
“We have not seen statistics that show where you are with compliance,” on the city’s minority participation requirements, said TIF Commissioner Christina Bennett.
If construction projects receive taxpayer money, they must abide by the mayor’s executive order of hiring 25 percent minority business enterprises (MBEs) and 5 percent women business enterprises (WBE) on all contracts.
They must also meet the city’s workforce goals of 25 percent minority, five percent women, 20 percent local workforce and 15 percent apprentices, as required by a 2009 city ordinance (No. 68412).
After Lower declined to provide the information, the commissioners asked a representative from the city’s Disadvantage Business Enterprise (DBE) office, which is in charge of monitoring minority participation compliance on publicly funded job sites.
Francoise Wiggins, the DBE office’s contract compliance officer, said most of the projects are within range of either meeting or surpassing the mayor’s executive order.
At the higher end, the BioGenerator expansion at the CORTEX 1 building has reached 51 percent MBE and 13 percent WBE participation. Near the lower end, the Wexford Science and Technology building, now called @4240, has only hit 15 percent MBE and 3 percent WBE participation. Wiggins said the building, located at 4240 Duncan Ave., is slated to pull in more MBEs and WBEs soon.
Tarlton, a women-owned business, is general contractor on both projects.
Yet the absolute lowest numbers belong to the Shriners Hospital, which has hired 10 percent MBEs and 3 percent WBEs. The general contractor is S.M. Wilson.
“We’ve never seen a presentation from the Shriners, and they never said they were going to meet this requirement,” Bennett said. “How are we not having S.M. Wilson here saying, ‘We’re going to get there’?”
Otis Williams, executive director of the St. Louis Development Corporation, said that Shriners Hospital had already started contracting the job when the city approved this particular redevelopment plan area. The hospital is not directly receiving any TIF money but is still benefitting from overall TIF dollars used in the redevelopment area, commissioners said. The hospital site is at the corner of Clayton and South Newstead avenues.
“We fought feverishly on this particular one, and I think we have gotten all the blood out of this turnip that we are going to get,” Williams said. “It was one of those that we were very unsatisfied with it, and we made it known to all parties.”
Williams said Shriners’ numbers are up from their original plan to contract only 3 percent MBEs, so he feels he has made progress. Although CORTEX and Williams worked daily to try to get the Shriners leaders to comply, they did not want to meet the goals, Williams said.
The Board of Aldermen and TIF Commission approved the redevelopment area plan that included the Shriners Hospital this past spring.
“So you are saying we made the agreement knowing that they were never going to comply with the executive order?” Bennett asked Williams.
Williams did not respond.
The workforce numbers on the Shriners Hospital are just as dismal. Regarding “boots on the ground,” they have hired 8.9 percent minorities, no women, 2.9 local residents and 10 percent apprentices. The project is set to be completed by fall 2014.
“This commission needs to know – is it Shriners, or is it S.M. Wilson?” Bennett said. “Because S.M. Wilson comes up here quite frequently saying that they are going to meet goals. Is it the developer or the hospital?”
Williams told Bennett that it’s a shared responsibility.
The TIF Commissioners voted in favor of holding a public hearing on Feb. 5 at 8 a.m. to further discuss activating TIF funds on the two CORTEX redevelopment plan areas. The commission meetings are held in the board room of the St. Louis Development Corporation, 1520 Market Street, Suite 2000.