Lingering Aerotropolis questions
July 17, 2011 by J. Desy Schoenewies
Lambert St. Louis International Airport could not attract enough airline business to become a hub airport even while they continued to build its massive new runway at the expense of taxpayers and a loss of entire communities. Now that they are sitting with a $1 billion concrete slab with a large for-rent sign, Lambert is desperate to attract any paying customer to land on their shiny new and gently used runway. After all, according to the St. Louis Business Journal, Lambert is still facing $1.4 billion in debt. Attracting a Chinese air-cargo hub would, in theory, help them pay off their debts and make that runway appear to be a regional necessity.
The problem is, Chicago, Dallas and other mid-American cities have already done their homework on attracting Chinese air-cargo shipments. St. Louis leaders and Missouri legislators have not been forthcoming with that information, instead insisting that our region somehow holds a key to that particular market.
From an article on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website today with a discussion with Greg Lindsay, who wrote the book on Aerotropolis and global markets:
The free-market Show Me Institute published a critical study, and an air cargo consultant said St. Louis would never be a cargo hub. Backers have tended to cast them as narrow thinkers who just don’t get the Aerotropolis concept.
That argument definitely doesn’t fit Lindsay — who coined the term in the first place. He wrote “Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next” with John Kasarda, a professor at the University of North Carolina. Since the St. Louis folks co-opted his title, they ought to be interested in Lindsay’s opinion.
Lindsay hadn’t spoken publicly about the St. Louis effort until last week, when he criticized it on Twitter. He tweeted that “calling some cargo flights and warehouses an aerotropolis doesn’t make it one” and then, more bluntly, “I don’t think it will work.”
The middle part of the country has plenty of cargo capacity elsewhere, and other cities are way ahead in the Aerotropolis game.
What does it take to build an Aerotropolis? “You have to create a market where the cost is lower or the access to market is better, and neither of those is really the case in St. Louis,” Lindsay said.
Local leaders are making their pitch on the cost side. Our airport has plenty of unused capacity, and the tax credits would make it cheap for freight forwarders and warehouse operators to set up shop. Why won’t that work?
“I think they could lure the Chinese, but the history of airlines and subsidies indicates that they can leave the moment the subsidies run out,” Lindsay said.
The message of “Aerotropolis,” the book, is that a few global cities now revolve around their airports, rather than the other way around. With rare exceptions, however, they were global cities before they became Aerotropolises. Chicago and Singapore have long been important trading hubs; St. Louis, not so much.
Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/business/columns/david-nicklaus/article_a377c6bd-a005-57a2-a63d-227599165b77.html#ixzz1SOF50mcv
Its possible that the Chinese could come. First, we would need to put forth large amounts of cash towards unbridled developing for shipment warehousing and infrastructure surrounding the runway. Yet, if we face the pattern that Lindsay suggests is typical with Chinese carriers, we would finance a multi-million dollar, tax-fueled gamble to lure an industry known to flee to another market at the slightest increase of local fees. Operating on a glimmer of hope for generating regional economic growth while saving face for the runway expansion is a risky investment for the region in the long term.
In St. Louis, we have seen a number of Wal-Mart stores leave one municipality for lucrative TIFs and incentives offered by legislators in a neighboring township down the street. In their wake, the originating municipality is left with a large, vacant box and a dying local economy as the smaller businesses move on to find other big anchor markets. Wal-mart and other box stores exist on TIFs and other local incentives. They pull out when local subsidies begin to run dry and leave local micro-economies in disaster. Perhaps the irony here resides in the cheap Chinese goods we’re looking to have land in St. Louis are the very goods that fill these roving big box stores. The reality is, our region cannot afford for this same scenario to play out on the grand global scale, leaving St. Louis a developed shell that nobody would come and lose smaller industries in its wake.
Maybe it is time we finally accept our position as a minor city and live within our means. Instead of gambling away the house for those narrow odds of winning the funds for a bigger house, we need to factor what we have and what industries we can realistically attract, and work with that. Lambert made a gamble when they built the W-1W runway. They failed to attract the necessary business to support its use and they are now struggling to pay off the loans. Mid-America Airport just across the river in Illinois is a fully functioning airport that has been trying to attract regional cargo for decades, with almost zero payoff. If Mid-America, an airport with highway access and no need to compete with passenger flight schedules, cannot attract air cargo, what does it say about Lambert’s abilities? Why should we once again reward Lambert and the City of St. Louis astronomical funds to support yet another short-sighted goal? Lambert failed to prove to the region that ANY airline would be committed to creating a hub while building W-1W, yet they continued to build that runway with the region’s monetary blessing. Lambert and the City of St. Louis is again failing to prove that they can attract the businesses they need for their air cargo goals by failing to present us with any Chinese carrier even slightly interested in our region for a long-term commitment. The experts are speaking out, but once again Lambert is ignoring the voice of reason.
I have said before that, if the project would create jobs and bring our region’s economy back into a real global game, then I would support Lambert to convert its peripheral land and create the shipping hub. However, the writing on the wall is clear that Lambert once again wants something unrealistic, and is willing to use public funds to get it.
If Lambert International and the City of St. Louis again gets its way, instead of vacant houses, the land of Carrollton may soon be filled with brand-new vacant warehouses sitting next to a vacant runway. (Yes, Lambert uses the runway. Just because they use it doesn’t mean they need to.)
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J. Desy Schoenewies
56 Houses Left 
Again, look at 1937 Airel photographs of St. Louis county ( available at the government center ) ..especially the area AROUND THE AIRPORT.
THE AIRPORT WAS ALREADY THERE. Yes, it was there in the 1920’s as a matter of fact…now, look at airiel photo’s of Bridgeton, circa 1966, and
see where they actually had built the subdivisions right up to the highway, first of all, and secondly, they built the houses in the shadows of aircraft that were taking off from Lambert Field daily and getting bigger all of the time.
So, the houses were built on cheaply aquired land, near a major highway intersection, and a busy, international airport.
What happens at the airport then, or now, or in the future, right or wrong, is as they say “it is, what it is”. It’s a friggin airport. Not a public park, not a ‘green space’, not a secluded area.. I love the airiel photo-graphs of Bridgeton when they had “graded” highway 270, prior to actual paving work, except they did the bridges first ( they always do ) and the bridges into the subdivision were there, the graded path of a major interstate ran RIGHT BEHIND the subdivision people. People knew they were buying :little pink houses: with an interstate running thru the back yard. They knew the airport was a NOISY neighbor that could potentially expand. Certainly Berkely learned this back in the late 60’s and early 70’s when they had people moving off of Springdale to avoid the noise..and then finally they bought those people out too. It’s just the reality of living near an airport that was started over 40 years before they poured the first foundations in Bridgeton. Just stone cold facts my friends.
The cliche, “it is what it is,” is actually a pet peve of mine. The phrase is fraught with inconsistencies because one person’s perceptions of existence, as defined by the term ‘is’ differs greatly for another individual. Your perception of Carrollton is far different than anyone else who as commented on this blog. It is never exactly the same for someone else what you think it is.
You mention cheaply built houses. How quaint of you. For a middle or working class person in the 1960′s, a home like one in Carrollton would be worth their entire life’s investment. To them, that is not cheap, but you find it OK to belittle what others can afford. The area certainly wasn’t cheap when my family bought in, but it was the best they could afford. They were far from wealthy but wanted for us to attend good schools and live in a good neighborhood. When you say things in those terms, you sound very inflated. If that is the case, then I am glad that you were more fortunate than we were to make a choice to live in an affluent area where eminent domain would never be an issue for you. I realize that this is the internet, but its still such a shame to see how money cannot buy humbleness nor grammar skills. It certainly can provide a self-justified use of the caps lock key.
I’ve seen many aerial photos of the area. Looking at aerial photographs of the 1930s, you can see that Lambert Field wasn’t any more dominant in the landscape than Chesterfield Airport is today. In the 1960s, the golden age of road trips, air travel was exclusive to the wealthy and to the businessmen. People dressed to the nines before boarding, hot meals were served, and it was a luxurious, rare thing to travel by airplane. It was not until the 1980s that air travel became pedestrian and widespread enough to include the middle and working classes. In the 1960s, to assume that Lambert would need to expand probably would have been met with laughter. Even then, expansion seemed preposterous, particularly in a time when the airline industries were in an economic bubble. Airline industries, particularly TWA, who operated 86% of everything coming into and out of Lambert, was struggling throughout the 1990s. This was before the runway plans were even approved.
The point of this blog was never “should they have built the houses.” They did. We lived there and we grew up there. And no, for all those years, jet noise was never an issue for many of Carrollton’s residents. It certainly was for Berkeley, Cool Valley, and Ferguson, who begged for buyouts in the 1980s due to jet noise. Those areas were denied many times over until developers became interested. Bridgeton fought hard to keep their homes because noise was not a problem for area residents and they had pride in their community.
The point of the blog is to raise the question, ‘Was the expansion of the airport worth it?’ Looking at Lambert’s flight statistics versus debt load today (without any mention of the Chinese cargo hub), anyone that lives in the St. Louis area can agree that the airport made a terrible decision in the addition of the runway.
They want to make the Chinese cargo hub work. I hope they can do it, but if they can’t, we as a region will be in a greater hole than before.
This so-called airport expansion was arguably the biggest abuse of eminent domain power in the history of this region. Certainly in my lifetime. A boondoggle of epic proportions.
First of all, it wasted (and is still wasting) untold millions, if not billions, of taxpayer dollars.
Secondly, the area to the south of Carrollton off Natural Bridge is primarily lower cost rental housing. Carrollton was the massive owner-owned anchor that stabilized the surrounding area. The entire city of Bridgeton has been damaged, and beyond just the major erosion of its tax base caused by the loss of Carrollton. Despite the fancy new police station and government center, the Natural Bridge area all around the south entrance to Carrollton has the look and feel of an area in decline.
Most of all, it negatively impacted the lives of thousands of Carrollton residents who had no desire to move. And all for absolutely no legitimate reason.
Those are the “stone cold facts”, Thomas.