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Through a mix of professional and personal connections, along with a healthy dose of political savvy, the veteran Clayton real estate lawyer sits at the center of the region's three-year bid to turn Lambert-St. Louis International Airport into a hub for Chinese air cargo.

A partner in the firm Stone, Leyton and Gershman, he has long held close ties to Paul McKee, who controls about 700 acres around Lambert. Several years ago, they hatched the plan to bring the Chinese to St. Louis.

Since then, Stone's deep knowledge of the project has helped him add most of the effort's other key players to his client list. His firm now works for the Midwest China Hub Commission, and he is registered to lobby on the hub for the Regional Chamber and Growth Association. In February, he signed on with the city of St. Louis to draft the Aerotropolis legislation, which contains the $360 million tax credit package Stone and others now say is essential to the effort.

So he represents nearly every side of the deal in St. Louis — and he sits at the negotiating table with the Chinese.

A consummate insider and the son of local attorney Sidney Stone, the attorney, 63, has had a quiet hand in many of the region's big economic development efforts, from early riverboat casino projects to McKee's WingHaven, the $750 million residential and commercial development in St. Charles, and NorthPark, the massive business park in north St. Louis County. Clients describe him as brilliant and note his rare knack for deal-making. They say he can articulate both a big vision and the nitty-gritty details that make it work.

Connected as he may be, Stone keeps a low profile. He declined to be interviewed for this story, citing the ongoing debate in the Missouri Legislature over the Aerotropolis bill and a desire "not to get out in front of" his clients. But his centrality to the cargo project highlights the tightknit world of development in St. Louis, where everyone knows everyone else and relationships twist back over decades. It also highlights a paradox of playing in a global economy where deals span continents but can often hinge on just a handful of personal relationships.

After all, none of this would be happening — St. Louis probably wouldn't even be talking with the Chinese right now — if not for one early Cold War-era twist of fate: Jack Perry went to China.

Perry was a British exporter who helped lead the first Western trade mission to China in 1952. At the time, this was no small thing. China had just become Communist. The Korean War was raging. But Perry and 47 colleagues — the so-called "icebreakers" — traveled to Beijing and forged ties that led to deals to sell grain and copper, machines and medicine to the Chinese.

The St. Louis connection? Perry was cousins with Stone's mother and worked closely with Stone's father. Perry's son Stephen went into the family business, and became a major player in British-Chinese trade in his own right. As a young man he also spent a lot of time in St. Louis, visiting his family here.

Fast forward a half-century, to 2007, when Steve Stone, by then a veteran St. Louis real estate lawyer working for McKee, put together his client and his British relative. Then the three of them set out to pitch the Chinese — and St. Louis leaders — that an underused airport in "the center of the center" of the United States could once again be a gateway to the Midwest.

It has taken three and a half years already, and even the first phase is not yet done. China Cargo Airlines is negotiating with Lambert to start flights. And Lambert and local business leaders are watching negotiations in the Missouri Senate over what kind of incentive package they will have to offer.

Stone has been there every step of the way.

Even if the tax package passes, it would be just one step of many in achieving the grand vision of Stone and others, who envision the cargo flights spurring large swaths of related transportation and warehousing development in the region. The hopes for this year are much more moderate, mainly getting one Chinese airline to commit to perhaps three flights a week in Lambert. Meanwhile, airports from Denver to Detroit are trying to lure international cargo and boost development. And regions around the nation are trying to forge trade ties of all kinds with China's booming economy.

'WHO SENT YOU?'

Stone's connections at home go way back. He was born in St. Louis in 1947. He went to Northwestern University, then law school at Washington University. He started practicing in the early 1970s.

Tall, bald and lean, Stone will sit quietly in a meeting while his clients make their case, perhaps scribbling a few notes. But at some point, he'll open up with an urgency, launching into an extended discourse connecting a half-dozen dots on some big idea like the course of Sino-U.S. trade over the coming decades. Colleagues sometimes roll their eyes — one business leader recently said he's "like a wind-up toy, he just keeps going" — but they generally agree he's one of the smartest guys in the room.

When local political and business leaders formed the Midwest China Hub Commission in January 2009, one of their first acts was to hire Stone at $15,000 a month. Not as its attorney, stressed hub commission chairman Mike Jones. That would raise too many potential conflicts between the commission and McKee. The commission hired him as an expert it can tap for ideas on how to make the project work — and for his connections.

Stone has "a unique and sometimes profound insight into real estate and real estate finance," Jones said. "Plus, without Steve, we don't have Perry. Without Perry, we don't have the Chinese."

Perry, too, through his London Export Corp., is on the commission's payroll, earning $450,000 a year to provide his expertise and open doors in Beijing. The St. Louis visits by Chinese ambassadors and trade ministers and investment groups over the past three years stem from Perry's relationships, and they are essential, Jones said, to making this sort of project work.

"It's really kind of the old-fashioned 'who sent you?' That's ultimately the way deals are put together," he said. "They only get put together if they make financial sense. But they only get to that point if people trust each other."

Of course, it's not just Beijing where doors need opening.

Stone has a long track record in state and local politics. Twenty years ago, he was a development adviser to then-mayor Freeman Bosley, Jr., helping shape intricate development deals. More recently, he played a key role in creating the Distressed Areas Land Assemblage Tax Credit, the $95 million state program McKee used to help recoup land-buying costs for his NorthSide project. He knows how to craft a deal that makes sense for all sides, said Richard Fleming, president of the Regional Chamber and Growth Association.

"He has one of the most brilliant and facile minds I've ever seen on that combination of public policy and economic development," Fleming said. "He's got a very unique mix of skills."

PURCHASING POWER

He also has a lot of political connections. In the past three years, Stone, Leyton and Gershman has donated just under $500,000 to state and local political campaigns, according to the Missouri Ethics Commission. Everyone from Mayor Francis Slay ($82,500) to Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder ($30,000) to Democratic groups in St. Louis' 5th Ward, where NorthSide is centered ($10,300). In a written statement, Stone said he donates to "pro-economic growth" and "pro-jobs" candidates, regardless of party.

Any Jefferson City juice those donations may have bought will come in handy in the last two weeks of the legislative session, as lawmakers balance the Aerotropolis bill against other tax credit programs and a tough state budget picture. Last month, Stone registered to lobby for the bill on behalf of the RCGA, Lambert and the city. He's working on an as-needed basis for the RCGA, said Fleming, to help legislators understand the complex bill. And the city's paying him up to $100,000 to actually write the legislation — a fee comparable to what it would pay any other attorney for similar work, said Jeff Rainford, chief of staff to Mayor Francis Slay.

In an earlier interview, Stone said there was no conflict between his job as lawyer to McKee and his job as consultant to the city — with whom McKee is negotiating on other projects such as NorthSide.

While McKee stands to benefit from the Aerotropolis credits, so do many other people, Stone noted, and given how much McKee controls right around Lambert, it would have been impossible not to include him.

"Paul McKee's land would have been in the plan whether I was the scrivener or I wasn't the scrivener," he said.

"Now he has competition he didn't have before."

As for why the city hired Stone, instead of any of the region's many other experts in development law, to help make this huge project happen, the reason is simple.

"He knows this," Rainford said. "It's all in his brain."