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What were once rolling grassland hills are now fields of new homes. The town’s grocery store, a Dollar General, just opened. So did a Mexican restaurant.

But that’s just the beginning. Two large-scale construction projects, the American Food Group’s meat packing plant and Coastal Cold Storage manufacturing plant, are coming and will need hundreds of workers.

Foristell, population 550 in 2020, now has more than 800 residents. Next year, that number is expected to grow to 2,700. A decade from now, more than 10,000 could live in this area bordering St. Charles and Warren counties, .

Explosive growth is coming to these far reaches of St. Louis’ western suburbs, regardless of whether the community is ready.

“It is all happening very fast,� said Mary McHugh, who has worked for the past 10 years as the city’s treasurer and deputy city clerk. “It is very hopping around here.�

New jobs are fueling much of this. But so is the relatively inexpensive land and a planned widening of I-70, which will make it an attractive location for people who work in nearby Wentzville — another growing community.

Traffic is already becoming a problem here. And the roads aren’t yet ready for the expected influx of more vehicles. Other town infrastructure, such as sewer lines, are only available now for a portion of the city’s homes. Foristell has a five-person police department and no fire department of its own.

A growing population will also demand other community services, such as parks.

“We don’t have a city personal property or real estate tax,� said Sandra Stokes, Foristell’s city administrator and clerk. “So unless we ask the voters to pass those taxes, we would not be able to do much more as a city than what we do now.�

But none of that is slowing development. Ten different large-scale subdivisions adding hundreds of homes are planned, under construction or recently finished.

Mercy’s plans to construct a $650 million, 75-bed hospital in Wentzville also boosted home demand, as home buyers said they were comforted to have a hospital closer to their homes, said Phil Reid, a real estate agent with Westbound Real Estate.

Reid recently sold several large tracts of land along I-70 to potential developers, who are waiting to see how interstate widening may impact traffic patterns in Foristell.

Kathryn Schellhase, president of the Foristell Chamber of Commerce, said the organization has seen its membership jump to 40 businesses, up from 12 in 2020. And Schellhase, who worked in insurance in Wentzville for 25 years, said she doesn’t think the growth is tied to the meat packing plant, which is expected to employ about 1,300 employees.

“Foristell is going to be a pretty hot corner of the world for the foreseeable future,� Reid said.

A ‘new Wentzville?’

St. Charles County’s population grew by nearly 16% to almost 417,000 residents between 2010 and 2023. Neighboring Warren County has grown by nearly 16% during that time, too, to almost 38,000 residents.

“Foristell is the new Wentzville,� Schellhase said. “The growth we have seen here is pure westward expansion.�

The 200-mile, $2.8 billion I-70 expansion project will likely encourage that trend, said St. Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann.

Town leaders are also pushing developers to build on 3- to 5-acre lots, allowing for larger homes and yards at prices more affordable than many parts of the region.

“Wentzville seems to build on every blade of grass,� McHugh said. “We don’t want that.�

Neither does Todd Dobbs, who moved with his family to Foristell from Wentzville three years ago.

“Wentzville had really grown too much,� Dobbs said. “We live on a one-street subdivision now with about 20 houses, you just don’t feel that overwhelming congestion that you do in Wentzville. But with all of this change, we are concerned that Foristell is going to turn into another Wentzville.�

While Dobbs said is still settling into his new home, he knows that some of his neighbors have already talked about moving away from Foristell due to the impending growth.

“I really don’t know anybody who is happy about all of these changes,� he said.

St. Charles County Councilman Joe Brazil, who represents southwestern St. Charles County and Foristell on the governing body, said he hopes Foristell doesn’t experience the explosive growth that has occurred in Wentzville.

“The cities are building like crazy, as if it is some kind of badge of honor to be the biggest city in the county,� Brazil said. “That’s ridiculous — especially when the people want stable, smarter and more sustained growth.�

That’s what Foristell city leaders say they want, too.

“We can’t possibly be as big as Wentzville because we simply don’t have as much land to grow on,� said Stokes, the city administrator and clerk.

Bracing for growth

Roger Cox, 73, a retired construction project manager, said he has seen his hometown undergo quite the transformation. Gone are the days when the small town would close down Main Street for a street dance to raise funds for various causes. Now, Main Street — which is just outside of his home’s front door — is a bustling thoroughfare with bumper-to-bumper traffic, and Cox said he feels as if it is only going to get worse.

“Foristell was always destined to grow,� Cox said. “And these kinds of frustrations come with it.�

From her vantage point in City Hall, Stokes said the city has been working behind the scenes to try to be ready for growth as farms turned into subdivisions and shopping centers in St. Peters, Wentzville and O’Fallon, Mo. As the boom crept closer, she said the city professionalized its staff, hiring a city planner and other employees to help prepare for the new phase in its 147-year history.

Even with the planning, she admits that there have been some headaches. Traffic congestion has become particularly bad at the intersections of Veterans Memorial Parkway, Highway W and Highway T, and also at the city’s lone access point on and off Interstate 70.

“Fixing that intersection is incredibly important,� Stokes said.

She said she hopes when the Missouri Department of Transportation widens the interstate it will address both the nearby intersection and the “seriously compromised traffic flow.�

Then there’s the question of additional infrastructure. Sewer service is limited. Other residents rely on the nearby Public Water Supply District No. 2 to provide drinking water and sewer services. Trash pickup is outsourced to a third-party company. Electricity is provided by either Ameren ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ or Cuivre River Electric Cooperative.

And it is not just the city bracing for growth, either. Church leaders from multiple congregations told the Post-Dispatch that they are anticipating a surge of new families in their community — and church pews.

“From a church standpoint, young families and new families are the lifeblood of a church’s future,� said Nathan Hessee, pastor at New Life Baptist Church, which sits about a mile from the site of the American Foods Group plant.

He said his congregation is actively working to launch ministry programs and initiatives that will engage young adults, families with small children and others.

“I don’t know who they are bringing to this region, and I am excited to meet them. I think that’s the thing that excites me the most — the potential,� he said.

Ehlmann, the county executive, said the debate over Foristell’s future was raging back in the 1980s when he worked as Foristell’s city attorney.

“The question back then was: Should Foristell try to merge with Wentzville?� he said. “But it is going to be up to the people who live there, and the leaders in that community, to decide what kind of community Foristell becomes.�