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I was driving downtown a couple of weeks ago and took an exit off of Highway 40 (Interstate 64) that I hardly ever use, the one at Chestnut and 20th streets that will be demolished if a new Major League Soccer stadium is built just north of it. Coming off the looping exit that takes you under the highway, I was at a stop sign headed east on Chestnut Street.

“Momentum� says the sign atop the building straight ahead, directly north of Union Station.

It’s the new St. Louis headquarters of New York-based advertising firm “Momentum Worldwide.� The company from Richmond Heights last year.

I took a picture of the sign, knowing that it would come in handy some day.

A week ago, a couple of the investors behind the that is pitching the new MLS soccer stadium were in town holding a series of interviews. St. Louis voters will decide , both of which have to pass for the soccer stadium to become a reality. The first would establish a one-half cent sales tax to fund MetroLink expansion and other neighborhood preservation and security programs. The second would dedicate an increase in a business use tax (which will automatically rise if the sales tax is approved) to help build the downtown soccer stadium.

Ask investors Paul Edgerley and Terry Matlack what they see going on in downtown St. Louis and they keep coming back to the same word.

“This is about continuing to build on the momentum,� says Edgerley, the majority investor and chairman of SC STL. The Kansas City native and former managing director at Bain Capital is a part-owner of the Boston Celtics, the professional basketball team in the city where he lives. He came to be involved with the St. Louis drive for an MLS team through a business relationship with former Anheuser-Busch executive Dave Peacock, who is also chairman of the .

Matlack, who lives in Kansas City and is founder of Tortoise Capital Advisors, sees a potential soccer stadium right next to Union Station as the next step in growing downtown development.

“Businesses want to locate where they want to live,� Matlack says. “We can be a big part of that momentum.�

The hopeful soccer team owners know they have a heavy lift in front of them.

Nationwide, voters are increasingly wary of investing tax dollars in public stadium projects. And unlike the ownership group’s other competitors for a new MLS franchise, the St. Louis proposal suffers from the lack of regional buy-in. In most of the other cities vying for the growing professional soccer league — Charlotte and Nashville come to mind — cities and counties are combining efforts. In St. Louis, the city is going alone, though the only local tax source being tapped to supplement private investment will be paid by businesses, not residents.

But it’s also a city where the soccer tradition runs deep. The nascent ownership group is trying to tap into that tradition to rally enough yes voters to the polls to win what will surely be a tight vote. If they win, Edgerley has no doubt the MLS will choose St. Louis.

“St. Louis is the best soccer city in the U.S.,� he says. “If we get the votes, we will get an MLS team.�

Edgerley exudes a quiet confidence that comes with years of making successful bets.

Right now, he’s betting on St. Louis.

The momentum he talks about is not difficult to see if you look for it.

Investment capital from Chicago, New York, Dallas and overseas is pouring into downtown St. Louis, turning its collection of historic buildings into new hotels, condos and lofts. Young people are moving downtown, enough so that the downtown ZIP code of 63101 showed the in the St. Louis region since 1990, according to .

Last week, local developer Amos Harris took me into the first floor of the Railway Exchange Building that takes up an entire city block north of Olive Street and east of Seventh Street. The former home of Famous-Barr and Macy’s department stores who plans a combination of residences and retail in the 21-story, 1.2 million-square-foot edifice built in 1914.

Standing in the empty first floor of Macy’s, which looks like it could have been cleared out yesterday, is an opportunity for a glass-half-empty or half-full moment. An old Coke machine that serves bottles sits to the side, a reminder of times past, when downtown St. Louis was a retail center for the region.

The economic development game now, Edgerley says, and Harris agrees, is about people. Growing cities develop as places where people want to live and work.

Harris sees a future St. Louis that has a vibrant corridor connecting the convention center down Seventh Street to Ballpark Village, and then west to Scottrade, Union Station, and, maybe — voters willing — an MLS soccer stadium.

“We see a lot of positives going on in the core of St. Louis,� Edgerley says. With a yes vote April 4, he expects to be spending much more time here. “Relationships beget next opportunities. And that creates companies, and jobs. St. Louis is a complicated city, but it feels like destiny.�