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ST. LOUIS — The chief of the St. Louis Development Corp. on Wednesday pledged to focus resources from an unprecedented infusion of federal aid on four struggling areas of the city, part of the plan guiding the city’s new economic development philosophy under Mayor Tishaura O. Jones.

SLDC Director Neal Richardson and Jones spoke to a gathering of several hundred of the city’s business and political elite Wednesday during the Mayor’s Business Luncheon — the first time both new leaders had the opportunity to use the 20-year-old event to outline their economic development policies. SLDC has grown its staffing from about 80 to 100 people to begin implementing the new approach, Richardson said.

“That may not sound like a huge jump, but that’s significant,� he told the gathering. “It’s bringing in people who are passionate about the future of St. Louis.�

Richardson, whom Jones nominated to lead SLDC in the months following her election last year, took the opportunity to announce the agency’s rebrand and release two major policy documents — in the works for a year — meant to signal the priorities of the new administration.

One, the , is a 78-page list of SLDC’s development priorities and philosophy focused on directing resources to disinvested areas of north and south St. Louis with the most potential for growth. The second is , such as property tax abatement, meant to add some consistency to a development process that some in the industry complained was ad hoc in the administration’s early days.

“We want to make sure that these expectations and these development processes are more transparent, honest and accessible to both developers and our residents,� Jones told the gathering in Marriott’s downtown ballroom. “Under the fierce leadership of Neal Richardson, SLDC has embraced this effort, building out a process and a structure to make sure anyone looking to do business in St. Louis knows exactly what it will take to do so.�

To increase transparency, Richardson said SLDC — which staffs an alphabet soup of development boards that award development tax breaks — will begin recording its meetings and posting them online in January, mirroring the practice of the Board of Aldermen and many other city agencies.

“We want people to see that we are scoring these projects consistently, we’re being transparent and that businesses and developers will know exactly what to expect,� Richardson said in an interview.

The scorecard, which isn’t yet final, will lay out a point system that SLDC staff will use to determine how much tax abatement development projects should receive. The scoring will be affected by where the project is located and how much affordable housing will be provided. But points also will be added for other benefits, such as walkability, proximity to transit and historic preservation. It sets a minimum score for the use of tax increment financing, or TIF, and sets a maximum of 90% property tax abatement that the city will approve.

SLDC hired consultants PGAV and for $150,000 to develop the Economic Justice Action Plan a year ago. The plan echoes some of the recommendations in the released in 2020 — one Jones said during her campaign for mayor she didn’t think “told us anything new.� For instance, SLDC plans to hire seven “neighborhood managers� focused on helping residents organize neighborhood associations and connecting them with nonprofits and government resources. A similar recommendation came out of the 2020 plan.

But the Economic Justice Action Plan does narrow the SLDC’s priorities and take into consideration the nearly $500 million in American Rescue Plan Act money sent to the city, tens of millions of which SLDC is already administering for new housing and business programs.

Four target areas

The plan identifies four areas for SLDC staff to focus its resources on, which it calls “demonstration areas�: The Martin Luther King Drive corridor from Grand Boulevard to the city limits; Walnut Park; a swath of Dutchtown and Mount Pleasant along Meramec Street; and the neighborhoods surrounding the under-construction National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

SLDC wants to spur the construction or rehab of hundreds of housing units in the areas. Richardson said the agency plans to use a new $15 million housing development and mortgage fund it created earlier this year using some of the $20 million in ARPA money and federal New Markets Tax Credits. It also has a new $37 million grant program for north city commercial corridors that can help rehab commercial space in some of the priority neighborhoods.

“There’s already developers in those neighborhoods,� Richardson told the newspaper. “They just need access to capital.�

Another priority is a more aggressive assemblage and marketing of real estate owned by the city’s Land Reutilization Authority, the owner of thousands of abandoned properties throughout the city. That may mean acquiring privately-owned land near clusters of LRA real estate to assemble more attractive development sites, an effort Richardson said will require “deep conversations� with private sources of capital.

LRA leadership there was shaken up this year after SLDC ousted longtime chief Laura Costello and paused the land bank’s sales to reevaluate its holdings and strategy. Richardson said Lance Knuckles, who has led LRA on an interim basis since Costello’s ouster, will head the agency on a permanent basis.

The plan also calls for the creation of an “economic justice fund� to implement the plan’s priorities using ARPA money. Some $200 million in ARPA has yet to be appropriated by the St. Louis Board of Aldermen.