Business and Finance

Every time Paul McKee stands up to pitch his big plan for north St. Louis, he points to another project 35 miles out west: WingHaven.

It is the prettiest feather in McEagle Properties’ cap. A Forest Park-sized complex of new homes, stores and office buildings. Exhibit A that he can do what he’s promising.

"I am very, very proud of WingHaven," McKee says.

What was once a poultry research farm on the fringe of St. Charles County today holds about 2,400 houses. It is home to the headquarters of MasterCard’s Global Technology Division. There’s a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course. Walking trails. A new school.

But 10 years in, WingHaven has had its challenges, too.

While homes sold quickly and MasterCard gave a spark, there’s still a lot of land for commercial development — at least 80 acres for office buildings sit empty. And many small stores have struggled, pointing to some of the challenges that come with the kind of transformative development McEagle is proposing for north St. Louis.

The $750 million development in O’Fallon, Mo., is almost as large as NorthSide in acreage but dwarfed by the new proposal’s vision for jobs and new homes. WingHaven has become McEagle’s banner project, and launched McKee, the co-founder of Paric Corp., into the elite of local developers.

Since WingHaven began, he has become renowned for his political connections, helped win a hard-fought competition to build NorthPark in St. Louis County and been a key player in the region’s air cargo talks with China.

QUICK SUCCESS

Nestled in a fast-growing corridor along Highway 40 (Interstate 64), new homes at WingHaven sold fast. When they went on sale in 1999, 550 were snapped up in a week, McKee has said, and the residential land was pretty much built out in five years.

Those homes came in a wide range of prices — from $100,000 town houses to million-dollar mansions — part of a conscious decision by McEagle and the home builders it partnered with to create a mix of neighborhoods and make them, at least by outer-suburban standards, fairly walkable.

"It blends well that way," said Tom Shepherd, who bought early and is now president of the homeowners association. "You’ve got everything here, and that makes us a little different."

No one would confuse WingHaven with a city neighborhood. It has cul-de-sacs and golf course views. People leave their garage doors open all day and jog along streets lined with white fencing and swaths of crisply mown grass.

McKee has said repeatedly he does not want to re-create WingHaven in north St. Louis. His plan there is more urban, denser, and it will incorporate existing buildings instead of wholesale new construction.

But he also talks up job creation in WingHaven. And on that front, the record is a bit more mixed.

In 1997, when O’Fallon officials approved WingHaven, the projections were for 15,000 new jobs.

No one’s sure exactly how many people work there today. Estimates run between 6,000 and 9,000. After MasterCard, which O’Fallon officials say has 1,700 people, the next biggest employers are Paric and Nordyne Inc., a heating-and-cooling equipment maker with about 160 workers. There are lots of banks and medical offices and a branch of St. Luke’s Hospital, but relatively few midsize businesses.

That’s a challenge, said Greg Prestemon, president of the Economic Development Center of St. Charles County.

"A vibrant local economy is going to have the five- and 10- and 20-person businesses that start growing at a fast pace," he said. "That’s the tricky piece for any development — getting those business that grow."

To be sure, MasterCard was a big win. McKee — with the help of at least $40 million in state subsidies — lured the credit card firm to WingHaven from Maryland Heights allstate insurance company. And it has grown since.

But MasterCard-sized projects are rare. And McEagle lost out on one in 2002, when CitiMortgage chose a site elsewhere in O’Fallon for its new headquarters.

Indeed, McEagle may have been early in to southern O’Fallon, but lots of other developers are there now, too, erecting office parks and shopping centers along Highway 40 out to Lake Saint Louis. There’s plenty of competition.

"A lot of stuff has happened around WingHaven to make it, from a retail standpoint, much more challenging than you would have thought 10 years ago," Prestemon said.

A 77-acre site McEagle owns just south of Highway 40 has seen several shopping center plans fall through; now the plan is to build a hockey arena there. And a market study commissioned this spring by O’Fallon found that WingHaven lacks any strong anchors to draw shoppers in.

That has hurt some of the small retailers who did move to WingHaven.

STRUGGLES OF RETAIL

Lakeside Shoppes, a plaza next to MasterCard, holds a lot of empty storefronts. A sign in one window declares that a children’s store has "Moved to the Meadows," a big new shopping center in Lake Saint Louis. A pet supply store is set to close this weekend.

"It’s just really hard for businesses to make it there," said Janine Rieger, who co-owned a backyard bird equipment store at Lakeside for three years before moving to Chesterfield. "We’d have days when zero customers would come in."

Other retailers say business is OK, and McKee points to the rough economy, which is hurting stores everywhere.

"Retail’s the worst part of our economy right now," he said.

Some stores have formed a merchants association to remind WingHaven residents of what they have in the neighborhood.

"We’re trying to remind people that there’s a lot of independently owned businesses here, and they’re good for the community," said Jan Stanczak, who moved her travel agency from Westport five years ago. "This is what it’s all about."

Nowhere was that sense of community supposed to be stronger than the Boardwalk, a two-block shopping district patterned on an older town center.

At one time, it had a grocery, a dry cleaner, a pizza shop and a hair salon. They’re all gone now. "For Lease" signs hang in empty windows.

"I probably wouldn’t do another Boardwalk like that," McKee said.

There are still two restaurants, a dentist and an Edward Jones office. A St. Charles County Library branch holds down one corner. But the Boardwalk is quiet. And getting quieter.

One Sunday afternoon last month, a few young kids rode their bikes to Deter’s Frozen Custard. They went in, ordered from the teenagers working the counter and ate at tables in the store. It was like an advertisement for the live-work-play community McKee talks about building.

Last week, Deter’s closed. It’s moving.

There just wasn’t enough foot traffic to support the place, especially after the grocery closed, said Doug DelGrosso, Deter’s owner for six years.

DelGrosso lives in WingHaven. So do his parents and his sisters. He loves the sense of community. And you can’t ask for a shorter commute. But as a place to run a small business, he says, it’s just too fragile.

"It sounds great," DelGrosso said. "But really most people just stop at the strip mall on their way home from work."

So that’s where he’s moving. Into an old Starbucks off Highway 94 in Weldon Spring. It has parking and a drive-through. It’ll open in March.

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