United We Stand, Divided We Kneel
by Steve Erdelen (Summer 2011, Hard Copy Edition)
In other words, if you pick up a copy of The Springfield News-Leader on your way to visit your child at Missouri State University, or on your way to Branson, the chances are pretty good that your future perceptions of Springfield, Missouri will be influenced by that newspaper you just bought. My first job in the advertising business was in 1984 and since that time the biggest lesson I’ve learned, is that perception is everything.
One of our contributors told me that she intentionally drops off copies of our magazine in trendy little coffee shops around the St. Louis area. She apparently does so, because she is proud of the magazine and she wants to help stop the perception that our area is on the decline and that we have very little to offer in terms of culture and commerce. As most of our readers realize, Northwest St. Louis County is brimming with great history, tremendous talent, fine businesses, beautiful homes and very friendly people. Region wide perceptions about this area however, could be dramatically improved.
Combine the devastating decline of Lambert St. Louis International Airport, the destruction of 2,000 homes and nearly 100 businesses in Bridgeton for a seldom used runway and the effective abandonment of Northwest Plaza in St. Ann and what do you have? What you have my friend is a perception problem. Pile on top of that the nationwide trend in the 1980’s and 1990’s to migrate out of inner cities and their original suburbs (or exurbs) and then what kind of community are you left with? I guess the answer depends on your perspective and your insight. It depends on whether your perceptions are formed by the influence of your peer group, people you aspire to be like or pure, deductive reasoning. It’s sometimes easier to look down your nose at a person, or a geographic area than it is to look down your nose to study the real facts about someone or somewhere.
The bottom line is that no matter where a person now resides, they are generally very proud of that place, but where they “grew up” is almost always sacred to them. I’ve seen it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears. On the local Facebook Groups I’ve organized, I’ve read thousands of fond remembrances from area Baby Boomers about Northwest Plaza, St. Charles Rock Road, Pattonville and Ritenour High Schools and virtually every neighborhood around here. When I announced online that we were launching the Rock Road Reporter, I was immediately flooded (and still am) by request for copies of the magazine, by former local residents who now live in St. Charles County, Lincoln County, Warren County, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Washington D.C. and Bradenton, Florida, to name just a few. Did they think that our magazine was going to be the second coming of TIME, or NEWSWEEK, or ROLLING STONE? Nope. They just missed the area they grew up in and they thought that our magazine could bring a little piece of home back to them.
The area that they grew up in was and is still considered to be a “working class” and “middle class” area. Their parents might have worked at McDonnell-Douglas (Boeing) or at the Ford or GM plant. They may have been in “the trades” as a machinist, pipe fitter, equipment operator, electrician, welder, plumber, carpenter, painter, bricklayer or laborer. Just like today, local people sold clothing and shoes and furniture and waited tables and tended bar and swept and mopped the floors at schools and at businesses. They worked hard and they took pride in what they accomplished. They put food on the table and they sent their freshly scrubbed kids to school everyday. America was booming and it was the working class and middle class paychecks that kept it booming. Families would buy that new Ford or Chevy or Dodge every three to five years and the new Zenith color television and the new Frigidaire as well. It made sense that one job here created another job here.
Things have changed quite a bit since then for the working class. Lifetime jobs with the same company are now extremely rare, as are retirement pensions. Loyalty to workers is a thing of the past and the dignity and honor of an honest day’s work is often overlooked and underappreciated. Greed is rampant and the divide between rich and poor is much worse than it has ever been. A good friend and top salesman that I worked with in the early 1990’s told me back then: “It used to be that sales and marketing people ran companies and now it’s the bean counters that run companies.”
His point at the time was that instead of investing in new markets and new products to create more profits, companies were beating down vendors and cutting jobs to prop up the bottom line. Very little has changed from his statement of 18 years ago, in fact it has gotten far worse. Corporations, with the tacit approval of Congress have basically declared war on the working people of this country. In the name of the bottom line, unions have been targeted and broken up, pension plans eliminated, insurance premiums increased and job security abolished. “Increased productivity” typically means that one person is doing the job of two or three people and by God, they better not complain about it. Most people know exactly what will happen to them if they do. Even if a worker keeps his or her mouth shut, the possibility of their job being shipped off to a foreign country remains a very real possibility. Speaking of foreign countries, American corporations are allowed to defer taxes from overseas profits to the tune of over $100 billion a year.
Hundreds of billions of hard working taxpayer dollars have been used to save banks and financial institutions that were “too big to fail.” The very same banks and financial institutions who helped to create the sub prime mortgage lending crisis that ultimately wiped out trillions of dollars in middle class home equity all over this country. Thousands of middle class people hear a statement similar to the following every day: “We’re sorry Mr. and Mrs. Jones, but your house that was valued at $160,000 in 2007 is now worth $100,000. The $60,000 in equity that you thought you had has now disappeared; therefore we cannot issue you a line of credit to capitalize your new business, because you don’t have enough collateral.”
When that happens and I can personally attest to the fact that it does happen, new jobs are not created and small businesses are not allowed to start-up or expand. The middle class is rapidly getting squeezed out of the American dream while billionaires are using millions of dollars of our tax money in the form of TIF’s (Tax Increment Financing) to “assist” them in the development of box stores that sell mostly foreign made merchandise. (For reference, see the new Wal-Mart Super Center being built on St. Charles Rock Road, in Bridgeton) Also, remember that the Wal-Mart atCypress and the Rock Road will be completely abandoned and presumably left for dead.
Not to rub it in, but two wars are being fought overseas and we have found within us the generosity to grant the wealthiest among us a $700 billion tax break. Add to that the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street and you’ll come up with enough money to send 20 million of our citizens through four years of college.
The GI Bill after World War II proved that educating Americans was a very smart thing to do. The bill helped to create the most innovative and skilled work force in the history of the world. It seems that, these days however, our tax money is better spent on subsidizing the wealthy in the hope that some of that money will “trickle down” to all of us peasants and “create jobs.” Job creation is a concept that politicians love to talk about, but have no idea of how to really make it happen. Rebuilding our infrastructure and investing in exurban redevelopment doesn’t seem to be a viable option for them. It’s much easier to just hand over money to corporations.
How can ordinary working class or middle class people (or whatever sociologists like to call us) fight back against raging greed and self serving politicians? I believe the way our parents did it and the way their parents did it before them, was first to get off their rear ends and go to the polls and secondly, to form and join unions. They teamed up to bargain collectively and to strike with work stoppages against unlivable wages and unnecessary greed. They boycotted companies who mistreated workers and marketed shoddy products. They practiced the old lesson of vigorously protecting their own interest. The same lesson any rich person would teach their son or daughter.
By the way, did I mention that there was a bug on page three?
Is the future of Northwest St. Louis County, still up in the air?
"Message from the Publisher," April 2011, Hard Copy Edition
I’d like to say that this issue was meticulously planned to have a certain theme, but it was really just serendipity that our April Issue turned out to be our “Airport Issue.”
"Message from the Publisher," April 2011, Hard Copy Edition
Above: Dr. John Kasarda's vision of a real Aerotropolis, dramatically differs from the recently proposed bill in the Missouri Legislature.
I’d like to say that this issue was meticulously planned to have a certain theme, but it was really just serendipity that our April Issue turned out to be our “Airport Issue.”
We had planned an April cover story on “The China Hub,” which is a private and civic effort to increase our region’s air cargo trade with China and I knew that Mike Hofmeister’s story was about building an “Aerotropolis” here, but I didn’t know that Jason Wilson was going to turn in a story about Lambert Field memories and I didn’t realize that our “Artist of the Month,” photographer Greg Harris, had a spectacular shot of an iron worker welding the girders of the control tower at the airport, which we would wind up using for our cover.
Once I saw that a (flight) pattern was developing, I remembered that Joe Sonderman had sent the magazine several vintage photos of Lambert Field back in January. So, guess what? This month’s “Joe’s Six Pack” feature will present some great old photos of the airport.
As you may have noticed, I’ve referred to the 1850 acres of land, owned by the City of St. Louis, as everything but its proper name, which happens to be Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. I guess I’ve done so, by force of habit. Having lived close to Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, all of my life, I’ve always referred to it as “Lambert”, or simply “the airport,” as Jason Wilson, states in his remembrance.
Lambert can be a very touchy subject around these parts. In 1998 the FAA endorsed the 1 billion “W-1W” airfield expansion plan which called for the acquisition and demolition of over 2,000 homes and businesses that were located primarily in the City of Bridgeton, to build a 9,000-foot parallel runway. Ironically, the airport’s expansion effort coincided with its demise. Passenger traffic peaked at 30.5 million in 2000 and was recently calculated at 12.3 million passengers in 2010. In other words, current passenger traffic would have to more than double, just to reach the passenger levels of ten years ago. Or, put another way, passenger traffic is down 60% in ten years, at St. Louis-Lambert International Airport.
One popular assumption is that the events of September 11th, 2001, immediately devastated passenger traffic at Lambert, but statistics tell a different story. Passenger traffic at Lambert did decline, but only by 4%; from 26.7 million in 2001, to 25.6 million in 2002. The major source of Lambert’s downward traffic spiral can be traced to the bankruptcy of Trans World Airlines, or TWA, which was acquired by American Airlines in 2001. After acquiring TWA, American then utilized Lambert primarily as a reliever for its existing hubs at Chicago O’Hare and Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and discontinued transatlantic service from St. Louis.
In a span of just two years (2003 – 2004) Lambert lost over 12 million passengers. After some fairly extensive research, I could not find a comparable downturn by any other major airport in the country. In fact, no other major airport in the country was found to be even close to Lambert’s passenger traffic decline of 60% from 2000 to 2010. By the time W1-W (the largest construction project in the history of St. Louis) was completed in 2006, Lambert’s once proud history as a top 10 airport, had been buried in the dirt.
In the meantime, Lambert is virtually surrounded by airport success stories. Springfield, Missouri and Cincinnati Ohio’s airports were recognized by the Department of Transportation in the third quarter of 2009, as the two fastest growing airports in the country. Chicago’s two major airports remain among the worlds most congested and Memphis, (thanks to its FedEx hub) handles more cargo than any other airport in the world. Yes, the world.
Is there a quick fix for Lambert, around the corner? It’s not likely, but history could repeat itself. There is currently an ongoing $15 billion dollar expansion effort occurring at O’Hare International Airport and in late January of 2011, American Airlines and United Airlines filed suit against the City of Chicago to stop it from issuing bonds to finance the expansion. According to the Chicago Tribune, the airlines say the cost of increased borrowing would require higher landing fees and other charges on the airlines that would curb their ability to increase service in Chicago.
It seems to me that the timing would be perfect for the City of St. Louis to approach both American and United with new and innovative proposals to expand service in St. Louis. After all, our expansion has been completed and we certainly have the extra capacity that they can’t seem to find in Chicago. I believe that transferring a significant portion of traffic to St. Louis, could stabilize their landing fees, increase overall passenger safety, relieve congestion and minimize flight delays for both airlines. As Mike Jones, Chairman of The China Hub Commission said, “We can play a major support role here. We don’t have to be Michael Jordan to win a championship; we can be Scotty Pippen and still win a ring.”
