JWC aims for community improvement in North STL

A new local organization is focusing on commercial real estate (CRE) as a way to support and enhance North St. Louis.

In July 2021, Ashley Rice and Sophia Patton founded and now serve as co-CEOs of the JWC (Jesus Wealth Community) Group, a “faith-based social enterprise with the passion for increasing wealth opportunities in underserved communities.”

“Our goal is to strengthen our commercial real estate presence with a focus on urban development. It’s a hybrid business and for-profit project. We are avid community builders and we welcome partnerships with nonprofit organizations and the commercial real estate sector,” said Rice.

Rice and Patton, both St. Louis natives, although Patton is now based in Dallas, created JWC to have a positive impact on the culture and community where they grew up.

“Our mission is to help people maximize their economic and social potential, which requires fighting systemic poverty,” said Rice. “We’re not trying to make a neighborhood ‘nice.’ We want to bring new life and business into underserved areas, starting at Delmar and Kingshighway and going north.”

The JWC Group partners with existing businesses to provide ATM merchant services to urban businesses and operate an online store that donates a portion of sales to nonprofits, and plans to “revitalize forgotten communities” through commercial real estate.

“We own the ATMs and are giving them to businesses for free with the option for revenue-sharing,” Rice said. The first ATM will be in place by November 2021.

The CRE division will start by buying properties in the target neighborhoods to bring in ventures that will support better living conditions —such as gyms, healthy grocery stores, pharmacy options and healthcare clinics.

“We want to see money flowing in so the neighborhood can profit,” Rice said.

Rice works full-time as a housing placement specialist with the St. Patrick Center, an agency in downtown St. Louis that helps homeless people find affordable living conditions. She is a member of the CREW Network-STL, Urban Land Institute-St. Louis District and Real Estate Development for Women of Color.

Patton has a background in insurance and has worked in commercial middle-market underwriting for the past decade.

“We are looking for commercial real estate partners and investors who understand our vision and mission,” Rice said.

The duo expects to see their first CRE projects launch by the end of 2022. For more information about the JWC Group, please visit thejwcgroup.com.

Urban League senior apartments, community center break ground in Dellwood

Last week, KAI joined the Urban League of Metropolitan Saint Louis to break ground on the organization’s new senior apartments and community center located at 9947 West Florissant in the City of Dellwood in North St. Louis County.

KAI is providing design-build services on the 40,000-square-foot facility which is expected to be complete by December 2022.

The $10 million, three-story building will include 44 resident units (40 one-bedroom units and four two-bedroom units), plus a community room on the main level for 12-15 people and a resident lounge with a kitchenette and restrooms. The main level will also include a private manager’s office, reception area, workroom and shared access to the community room.

At a time when the shortage of affordable housing in communities around the United States regularly makes the headlines, another less visible housing crisis is also intensifying, according to KAI CEO Michael Kennedy, Jr.

The number of elderly people with ‘worst case housing needs’—defined as renters with low incomes who do not receive government housing assistance and pay more than one-half of their income for rent, live in severely inadequate conditions, or both—is increasing rapidly. Nearly 10 million households with an occupant over age 65 spends more than 30 percent of their income on housing; roughly 5 million of those households spend more than 50 percent.

“The growth in the population of Americans aged 65 or older is projected to reach nearly 73 million in 2030, and more than 83 million in 2050, which means that senior households increasingly will be renters,” Kennedy said.

“Resources for housing and supporting our aging population are scarce in relation to the scope of the problem. To the Urban League and its board members and donors, the Missouri Housing Development Commission and Michael Gardner and his team at Gardner Capital, St. Louis thanks you; this community thanks you; and I thank you for partnering with KAI to bring seniors in this community this much needed project,” Kennedy said.

The Urban League of Metropolitan Saint Louis’ mission is to empower African Americans and others throughout the region in securing economic self-reliance, social equality and civil rights. The organization is committed to investing in the continued redevelopment of the West Florissant Corridor through Dellwood and Ferguson.

The goal of the development is to give seniors in Dellwood not only the opportunity to live in a brand new building but to also have easy access to many services and programs offered by the organization, including the popular Senior Empowerment Series.

Presenters at the groundbreaking ceremony also included Urban League president & CEO Michael P. McMillan; St. Louis County Executive, Sam Page; St. Louis County Council Chair, Rita Heard Days; City of Dellwood Mayor, Reggie Jones; and Missouri State Senator, Brian Williams.

Grain terminal addition strengthens STL inland port

The St. Louis region’s position as the most efficient inland port in the United States has been strengthened following the recent addition of a new grain handling terminal on the banks of the Mississippi River in Cahokia, Ill., adding capacity in the area known as the Ag Coast of America.

The region garnered the title due to a 15-mile stretch of the Mississippi River featuring 15 barge-transfer facilities that, at total capacity, can handle 150 barges a day – the highest level of capacity anywhere along the Mississippi River.

The addition of the 16th terminal, which was built by American Milling and purchased in December 2020 by Oakley St. Louis, LLC, a subsidiary of Arkansas-based Bruce Oakley, Inc., further expands the existing capacity with the ability to handle at least 1,000 more truckloads of grain daily. 

Bruce Oakley entered the market in 2019 with its purchase of Lange-Stegmann Company, its second terminal in the area. The acquisition gave Bruce Oakley control of Lange-Stegmann’s 60-acre site at Mile 182.7 on the Upper Mississippi River, which includes a barge dock, a rail yard with 23,000 feet of track, three locomotives, a truck and rail scale, and more than 153,000 tons of storage capacity.

“Bruce Oakley, Inc. is very excited to have a presence in the St. Louis area,” said Justin Oakley, vice president of Bruce Oakley, Inc. “For a commodity transportation and distribution company like Oakley, St. Louis is one of the most strategic locations on the river system. No other city connects river, rail, and road quite like the Ag Coast of America. Deep barge drafts, the lock-free and ice-free river to New Orleans, connection to the Class-1 railroads, and proximity to many industrial accounts that Oakley also services, make the Ag Coast a perfect location for us. Having the largest and most efficient fertilizer terminal in the area, complemented by a high-speed grain loading terminal, makes Oakley uniquely suited to add value to customers throughout the region.”

Other facilities on the Ag Coast include the Cargill Grain Elevator, which is one of the busiest grain elevators in the nation; the Bunge-SCF River Grain Terminal in Fairmont City, Ill., which is designed for more than a million bushels of permanent storage and can handle high volumes of multiple commodities simultaneously; and four facilities in Cahokia, Ill., operated by Consolidated Grain and Barge Company (CGB), Louis Dreyfus and COFCO International Growmark, which are the four highest capacity facilities in the entire inland waterway. Facilities operated by ADM, Gavilon Fertilizer, SCF, and Italgrani Elevator Company, along with America’s Central Port and the Municipal River Terminal in St. Louis, round out the 16 barge transfer facilities currently handling the tremendous volumes of agriculture and fertilizer products flowing through the Ag Coast.  

Growth on the Ag Coast is also supported by the recently completed reconstruction of Cargill Elevator Road, a vital link to the terminals in Cahokia, Ill. Trucks represent 87 percent of the vehicles traversing the narrow roadway, and prior to the reconstruction, traffic had been limited to one lane in each direction. Federal funding of  $800,000 through the IDOT Competitive Freight Program was key to advancing the $3.3 million project, which also received state and private funds.

“IDOT is proud to be working closely with our local stakeholders and businesses to improve the efficient transport of freight through our region,” said Keith Roberts, the acting Region Five engineer for the Illinois Department of Transportation. “The recent Cargill Elevator Road improvements complement future planned work by the department, including the extension of relocated IL Route 3 south into Sauget and additional projects to improve reliability of the freight and commuter network along this vital regional corridor.”

One additional project, now partially funded, will help to address heavy traffic volumes on Illinois Route 3 at the A&S Railroad crossing in Sauget, which result in more than 55,000 hours of through-traffic delays annually. Calculating the cost of delay, a proposed grade separation project would provide annual cost savings of $1.5 million for passenger and commercial vehicle drivers traveling this area and improve truck traffic reliability, safety and efficiency benefiting barge and rail rates. The overall project has multiple benefits to the region in terms of improving access to the growing business community and encouraging future business development. 

Mary Lamie, vice president of Multi Modal Enterprises for Bi-State Development and head of the St. Louis Regional Freightway enterprise, is excited about the continued investment in the Ag Coast and the infrastructure surrounding it.

“Handling nearly 450,000 tons per mile, the St. Louis region’s port system is almost two and a half times more efficient on its river usage than its closest competitor, according to the most recent rankings by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,” said Lamie. “The added capacity and enhanced access provided by the newest terminal and infrastructure investments will come in handy given projections that 2021 will be a record year for corn and soybean exports from the United States.”

Raising the roofing industry despite a pandemic

Some, if not many, St. Louis-area businesses that serve the commercial real estate community have managed to do well despite the pandemic restrictions and frustrations of the past 18 months. Roofing Services & Solutions (RSS) is among them.

RSS was part of the MHS Legacy Group, a St. Louis company that also had operations in Nashville and Orlando, and a special projects division that worked around the country. The company was sold to TectaAmerica toward the end of 2019, according to Joe Lauberth, current RSS president and past general manager— just as hints of the pandemic were starting to appear. Lauberth and colleagues tried to buy the company but that didn’t work out; TectaAmerica had a better offer.

“I was skeptical at first, because parts of TectaAmerica were non-union and we’re a union shop, but we’re still a union shop, and I’m extremely pleased with the way things have gone,” Lauberth said. “It has worked out well. They allow us some autonomy. They have a lot of resources we can fall back on.”

In fact, 2020 — the first full year as a TectaAmerica company — was “exceptional; a record for RSS,” Lauberth said. Although he said that roofing is a very cyclical business, revenues have increased by 400 percent over Lauberth’s 15 years with the company. 

Success in the past 18 months of COVID-19 can be traced to following safety and health precautions while keeping the company doors open, projects moving and communication channels clear. Being designated an essential business, since roofing is considered part of the construction industry, was an important piece of that puzzle. 

RSS/TectaAmerica works in St. Louis primarily with public schools and municipal districts, although current clients include Boeing, Anheuser-Busch, Bayer (formerly Monsanto), Washington University and the Washington University School of Medicine, Barnes Hospital and the U.S. Department of Energy. 

One factor in recent success has been the arrival of Lindsay Pietroburgo as sales account manager with a primary responsibility for coop activities.

Pietroburgo graduated from Illinois State University and worked for State Farm Insurance as a field inspector for 13 years, with several promotions. She came to RSS/TectaAmerica in 2020 when she decided to look for an active role in construction and saw a posting at indeed.com. Thanks to her insurance background, she was familiar with issues that could affect building roofs.

“Roofing is the first line of defense in bad weather,” Pietroburgo said. 

Pietroburgo’s initial responsibility was to work on the company’s coop opportunities. Commercial public entities like schools and municipalities have to use public funds for roofing. The coop is a group of schools that can lets potential clients and providers bypass the traditional bid process but still follow guidelines.

“It’s a rigorous process to be approved and have a bid reviewed,” she said. “It’s still a bid process, but is faster by months.”

“This isn’t a new process, but it’s new to us,” Lauberth said. “It gives public entities an opportunity to get projects done efficiently.”

Pietroburgo is also focusing on expanding marketing efforts by developing relationships with colleagues and growing the company’s LinkedIn page, which she called invaluable free marketing. She has joined local chapters of CREW, BOMA, IFMA and other professional organizations in commercial real estate to boost company visibility; the company had been a member in the past and Pietroburgo is renewing those connections with an eye to expanding the company’s variety of clients.

“Associations provide connections to private companies, and we want to nail business from both sides: property managers and facilities management,” Pietroburgo said. 

Reminders for homeowner and condominium associations following the Surfside tragedy

The devastating partial collapse of the Champlain Tower South condominium building in Surfside, Fla. on June 24, 2021 is raising many legal questions about the condominium association’s responsibilities, transparency and potential liabilities in the events surrounding the catastrophe.

While it may take months, or even years, for these questions to be resolved in the courts, there are important actions that homeowners and condominium associations should take to protect themselves, their owners and their properties from avoidable tragedies and unnecessary losses stemming from inadequate maintenance and planning. Below are actions associations should consider:

• Seek Expert Advice. Hire and rely on experts in their fields for advice when needed and err on the side of caution when concerns arise over property or financial issues. Hire someone with expertise relevant to the issue(s) at hand and take their advice seriously. Share concerning reports with owners and residents, particularly when confronting life safety issues.

• Conduct a Transition Study. A key milestone for newer homeowner and condominium associations occurs when the property transitions from builder to owner control. It is wise to conduct a transition study so the Association’s board knows if the development it is taking responsibility for was properly constructed or if there are shortcomings that need to be addressed by the builder and/or Association. A transition study involves hiring a professional to review the property to confirm it was properly constructed according to the plans and complies with applicable building and municipal codes.

• Conduct a Reserve Study. Associations of any age should consider conducting a reserve study to fully understand their long-term financial obligations to properly maintain their property. A reserve study typically involves 1) hiring a professional to review the property and the community’s governing documents, 2) laying out the maintenance, repair and replacement costs of the items that are the Association’s responsibility, and 3) funding the association’s reserves to be able to pay for known future expenses.

• Scheduled Maintenance. Regularly schedule inspections of the property to look for items requiring association maintenance, repair and/or replacement, and act on the items needing work. As the Surfside tragedy has painfully shown, deferring important maintenance can lead to disastrous consequences. Even lesser deferred maintenance can have serious implications. Discretionary aesthetic repairs, on the other hand, are typically not required maintenance items and are often within the board’s discretion.

• Maintain Proper Insurance. Properly insure both the property and the association board. Consult with an insurance broker who is knowledgeable about homeowner and condominium associations to be sure you have the right and sufficient coverage in place. Hire experts and contractors who also maintain proper insurance and are experienced in handling properties like yours.

• Be Transparent About Financials and Additional Assessments to Owners. Nobody likes increases in assessments; however, our homes are the biggest investments most Americans make. It is important that the Association is properly funded to handle current maintenance needs and to reserve for future anticipated needs. Costs increase for all businesses over time, including for the regular operational and maintenance expenses for homeowner and condominium associations. Associations must be realistic about their financial needs. Boards should regularly share budgets and other related financial records with the owners that show the community’s overall financial situation and explain future financial needs. Transparency and open communications go a long way in reaching broad owner consensus to keep the association fully and properly funded.

Upfront planning by association boards and owners for long-term property maintenance is a wise investment that can protect the association, its owners and their property investments from issues down the road.

Stephen G. Davis is an attorney with Carmody MacDonald P.C. in St. Louis and represents more than 200 Homeowner and Condominium Associations throughout the St. Louis area. He is also an active member of the Community Associations Institute – Heartland Chapter.

Ladue School District kicks off $126 million building program

S. M. Wilson & Co. has officially broken ground on Ladue School District’s Future-Ready Schools building program in St. Louis, Mo.

S. M. Wilson is serving as the Construction Manager at Risk (CMAR) for the district’s $126M Proposition L bond referendum, passed by the community in April. Projects include renovations and additions to Ladue Middle School, Old Bonhomme Elementary School and Spoede Elementary School.

On June 16, students, parents, staff, board members and residents from the local community came out to celebrate three separate groundbreaking ceremonies to mark the beginning of construction.

“We are excited to celebrate these milestones with our community because that’s who this is about: our community,” said Ladue School District superintendent, Dr. Jim Wipke. “This is a significant step toward providing the future-ready schools that all of our students deserve and sharing our gratitude with a community that invests in the education of its children.”

S. M. Wilson has been working with Ladue Schools for 13 years, serving as the Construction Manager for four building programs. Previous projects include construction of the district’s Early Childhood Learning Center, renovations and additions at Ladue Middle School, Reed Elementary School, Conway Elementary School and Old Bonhomme Elementary School. Most recently, S. M. Wilson completed the $67M renovation and addition to Ladue Horton Watkins High School.

“We are honored to work with Ladue School District once again. Our goal is to deliver beautiful schools for the students, staff and community to support the District’s mission: ‘Together, we will empower every student to become a passionate learner and achieve his or her highest potential,” said S. M. Wilson project director, Mike Hanner.

Ittner Architects and Perkins+Will are the project architects. Construction is set to be complete by the end of 2023.