Committee advances amendment to stadium special improvement district to add office, parcels and park area

The St. Louis City Board of Aldermen’s Housing, Urban Development and Zoning Committee advanced Board Bill 168 out of committee with a due-pass recommendation after hearing testimony about boundary changes to the stadium special improvement district (SID).

Alderman Alman Aldridge introduced the bill and called Courtney Miller, director of public engagement for St. Louis City SC, to explain the changes. “My name is Courtney Miller. I’m the director of public engagement for St. Louis City SC,” Miller said, and described the SID’s purpose as a way for the privately operated district to recover some infrastructure costs tied to the stadium and surrounding development.

Miller told the committee the original SID covered roughly 32 acres of what she called the stadium district and that developers and partners have invested about $667 million into stadium and district infrastructure, including stadium construction, training facilities, a tunnel beneath Market Street, sidewalks, lighting and sewer upgrades. The amendment would add the team’s front office (not included when the SID was first created), a parcel previously excluded while owned in part by Anthem, and part of Alo Park West under a cooperative agreement with the parks department. Miller said adding the park area would allow SID funds to be used—for example, for security and trash pickup during large events—while not supplanting the parks department’s baseline maintenance obligations.

A public commenter, Mr. Connelly, said he was neutral on the boundary adjustment but raised governance and transparency concerns about overlapping incentives and taxing districts connected to the stadium, including a tax abatement, a tourism development district and a port improvement district. “The transparency for that district in terms of a notification is lousy,” Connelly told the committee, and warned that the recently approved port improvement district would add roughly a 1 percent levy that would affect game-day food and beverage costs.

Committee members asked presenters to upload the older SID map to the civic clerk’s drive so members could compare the versions. Miller and Alderman Aldridge also said documents and maps are available online and explained that the port authority’s recent involvement stemmed in part from work to address a spring discovered beneath the stadium site that required water treatment and remediation.

Several members praised the stadium’s community investments. One member noted the team achieved a high waste-diversion goal and commented that, because the measure amends an existing SID rather than creating a new single-site SID, she would support it. Aldridge closed by thanking Major League Soccer and stadium partners for youth fields and other neighborhood investments and asked the committee for a due-pass recommendation.

The committee moved, seconded and passed the bill out of committee; the clerk recorded six “I” votes. The committee had no further resolutions and adjourned.

What happens next: Board Bill 168 received a due-pass recommendation out of committee and will be transmitted according to the board’s normal legislative process for further consideration.