Square's Relocating of 1,400 Jobs to Former Post-Dispatch Building Adds Another Key Anchor to the Emerging Center City STL "Gigabyte Corridor"

With the announcement by Square & Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Square & Co-Founder Jim McKelvey that Square Inc. has signed a 15-year lease, with space for some 1,400 employees, in the former St. Louis Post-Dispatch Building --- the emerging "Gigabyte Corridor" along North Tucker Boulevard adds another major anchor. It joins The Globe Building, the 550,000 square foot Art Deco building now undergoing a dramatic renovation for tech firms as well, --- just a block away, in this north/south center city connection between Downtown and the new $1.75-billion HQ of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the adjoining Innovation District at the heart of the 1,500-acre NorthSide Regeneration Mixed-Development in North St. Louis:

"Square to move, expand St. Louis office downtown." | Business | stltoday.com | July 29, 2019

https://www.stltoday.com/business/local/square-to-move-expand-st-louis-office-downtown/article_5d131c13-71e2-5647-98a4-8a12bb51e952.html

St. Louis natives Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey are Co-Founders of both Twitter and Square, and have been longtime business colleagues and fellow tech leaders, dating back to well before the founding of both Square and Twitter. Square was originally founded in St. Louis, but Dorsey and McKelvey moved their HQ to San Francisco in hopes of having a stronger pipeline of tech talent.

Since establishing the Square San Francisco HQ, and experiencing the fierce competition for talent and the high price cost of doing business there in recent years, Square has relocated several hundred employees from San Francisco to the co-working space at CIC@4240 in the CORTEX Innovation District.

During this same period, McKelvey also founded LaunchCode, Inc., the St. Louis-based national nonprofit which recruits and trains coding and software development talent, and which has substantially enhanced the St. Louis tech talent pipeline.

McKelvey's and Dorsey's commitment on the 235,000 square foot Post-Dispatch Building and the adjoining 4.5 downtown acres in September, joined The Globe Building's high tech adaptive reuse of that 550,000 square foot landmark, and has set the stage for this tech corridor along Tucker Boulevard connecting the expanded Ballpark Village and Washington Avenue assets, such the T-Rex Technology Incubator, and other innovation and entrepreneurial resources on the southern end, and the connection on the northern end of the Corridor to the 1,500-acre NorthSide Regeneration (NSR) Mixed Use Development and the new 1 million square foot new NGA HQ at the heart of NSR.

Back in February of 2019, I posted an article noting the prospective unique mixed-use place making and central city revitalization opportunities for St. Louis with the emergence of the "Gigabyte Corridor" along Tucker Boulevard and the development of distinctive mixed-use districts within Center City St. Louis:

"... with the Cardinals and Ballpark Village as an anchor in the heart of the Central Business District — Center City St. Louis has the unique civic potential to become a connected set of mixed-use districts and growing entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Imagine a St. Louis Central Business District linked with the following surrounding and connected center city districts:

• the 200-acre CORTEX Innovation District and the three CIC co-working facilities;
• the Grand Center Arts District;
• the St. Louis University Campus and SLU’s Prospect Yards District;
• the Harris-Stowe University campus;
• the 1,500-acre mixed-use NorthSide Regeneration Development and the $1.75-billion, 100-acre National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) new HQ on the northern perimeter of Downtown; and,
• the emerging “Gigabyte Corridor” along North Tucker Blvd (anchored by The Globe Building, T-Rex, and the adaptive reuse and regeneration of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Building and the surrounding 4.5 acres recently purchased by entrepreneur, Co-Founder of Square and Founder of LaunchCode, Jim McKelvey).

The Globe Building is a 550,000 sq. ft. vintage former industrial space which has been transformed, with next generation technology and power, into a futuristic hi-tech innovation space, anchoring the emerging “St. Louis Gigabyte Corridor,” along with the pending renovation of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Building, on North Tucker Blvd. --- February 12, 2019

With the emergence of both the governmental/defense and the commercial Geospatial Intelligence Industry, St. Louis has the potential to become a Global Geospatial Intelligence Hub, paralleling St. Louis' success since 2000 in becoming the BioBelt Center of Plant & Life Sciences Hub, with initiatives such as CORTEX, BRDG, the Danforth Plant Sciences Center, and others:

St. Louis Named “One of the Fastest Growing and Top Ranked Emerging Life Sciences Markets in the U.S.” March 31, 2019. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/st-louis-named-one-fastest-growing-top-ranked-emerging-dick-fleming/ 

Speaking to the emergence of the GEOINT Sector in March 2019, Visiongain (the London-based firm which studies the growing Geospatial Intelligence Sector), concluded in The Governmental Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) Solutions Market Report that the global GEOINT market will have had $12.84-billion in spending in 2018 (and this number does not include the growing Commercial Geospatial Intelligence Markets).

With the new NGA HQ now about to go under construction, the growth of their private sector GEOINT contractor firms is already evident with a number of recent locations by firms active in the nearly $2 billion of annual NGA contracting, including the recently-announced expansion of ESRI in St. Louis:

"GEOINT Industry Leader ESRI's Job Expansion in St. Louis Is Prospectively 'First of Many' Such St. Louis GEOINT Expansions." May 16, 2019 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/geoint-industry-leader-esris-job-expansion-st-louis-first-fleming/

As has been the case with the success of the St. Louis BioBelt initiative, fulfilling the City's and region's potentials to become a Global Geospatial Intelligence Hub will depend in great measure on sustained public/private sector collaboration. It's ours to make happen.

--- Dick Fleming, CEO, Community Development Ventures, Inc., CIC@4220, CORTEX Innovation District, St. Louis, MO