Departments — May/June2007

St. Louis No Longer Singing the Urban Renewal Blues

Second in our series about city facelifts explores the city’s entertainment boom

By Mark J. Shaw, Editor-in-Chief

From the battle for tourist dollars to the war for talent, this issue of Constructor, our largest ever, has got a lot to say about cities and companies that are taking big chances to improve themselves.

St. Louis, long known for its great blues, jazz, baseball teams and beer, has launched an exciting urban renewal program with a deluge of new projects to greatly boost the city’s tourism profile. In this issue’s cover story—the second in our series about cities undergoing major facelifts—writer Bruce Buckley offers a portrait of a city remaking itself, with more than $1 billion in new entertainment and gaming projects under way.

Buckley’s story details how the renovation of thousands of historic residences and the conversion of vacant office buildings into condominiums is revitalizing many once-blighted areas of St. Louis.

Now, Buckley says, “a wave of casinos, sports venues and entertainment districts are springing up to serve the new influx of residents and lure more tourism dollars to the region.” The urban renaissance extends into the area’s infrastructure, with millions of dollars in improvements planned to highways and transit.

This issue of Constructor also continues our series of profiles on AGC-member companies making a splash in the marketplace by taking their businesses in new directions. Cianbro Corp., Pittsfield, Maine, known for decades as one of the country’s premium bridge builders, is exploring new waters as a restorer of marine vessels and as a casino builder. Cianbro also has been selected to build the Destiny USA project in Syracuse, N.Y., touted to be the world’s largest fully enclosed “leisure city,” with hundreds of stores, restaurants, hotels and entertainment venues. Cianbro now also is a wholly employee-owned company.

In response to readers who have asked us to include a few shorter, “quick-read” stories, we are launching a department called “Short Takes.” It features more visual coverage of smaller, interesting projects across the country. Our first Short Takes feature is an interesting horizontal-construction project by Rudolph and Sletten at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. In this case, rhinos, deer and giraffes played the role of lions, tigers and bears, but there was still plenty of excitement on the jobsite.

And in one of the more important industry issue pieces we have published to date, writer Mary Powers explores what firms are doing to win the war for talent. Powers reports on research from an industry white paper released at AGC of America’s annual convention in San Antonio this March. The paper and the Building Futures Council urge industry leaders to reevaluate their traditional resource management practices and make changes now if they want to begin attracting and retaining the best and brightest young workers.

Powers interviewed human resources experts who warn that the construction industry, is, in fact, losing the war for talent using its current practices. Ralph Locurcio, a retired brigadier general with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and a professor at Florida Institute of Technology, says, “The war we now have for talent may be a result of our poor leadership. We’ve failed to attract people to our profession.”

The challenge comes from companies being project centered rather than leadership centered. To win the talent war, they must become great employers, not just great builders, experts say.