County Has a Plan for How It Would Break Northwest Plaza Lease and Move Out
Date Posted: October 15, 2019
Posted In: News,
From St. Louis Post-Dispatch: St. Louis County Executive Sam Page’s administration has drawn up a plan for how it would relocate hundreds of employees if the county were to break its lease for office space in the former Northwest Plaza, according to a presentation obtained by the newspaper through a public-record request.
Page’s predecessor, Steve Stenger, negotiated a lease for office space at the site, now known as the Crossings at Northwest, with some of his biggest campaign donors. The County Council has said the circumstances that led to the seemingly ironclad 20-year lease were “potentially criminal and unethical” and the county charter allowed contracts to be voided in cases when a county officer or employee received a benefit from the contract.
The lease for nearly 150,000 square feet will cost taxpayers at least $69 million and could run as high as $77 million, according to the newspaper’s analysis of the contracts. Stenger had told the council in 2016 the deal would save $10 million per year, however, the newspaper found there were no savings and instead the potential to cost taxpayers millions.
County Council ethics hearings after the newspaper’s report revealed that Stenger largely shut career county government employees out of site selection and negotiations and put his former campaign manager in charge of the project. Some county employees expressed dismay at the unusual process.
After succeeding Stenger on April 29, one of Page’s first acts was to urge the owners of the complex, Robert and P. David Glarner, to renegotiate. The two sides met twice without reaching a new deal. The Glarners sued the County Council in July to block subpoenas issued to them in the council’s investigation of the deal; the case is pending in St. Louis County Circuit Court.
Through a public records request, the Post-Dispatch obtained a slideshow laying out the Public Works Department’s plan for relocating employees. It reveals plans to move some offices to existing county offices, and others to locations that were redacted.