Walter Metcalfe, a Deal-Maker, a Builder

Date Posted: January 3, 2016

Posted In: People,

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Walter Metcalfe is a deal-maker. Perhaps the region’s most important.

Metcalfe negotiated pacts to build the Scottrade Center hockey arena, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation museum, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and the Edward Jones Dome football stadium.

He helped bring to St. Louis the national urban teaching corps, Teach for America. He wrote the contracts to sell the New England Patriots to a Busch heir, and then from that heir to Boston business magnate Robert Kraft. He negotiated the purchase of the Blues hockey team three times, its sale twice.

And he worked with such resolution to redevelop the Gateway Arch grounds that, eventually, a half-dozen agencies agreed to participate in the $380 million renovation.

Then he designed the regional sales tax and fundraising campaigns to pay for it.

Former Mayor Vince Schoemehl called him the “quintessential citizen.”

“The key to Walter is he is egoless,” Schoemehl said. “He doesn’t care if he gets any credit.”

Metcalfe — a former chief of Bryan Cave, the largest law firm in St. Louis, and one of the largest in the country — is lauded by peers for his creative thinking. They speak in awe of his persistence.

Multiple public figures, including Great Rivers Greenway trails district director Susan Trautman and stadium task force co-chairman Dave Peacock, call Metcalfe a guiding influence.

Former Sen. John C. Danforth, once a colleague at the firm, described him as one of the smartest people he knows.

“He has a remarkable ability to get things done,” Danforth said.