Throughout the past year, my staff and I have been working hard to let existing businesses know that we appreciate them, and to show businesses not yet located here that the City of St. Louis is a great place for business. If you would like to receive this monthly column automatically via e-mail, check our Web site at www.stlouiscity.com, click on the Mayor's Office and then click on "sign up to receive the monthly newsletter by e-mail" and follow the instructions.

I look forward to hearing from you. Now, here are some of the things we're doing right now to help business flourish in St. Louis.

Communicating Every Day with Business …

Every month I meet with business associations. These associations are groups of businesspeople located in all parts of our city: North Kingshighway, Dogtown, the Hill, North Broadway, South Broadway, Hampton Avenue, you name it. Sometimes it seems that every street has its own business association. I think that's great - I want to meet with every single one of them.

In these discussions, I let these businesses know that we appreciate them-and that we are committed to doing everything we can to help them prosper in our city. I listen to what they have to say, and then I take all of that great information back to my staff so that we can help St. Louis businesses succeed and grow.

Every month, we send out over 100 letters to businesses. Every month I meet with individual businesspeople to let them know that we're here to help.

And every month I present a "Spirit of St. Louis Award" to a business that has made or renewed a commitment to our city. By the way, if you know of any deserving candidates for this honor, please contact my office at 622-3201.

We also want you to let us know if you hear anything we should know about business: businesses looking for a new home, businesses thinking about leaving the city, businesses thinking about expanding. Please contact my office and let us know what we can do to help.

I'd like to thank my friend Ken Langsdorf for this idea, for his constant assistance in keeping us in touch with our local business community, and for his assistance in introducing us to the capabilities of the Center for Business, Industry and Labor at the St. Louis Community College.

Making progress in retail …

Every Christmas, I buy all my gifts from city retailers. But each year, it has become harder and harder to find quality retailers in the city. We need to change this so that we can capture our share of sales tax on retail purchases-and so that city residents have a broad range of convenient retail services in their neighborhoods.

But we're making progress on these fronts. Koman Properties is building a new shopping center at Dr. Martin Luther King Drive and Grand Avenue; Kimco is completely rebuilding the old Gravois Plaza at Gravois and Gustine-with a new Shop-'n-Save and stores that are brand new to the City of St. Louis. And we've located a retail consultant who has a history of success in rebuilding downtown retail. In the next couple of years, we expect to have the beginnings of a new and exciting retail base in downtown St. Louis.

We're also working with aldermen to identify places to focus on retail development throughout the city: neighborhood retail as well as regional retail. We have a lot of untapped market potential here in our city, and we're doing everything possible to ensure that most - if not all -- of that market potential can be satisfied right here in the city.

Workforce Development …

A business cannot succeed without productive and skilled workers. And skilled workers will not stay in St. Louis without good jobs. While we work to retain and attract business, we're also working hard to train tomorrow's workers. The strength of our workforce will go a long way toward determining the future vitality of our city, our region and our state.

At the St. Louis Agency for Training and Employment (SLATE), we're building new partnerships with technical schools like the MET Center and Ranken, as well as with our public school system, so that our young people know that there are jobs waiting for them with good benefits and good pay if they get good grades and graduate. Right now, we're working hard to encourage city employers to offer our kids summer and after-school jobs. If you know of anyone who would like to hire a city teenager for the summer, please contact Marilyn Massey-Shandy of SLATE at 314.589.8111, or e-mail her at mshandy@slate.works.state.mo.us.

Encouraging and Fostering Development…

St. Louis is one of America's older industrial cities. In many ways this is a great thing: we have lots of great historic buildings that can't be found anywhere else in our region, and more and more people want to live in the kind of historic environment we can offer.

In other ways, this is a problem for business development. Many businesses want sites of 10 or more acres-and sites of this size are very hard to find in the City of St. Louis.

So we're working hard to identify potential sites for business development, and to get the resources necessary to assemble contiguous sites that provide the acreages that modern businesses need.

Our first focus is the North Riverfront area, which is already home to many thriving businesses like Thiele Tool. With concentration and energy, the North Riverfront has the potential to attract a lot more business: it's convenient to all of the major highways that converge in the City of St. Louis, and it's right next to the Mississippi River, a major transportation asset in its own right. We're ready to begin assembling land and rebuilding infrastructure in this area.

We're also working to identify neighborhoods throughout our city that have great business potential. St. Louis was once a city of 850,000 people. Today, we have less than 400,000 residents. One silver lining to this is that there is plenty of room within our boundaries for more people and more business - and we're determined to make St. Louis once again a place where everyone will want to be.

Ballpark and Ballpark Village …

The Cardinals are, of course, our favorite baseball team and a great St. Louis tradition. But they are also a business - a big one. The team pays over $8 million in direct city taxes each year. This business generates even more tax revenue indirectly: over 60% of the people who go to the more than 80 baseball games played here each year do not live within a 50-mile radius of St. Louis. These baseball fans eat in city restaurants, stay in city hotels and visit city attractions-paying taxes as they enjoy what our city has to offer. Clearly, we cannot afford to let this business move outside our boundaries.

On March 15, the St. Louis Board of Aldermen voted overwhelmingly to approve the plan to build a new Cardinals ballpark in downtown St. Louis. Once the new ballpark is complete, the owners of the Cardinals will build a Ballpark Village next to it. This "village" will be a true mixed-use development, the likes of which our city and our region have never seen. Ballpark Village will combine new upscale downtown housing with quality downtown retail and office space, creating the kind of environment that attracts both new residents and new businesses to our city.

Both the new ballpark and the ballpark village are critical to our efforts to make St. Louis a great city again. Please urge your state senators and representatives to support the state's role in this development. Both Missouri and the City of St. Louis need the revenues and the "team spirit" that a historic baseball franchise playing in a great new ballpark in a vibrant downtown will bring.

Streamlining Business-Government Interactions …

As I noted earlier, Ken Langsdorf hooked us up with the Center for Business, Industry and Labor. Working with CIBL, we're developing and implementing a business-retention and attraction strategy that starts with customer service. When a business deals with city government, that business should have a real "one-stop shop" where all of its needs can be met. When I came to the Mayor's office last April, many business interactions had been consolidated at the Business Assistance Center-but many more interactions remained isolated. We're consolidating more and more business-related functions within City government-so that the time it takes business to conduct business with our government is reduced.

As I said many times during my campaign, a Mayor can't do it alone. I need all of you to help. And I'm happy to report that during my first year in office, people throughout the region have responded overwhelmingly to this appeal. We're working as a team-and our team is racking up victories every day.

If you have any ideas - if you think of anything we should be doing more of or doing better, or if you want to help in any way with making St. Louis a great city for people and for business, please let me know. We want everyone to join our team, and we want our team to be a winning one. With your help, this city's best years will be ahead of it. Thank you for all your help!