ST. LOUIS – History may have just been made in the City of St. Louis.

St. Louis’s mayor, aldermen, and Greater St. Louis Inc., which promotes economic growth in the St. Louis region, praised a compromise to spend more than a quarter of a billion dollars from the 2021 $790 million legal settlement with Rams owner Enos Stan Kroenke and the NFL.

“From Delmar to Dutchtown to Downtown, every neighborhood in St. Louis deserves to benefit from these settlement funds,” St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones said. “Legislation is messy. It’s making sausage. This is part of that sausage-making.”

Multiple aldermen tell FOX 2 News that substitute Board Bill 153, dubbed the Transform Act, already has enough support on the 14-member Board of Aldermen to win majority approval.

The bill would allocate the largest share to revitalizing downtown: $74 million. Any money spent downtown requires a private dollar match to be secured by Greater St. Louis Inc., including $11 million for the iconic but condemned Railway Exchange (former Famous Barr) Building.


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$50 million would go to a city workforce fund, with $30 million for childcare and the rest for job training and education.

$50 million would go toward revitalizing struggling neighborhoods in north St. Louis and southeast St. Louis.

$40 million would go toward upgrades of the city’s crumbling water system.

Another $40 million would be allocated for north St. Louis to redevelop vacant lots with new homes and small businesses.

Improvements in north St. Louis, southeast St. Louis, and downtown would include tens of millions of dollars for mobility infrastructure improvements to streets and sidewalks.

“Everybody’s not going to get everything they want but everybody is going to ensure that the communities that have been neglected for over 70 years will not be (that way) anymore,” Alderwoman Pam Boyd (Ward 13), a key architect of the compromise along with Alderwoman Alisha Sonnier (Ward 7), said.

“Not only is this a historic example of collaboration, of public-private partnership, it’s also reaffirming that your city’s leaders understand that either all of St. Louis wins or all of St. Louis loses,” Sonnier said.

“We will not grow if we do not address depopulation in north St. Louis. We will not grow if we do not revitalize Downtown, period,” Dustin Allison, interim CEO of Greater St. Louis Inc., said.

With interest earned since the 2021 settlement, the amount spent will be nearly $300 million. The plan is set to be voted out of committee and head to the full Board of Aldermen this week.