St. Clair County is contributing $250,000 and free land to investors led by a Wall Street veteran to build a privately financed $4 million to $6 million cargo facility at MidAmerica Airport in Mascoutah.

County Board Chairman Mark Kern said Tuesday that the airport needs the new cargo facility to replace the one Boeing Co. will use to manufacture airplane parts. The Boeing project, announced in August, will produce about 75 jobs.

The lead investor in the new cargo facility is John G. Hewitt, a veteran of the New York Stock Exchange, Goldman Sachs and Knight Securities. On Monday, the St. Clair County Public Building Commission approved the lease of 26.4 acres of airport property to Hewitt's company, H-Trading, of New York, airport officials said.

Hewitt, who lives in San Francisco, said MidAmerica could become a key part of the cargo hub operation Missouri officials hope to establish with Chinese airlines at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.

China hub operations will likely begin at Lambert but could expand to include MidAmerica because it is a "great facility" surrounded by open, developable land, Hewitt said.

"It struck me it was the perfect setting for doing a big business deal with China," he said.

Lease terms require a Mid-America cargo building of at least 62,500 square feet completed on the site by the end of the second quarter of 2011. Exact specifications will affect the cost, but officials estimate the building will require an investment of $4 million to $6 million.

Terms of the deal include a lease of 13 years at no cost for the land, followed by options for two five-year extensions at market value.

Kern said the county will own the facility at the end of the lease. He added that the public-private project will mean progress for MidAmerica as a cargo hub. More than 20,000 square feet of the new cargo building will be for processing perishable goods and will hold all of the chiller equipment previously purchased by St. Clair County for the building taken over by Boeing.