St. Louis Post-Dispatch
This is an overview of part two of the Post-Dispatch series, A Flood of Development. Click the link to our special report for more details.
For Mike Hejna, the decision to build a $30 million shopping center in the high-profile flood plain of Chesterfield Valley was a matter of risk and opportunity.
A small risk, Hejna says, and a big opportunity.
Critics -- who believe the Valley will one day again be under 10 feet of water like it was in 1993 -- say he's playing Russian roulette with the Missouri River.
But Hejna, president of Gundaker Commercial Group, thinks the odds are stacked heavily in his favor, thanks to a rebuilt Monarch Levee that will soon protect against a so-called 500-year flood.
In the decade since the disastrous flood of `93 destroyed much of the Valley, the area's business community has stormed back with a vengeance.
In just 10 years, new investment has topped $400 million. The boom has been led by the area's massive new centerpiece: Chesterfield Commons. Billed as America's largest strip mall, the 1.3 million square foot Commons has become the St. Louis region's primary mecca for big-box retail.
Like a pied piper, the shopping center has led others to the 4,700-acre flood plain -- a carpet-maker, a natural foods producer and a Bentley car dealer, to name a few.
In response, the Valley's once depressed property values have skyrocketed and are now worth five times their 1994 value.
The comeback was all made possible by more than $50 million in levee, road and sewer upgrades, which were funded through an intricate mix of public dollars.
While the Valley's return has been cheered inside Chesterfield, not everyone is smiling.
Critics say the comeback is an unnecessary risk. They say raising the Monarch Levee and rebuilding the flood-prone Valley is part of a larger, systemic problem -- one that will cause even more flooding in the future.
Proponents remain undeterred. For them, raising the Monarch Levee and encouraging development was just a matter of saving their businesses and trying to recover the hundreds of millions of dollars lost in 1993.
Like it or hate it, both sides of the matter agree on this point: Chesterfield Valley business owners who set out to build a 500-year levee and redevelop their flood-damaged area were highly successful in reaching their goals. Indeed, they've set a model for riverfront communities across the state and region.
Read the
complete series online for more details about these findings.
