This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Aug. 5, 2013: Among the twists and turns that Valmeyer has taken since the Great Flood of ’93, the coolest -- as in 58 degrees year round -- is Rock City, a warehousing facility constructed in an old limestone quarry that the flood-ravaged village acquired during its quest to move to the bluffs.
It is a cave created not by nature but by workers who for decades tunneled into the river bluff at the former Columbia Quarry. Today, it is a "rock solid development,” according to developer Joe Koppeis whose company -- Admiral Parkway -- leases the cave from the village. He sees unlimited potential for growth, since only about 1 million of the cave’s 6 million square feet are now being used.
Rock City is, in effect, an underground warehouse district, with lights and paved streets, with names like Boulder Boulevard and Limestone Lane. Business offices are of a modern design, with finished walls and ceilings -- and an occasional stone wall for accent.
Koppeis said that he spent $10 million to build a 200,000 square-foot freezer facility that provides temperatures from -15 to 28 degrees. Gateway Cold Storage now operates from the cave, where foods ranging from ice cream to pizza toppings are stored and await transport by tractor-trailers.
The cave is a natural for cold storage, said Koppeis.
“Once a rock gets frozen, the rock will freeze 30 to 60 feet deep. Even if you lose electricity, the rock will maintain the cold,’’ he said.
Rock City has the potential to provide safe climate-controlled storage for everything from food to computers to documents, said Koppeis who is working to attract new tenants.
In 2009, the National Archives opened a storage center for personnel records at the site. The archives now leases nearly 500,000 square feet.
Koppeis notes that the cave, which is about 20 miles south of St. Louis and 11 miles from Interstate 255 provides access to barges, highways and rail.
“We think we’re on the right track,’’ he said.
Valmeyer used about $3 million in grants from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Community Affairs and the U.S. Economic Development Administration to construct the infrastructure and roads for Rock City. Koppeis said that Admiral City has brought about $50 million in private investment.
The development is an example of public-private cooperation, he said.
"Since 2008, we paid over $1 million in royalties to the village. We’ve invested $50 million, and we have over 220 people working there now, including the archives,’’ Koppeis said.
"Everybody’s worked together to make it happen,’’ he said, adding, "The public sector can’t do it on its own. You have to have a mix to make things work.''
The retro-fitted cave harkens back to the village’s early history, when the quarry was the heartbeat of Valmeyer, said Dennis Knobloch, village administrator.
The quarrying operation began in the early 1900s to mine stone for the construction of a railroad to connect St. Louis and Chester, Ill. Until then, Valmeyer had been primarily a farming community; it incorporated in 1909. A mushroom farm operated from 1939 to 1983 in the tunnels created by the mining. During the Cold War era, the quarry was designated as a civil defense shelter and stocked with barrels of drinking water.
In 1995, Valmeyer purchased the quarry because it owned the mineral rights under the new village site -- a situation that was holding up the release of state and federal funding pledged to the rebuilding effort.
Koppeis, who has developed shopping centers in Columbia, Sparta, Freeburg and Chester, took on the Rock City project in 2002. Where others saw a hole in the ground, Koppeis said he saw potential, partly because he was familiar with an underground storage facility operated in a former quarry in Carthage, Mo.
And, he adds, he tends to view the world differently.
"Most people think I’m crazy, and I probably am,’’ he said.
Koppeis sees a bright future for Rock City, which he says is now paying for itself. And in the meantime, he is working on a new plan: a $250 million project to build wind turbines on the bluff south of Valmeyer.
A watershed moment
This summer marks the 20th anniversary of the Great Flood of 1993. While the flooding began in May and stretched into September, the Mississippi River crested in St. Louis at a record-breaking 49.6 feet on Aug. 1. St. Louis wasn't alone; many communities along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers experienced record crests and devastation. In a series of stories from reporters Robert Koenig and Mary Delach Leonard, the Beacon looks at the impact of the flood on floodplain management as well as two communities that suffered extraordinary damage.
