Jason Hall is not known to be timid about sharing his views on what’s going well and sometimes not so well for the St. Louis region.
Hall has built a reputation as one of St. Louis’ most vocal cheerleaders in various positions at different economic development organizations over the past 12 years, most recently as the first CEO of Greater St. Louis Inc.
“Maybe I’ve been accused of being too intense at times,” he said. “You know, when it’s home, it’s deeply personal.”
The native of Granite City explained the projections showing nine metropolitan areas could eclipse St. Louis’ population by 2030 helped fuel his focus on unifying a fractured local economic development landscape. Greater St. Louis Inc. is the product of that work, which merged five different organizations into a single entity in 2020.
“At the time, people said, ‘that can’t happen,’” Hall said. “Sure, we worked seven days a week, 14 hours a day, and didn’t take a day off, but we did get it done.”
Hall’s tenure in the St. Louis region comes to an end this month, when he moves east to Ohio to take over the reins of the Columbus Partnership on Jan. 13. But the move doesn’t mean Hall thinks St. Louis is a sinking ship, he said.
“We’re at a level of civic engagement in this community that I have never seen in my lifetime,” Hall said. “People are motivated, they have purpose in this work. I truly have the confidence this region is going to have what it takes to reach its full potential.”
Hall will just be watching and cheering on that success from hundreds of miles away, instead of being an architect of it.
St. Louis Public Radio’s Eric Schmid sat down with Hall to discuss his transition to Columbus and reflect on his time at Greater St. Louis Inc.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Eric Schmid: I want to start off with one question that’s probably been on a lot of people’s minds since the news about your move came out. Why Columbus?
Jason Hall: It’s interesting. Columbus is one of the markets that I studied most intensively. Is a model of regional collaboration and regional economic development is a model for what we could do here in St Louis. And so it's always been a city in a region that I put up on a pedestal that's had their civic act together for a long time.
[The Columbus Partnership] reached out in the fall and said, ‘We’ve talked to people around the country and your name keeps coming up. Would you be willing to have this conversation?’ I hadn’t returned a call like that in almost 10 years. I had this moment that I needed to engage and hear more because I had looked at it so closely and a very generous market for sharing best practices that we were able to adopt here.
Schmid: I think about how you’ve spent most of your career in St. Louis or Missouri and how it might be bittersweet to leave that behind. What are you thinking or feeling about actually leaving?
Hall: It is hard when you have so many memories of a place, friendships, mentors and all of that. That’s real. But on the flip side, I love people and I love bringing interesting networks together and I’m already starting to get that energy in Columbus. People that work in this market, that have friends in that market, have already started reaching out, making those connections. We may have businesses that are headquartered here in St. Louis that have material operations there and vice versa. Socially, people are reaching out and [my husband] Justin and I have been very welcomed in that market.
Schmid: It doesn’t sound like it’s a clean break, like there’s still a lot of connection. Is that what you foresee?
Hall: Yeah. I think the Midwest [has] become very collaborative. A lot of us have faced similar challenges, and I think there would have been an era where organizations like ours in different cities were afraid to talk because we were going to compete. Greater St. Louis Inc. wouldn't exist but for the generosity of markets like Columbus, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati.
We face much bigger issues that we need to work on collectively, and a good, strong Midwest is good for everybody.
Schmid: Thinking about your time at Greater St. Louis Inc., what are you most proud of accomplishing?
Hall: The fact that we unified these [five] groups in a real way. We’ve built something that people are proud of and that they feel. I'll tell you that has hit me hard when this announcement came out. The messages that have come in from community stakeholders, investors and partners, you realize people truly appreciate the leadership and they appreciate the work to make St Louis stronger. I’m proud of the STL 2030 Jobs plan, taking on those fracture lines in this region around race, inclusion and geography that we have tripped over so many times.
And then of course the stuff that a lot of people focus on: restoring non-stop air service to continental Europe, bringing this amazing catalytic opportunity [in the NGA] to north city.
Schmid: What’s something you wish you could have done or had the time to see through here now that you’re going to be going to Columbus?
Hall: Downtown becomes the big issue. It’s really thorny. It’s capital intensive and requires a lot of behavioral change in St Louis. I have seen, particularly over this past year, a mind-shift change. Maybe some of that happened when the Wall Street Journal article gave us a wake-up call as a region. That's OK, let's acknowledge that, that sometimes you need to look in the mirror in a unique way to realize how serious it is.
The second one would be to see where we can go from a city-county integration, whatever that might look like. I think it’s a serious conversation we’re going to need to have as a region going into the end of the decade.
Schmid: That sounds like you think we are going to “win this decade,” as you’ve said on many occasions.
Hall: I have always said [that]. My confidence level today is higher than it was when we started. If you would have told me four or five years ago St. Louis would be a top five market for job growth for the first time since 1990, 16th-fastest-growing GDP, that downtown would be getting tackled in a very serious way, I would have said, ‘No way would it be that much success.’
That’s a trajectory, but now we’ve got to hold that. That’s really the challenge for this region. We’ve got to continue to stay the course and embrace this collaborative and inclusive spirit that drove this transformation.
Schmid: What might be holding us back from being able to achieve that vision fully? What still needs to happen in the next five years?
Hall: If you look at the arc of St. Louis compared to fast-growing peers in the Midwest, like a Nashville or an Indy or Columbus, the difference has been they’ve had decades of continuous civic leadership without major disruptions. Here in St. Louis, we’ve had higher peaks and valleys – periods of intensive engagement and then periods of disengagement. This is a long-term game. Long-term cannot be an excuse for not taking immediate action today.
Schmid: I know at least some people are probably thinking this, but is Greater St. Louis Inc. going to be OK without you there?
Hall: Yes. It is a great team of people, and when we set this out, I did not want to be the kind of leader that you just want the role and as long as you’re presiding over an ash pile, you’re happy regardless of whether we get to success. The whole point of this was to build a best-in-class institution with a professional staff and a broadly engaged stakeholder and CEO community.
I feel so good, truly, about the condition that it’s left in. I think it’s always good to have fresh ideas come to the table. Almost half of my senior leadership team had been the CEO of an organization before I recruited them. There’s many people that can step into that leadership, and this organization will be strong. I fully believe that or I would not have been in a position to be able to look at an exciting new opportunity.
