ST. LOUIS (KMOX) -- The nation's largest bank is reportedly tired of the high costs of New York and is looking for an alternative. Is St. Louis ready to make a sales pitch?
JP Morgan Chase has about 37,000 employees in the New York area and is building a new glass tower on Park Avenue. But Bloomberg says costs are catching up; the firm is considering moving thousands of workers out of the big city, especially amid predictions of an economic downturn.
Steve Johnson, CEO of the St. Louis Economic Development Alliance, calls these publicly floated projects "open source."
"These kind of projects are challenging to work when they're out in the public domain like that. Most of the time we're working under non-disclosure agreements and 'confidentiality' is the watch word of the day," he describes, "so these put a lot of pressure on a lot of different people to come through. I think there's a reason for that."
JP Morgan now has about 25,000 workers in Texas. Bloomberg suggests cities in Ohio and Delware are also under consideration.
Johnson says: "One of the things they're looking for, and it's increasingly hard to find in major metros, is the affordability that St. Louis offers. What it means to the company is that they can employ people who actually can afford to own their own home. They can employ people who don't have to commute an hour to 90 minutes each way."
St. Louis also has a million square feet of office space immediately available in the skyscraper at 909 Chestnut, plus the density and transit access that larger cities boast but without the congestion.
The region's financial industry cluster is so broad, with the biggest of advisory firms and payment processors, plus accelerators funding small tech start-ups, that Johnson says JP Morgan would fit here no matter what part of the business they're moving.
By the way, JP Morgan is coming regardless. Chase Bank is opening branches in our area.