SAINT LOUIS, MO (KMOX) - "It's not a secret we've had many issues downtown," says Downtown St. Louis Alderman Jack Coatar, "we've had windows in high rise buildings shot out. We hear regularly from major employers who say 'our employees don't feel safe'."
The recent chaos downtown comes after a year of wild street racing and random shots fired on weekend nights.
Coatar tells KMOX News, commercial real estate demand downtown is changing. He says the future is more residents in the central business district.
"How we work is changing. I don't know that we're ever going back to a time when employees are spending 9 to 5, five days a week in their high rise offices."
Coatar says he hasn't heard anything new about reports six months ago that Peabody Energy was looking to move out of the city. But he says it wouldn't surprise him if big companies are taking a second look at their leases after all the changes.
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