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| St. Louis Apartment Locator Services : St. Louis Apartments |  | Contents | |
| Economy |
| Saint Louis punches above its weight as a center for corporate
headquarters. Beer commercials have made the city well known
as the home of Anheuser-Busch Breweries. Two local brokerages,
A.G. Edwards and Edward Jones, have grown into dominant players
on America's financial landscape. It is also the site for the
headquarters of Energizer, the battery company. Neighboring
suburbs host Monsanto, formerly a chemical company and now a
leader in genetically modified crops, and Solutia, the former
Monsanto chemical division that was spun off as a separate company
in 1997. Hardee's corporate headquarters lies in the metro area.
Enterprise Rent-A-Car is headquartered in Clayton. |
| However, in recent years, many longtime corporate pillars
have left St. Louis. Saint Louis was the corporate headquarters
of McDonnell-Douglas prior to its 1997 merger with Boeing. Upon
the merger, the area became the headquarters for Boeing's $27
billion-per-year Integrated Defense Systems division and its
company-wide Phantom Works R&D operation. Locally, Boeing
manufactures the F/A-18 Super Hornet and JDAM smart bombs, and
has developed — at times secretly — several unmanned combat
air vehicles (UCAVs). However, when Boeing relocated its corporate
headquarters from Seattle, Washington in 2001, it moved to Chicago
— Saint Louis was not one of the final candidates. |
| From 1994 until its acquisition in 2000 by Tyco International,
another chemical company, Mallinckrodt, was headquartered in
Saint Louis County. Many of the former Mallinckrodt facilities
are still in operation by Tyco in the Saint Louis suburb of
Hazelwood, Missouri. |
| Saint Louis has also been corporate headquarters for animal
feed and human-food maker Ralston Purina (split up and acquired
by out-of-town interests, although St. Louis-based Energizer
is a former subsidiary), Trans World Airlines (acquired by American
Airlines, which then dismantled TWA's St. Louis hub), telecommunications
company SBC (moved to San Antonio), and military contractor
General Dynamics (moved to Washington, D.C.). All major St.
Louis banks have been purchased by out-of-town banks. The city
retains a Federal Reserve Bank. |
| Saint Louis remains home to railway car plants; two DaimlerChrysler
plants in the nearby suburb of Fenton, where minivans and pickup
trucks are built; a General Motors plant in suburban Wentzville;
and a Ford Motor Company plant in Hazelwood, where SUVs are
built. |
| The region has built up a formidable health care industry.
This is dominated by BJC HealthCare, which operates Barnes-Jewish
Hospital and St. Louis Children's Hospital, plus eleven others.
BJC benefits from a symbiotic relationship with Washington University's
School of Medicine, which is a major center of medical research.
Other major players include SSM Health Care, St. John's Mercy,
and the Tenet Corporation chain. |
| Although local housing costs have risen in recent years, they
are still significantly below the national average, and are
a revelation to new arrivals from the coasts. From the mid-1990s
onward, the City of St. Louis itself has seen a major surge
in housing rehabilitation as well as new construction on cleared
sites. As a rule, other costs of living also are at or below
the national average. Wages tend to reflect these facts, likewise
being at or slightly below the average. |
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