EDITORIAL: Energy boost.(Editorial)

Sep. 25--One mark of the significance of Centene's decision to move its corporate headquarters downtown may be this: When city officials tried to recall the last time anything like this happened, no one could.

"Decades" was the guess of Mayor Francis Slay, who joined Centene's chairman and chief executive officer, Michael Niedorff, in making the announcement Sunday. "Fifty years, maybe."

Actually, if you count Trans World Airlines, it's been "only" 13 years. But TWA already was in its financial death spiral when it moved corporate headquarters to One City Centre in 1994. Seven years later, it was absorbed by American Airlines, and TWA passed into memory.

Smaller firms have moved downtown. Larger firms already located downtown have expanded. But for a $2.2 billion company to move downtown, with the promise 1,200 new jobs and a 27-story signature building? And a second building for parking and retail that someday may accommodate more new office space? And a commitment for a new hotel in the Ballpark Village development where all of this will be located? That kind of thing just doesn't happen.

What's more, if you believe that what goes 'round, comes 'round, this is sort of municipal payback: Centene is moving to the city from Clayton, to which many city firms fled in the 1960s and 1970s.

"This will open eyes and lead to greater milestones and open more doors," said the mayor, serving up a veritable mixed-metaphor salad. His excitement is understandable; for all of the progress that has been made downtown -- with new stadiums and entertainment venues, casinos and loft apartments, hotels and a convention center and the Old Post Office renewal -- downtown first and foremost must be a business center.

"Centene sent out an RFP [request for proposal] and got something like 90 responses," said Barbara Geisman, Mr. Slay's director of development. "The people who are already downtown really like it, but if you're not downtown, you're subject to a lot of naysayers. The fact is that now somebody who's not already here, but has a whole bunch of affirmative choices, has chosen to come downtown. The psychology of that is important."