berkeley
Take a chill pill, St. Louis—Tums is still here. But you may need to gobble a handful of the tablets when you hear more about the latest bigger fish swallowing another smaller fish in the metro: Cigna, the gigantic insurance company, is acquiring Express Scripts for $67 billion. Criminy! How many companies born and bred in the Gateway City are still here? 7 Up? Not quite. Westinghouse bought 7 Up in 1969 and sold it in 1978 to Philip Morris, the giant tobacco, etc. firm … for starters. Ralston-Purina? Nope. Swiss-based Nestlé merged with Purina in 2001. All right, then. Monsanto?! More on them in a moment. Anheuser-Busch? Oh, never mind those Belgians. Express Scripts, based in the North County municipality of Berkeley adjacent to the UMSL campus, is—well, will have been, when all’s said and done by the end of 2018—the largest public company in the metro. Monsanto may be a behemoth, but even the ag giant can’t compete dollar-wise with Express Scripts, which has annual revenues topping $100 billion, give or take a few hundred million. Monsanto’s annual revenues have been somewhere between a measly $10 billion and $15 billion. Oh, I almost forgot—my bad! Monsanto has been no more, as such, for a while. The company has an out-of-state master as well. International, even. German firm Bayer AG bought the company in 2016 for $66 billion. (It’s a difference of only $1 billion from the Cigna deal … hardly chump change, even for your average billionaire.) Bayer AG is based in Leverkusen, North Rhine-Westphalia, where its illuminated sign is a landmark. And Bayer has its own pro soccer team. The only thing remarkable about Monsanto from the road is the occasional gaggle of protesters. Express Scripts will kind of dissolve like an Alka-Seltzer once the Cigna deal is complete. Sigh. The resultant mega-company will be headquartered in Bloomfield, Connecticut, as Cigna. Analysts say Cigna had been on the hunt for a pharmacy benefits manager (PBM) for some time. Well, they got the biggest one, anywhere, ever. But don’t cry for us, Argentina. Express Scripts has only been here since 1986. 7 Up was formulated here in 1929. It had some … relaxing … ingredients when invented. Today, the lemon-lime soda—which ain’t ‘100 percent natural’ as the company had claimed until a lawsuit—comes in cherry flavor, too. And it wraps its bottles in the StL city flag, the Arch and other iconography, as if the soda pop has a single, blessed thing to do with us anymore.
north county
As part of its long-range plan of acquiring acreage to protect threatened and endangered animals, the Saint Louis Zoo wasn’t able to go south to Grant’s Farm. You may recall a few years back, the zoo made a $30 million offer for the attraction where the Clydesdales are stabled, which was soon retracted when the needle on the Busch sibling rivalry flipped into overload. Not to worry. Looks like the zoo will expand north instead … if all Is are dotted and Ts crossed … in a comparative steal of a deal. The Saint Louis Zoo Association plans to buy a 425-acre complex in North County from United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 562, a $7.1 million agreement comprising privately donated funds. Zoo officials note there are few parcels remaining in the metro featuring “varied terrain, perimeter fencing, utilities, lakes, good buffers and existing buildings.” While specific details are unclear, it’s likely the public may be able to enjoy the area via a wildlife and safari experience. Union families would gather after work and on weekends at the complex, which includes a golf course. It is just shy of idyllic. The local chapter moved its headquarters and training center to Earth City at the end of last year. The Saint Louis Zoo Association cooperates with the zoo but is a separately incorporated 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose volunteer board is made up of business and community leaders. The association’s purpose is to support the zoo by providing leadership for fundraising and oversight for the zoo’s conservation education, programming, facilities, government relations and special events.
st. louis
Come on up, get down and put your Q on … if you’ve been minding your Ps and Qs, you know it’s already time, once again, to celebrate queer culture in film! The 11th annual QFest St. Louis, presented by Cinema St. Louis, runs April 4 through 8 at the .ZACK Theatre, and directors and other celebs will be in attendance. QFest will present an eclectic slate of 14 shorts, six narrative features and four documentary features. Of particular note is The Lavender Scare, a documentary that chronicles the devastating effects of President Eisenhower’s decision to label homosexuals as ‘security risks’ and fire any government employee discovered to be gay or lesbian. The film, by Emmy-winning director Josh Howard, is free and open to the public. QFest is especially pleased to host the St. Louis premiere of Snapshots, featuring Piper Laurie (Carrie, Twin Peaks). Maplewood-set Becks, co-directed by StL natives Elizabeth Rohrbaugh and Dan Powell, will open the festival on April 4. Among other QFest highlights are this year’s Q Classic, Hettie McDaniel’s coming-of-age love story Beautiful Thing, and the music doc Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution. Both shorts are free and open to the public, as is Lavender Scare … which is unfortunately timely. Don’t ask, don’t tell, right? No, even that heinous principle is already ‘so 15 minutes ago,’ considering the decree by the present occupant of the Oval Office to rid the military of any trans members. Eisenhower, perhaps a visionary when it came to warning against the military-industrial complex, was a 1950s-era nincompoop when it came to social justice. He’d have had no idea what LGBTQ stands for. In his day, ‘gay’ meant joyful … and ‘queer’ was derogatory. Anyhow, like we were saying: All screenings will be held at .ZACK, three blocks east of Grand Boulevard at 3224 Locust St. Advance tickets are available through MetroTix; direct links are on the QFest website.
st. peters
Call it an honorable mention! St. Peters has been awarded a new Amazon fulfillment center, one of about 75 now in the U.S. and Canada. Alas, there will eventually be only one ‘HQ2,’ a second headquarters for Amazon, even though the metro was among 238 cities and regions preparing to put on a beauty pageant for a shot at 50,000 high-paying jobs and $5 billion in investment. Oh well. We may not have enough charm, tax incentives or whatever else is needed to make such an immense, dazzling dream come true. Jeff Bezos et al. in Seattle couldn’t care less about where we went to high school. (But hey! We’ve had the best team in all of baseball exactly 11 more times than Seattle has!) Amazon in January whittled the list down to 20 contenders. But that’s not important right now. Amazon has picked St. Peters for 1,500 spanking new jobs with a not-nearlyas-sucky-as-L.A. commute. Note: Several hundred folks presently work at the Internet behemoth’s sorting center in Hazelwood. Employees at the new $175 million, 800,000-square-foot workplace will pick, pack, and ship books, electronics and toys. We think that’s even better than an honorable mention ribbon. (Vigorously wave Missouri state flags here.)
university city
U. City has green-lighted a $28 million expansion and renovation of COCA in a historic former synagogue at 524 Trinity Ave. This, the second phase of construction, will expand the Center of Contemporary Arts—now, doesn’t COCA just roll off the tongue?— to the east to include a 450-seat theater, more than 8,000 square feet of new studio space, a commons area and a designated area for families to drop off and pick up students. Renovations to the existing building include transforming COCA’s theater into a skylighted performance lab, two new dance studios, a renovated art and design studio, and a teaching kitchen. COCA launched a $40 million capital campaign three years ago; the additional $12 million will fund COCA’s endowment and reserves. (As of this month, the campaign was at $36 millionplus, and counting!) Founded in 1986 and with a $5 million annual budget today, COCA serves more than 50,000 students of all ages and skill levels, from rank amateurs to budding professionals—all taught by a faculty of distinguished arts educators. COCA offers services on-site as well as in schools, community centers and corporate settings—also providing nearly $1 million annually in scholarships and support services. Its main building was designed by Erich Mendelsohn and listed on the National Register. In the 1940s, members of the B’nai Amoona congregation were attracted to the work of Mendelsohn, a pioneer in the Art Deco and Art Moderne movements who left Nazi Germany in 1933.
