CLAYTON — Centene Corp. will not build a 1,000-seat civic auditorium here, a development that was much-lauded six years ago, and key to millions of dollars in public subsidies for the health insurance company’s local expansion.
The decision should trigger the company’s forfeiture of a local property tax break that was set to save it $75 million over 20 years.
Executives did not explain why they’re abandoning plans, though they had previously said they were pausing expansion here.
“A civic auditorium is no longer in Centene’s plans regardless of any incentives to proceed,†the company said in a statement to the Post-Dispatch. “Centene highly values our relationship with the city of Clayton and is proud to call ºüÀêÊÓƵ our home.â€
Clayton City Manager David Gipson said it would be premature to comment until the Board of Aldermen could discuss the matter.
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Mayor Michelle Harris did not immediately respond on Thursday to a request for comment.
But she said earlier in the week that “Clayton is fortunate to be home to Centene headquarters, auditorium or no auditorium.†She said the company had not communicated with the city over its plans for the civic auditorium.
Centene in 2016 unveiled plans for a $770 million campus expansion that included nearly 1 million square feet of office space, hundreds of apartments or condos, retail shops, a 1000-seat civic auditorium and a hotel near South Hanley Road and Forsyth Boulevard.
“We could have nighttime events and jazz quartets,†said Clayco chief Bob Clark, the point man on the project for Centene, while pitching the designs then. “And Centene is committed to a world-class facility, where right now, I think we all know, there is a dirt path.â€
“We see this as a huge, huge public benefit to the community,†he continued. “This is going to be a great facility.â€
But Centene said then that it could not build the project without public subsidies. Clayton officials negotiated a development agreement that said all tax abatement would cease if the civic auditorium, estimated then to cost about $100 million, was not completed by Dec. 31, 2024.
Since then, Centene has built just one office building and a parking garage, which opened in early 2020. It bought The Ritz-Carlton in 2018 instead of building a new hotel — cloaking the deal in a nondescript limited liability company — and later blamed the coronavirus pandemic and crime in the ºüÀêÊÓƵ region for not moving forward with later phases of the project.
The company is now building an East Coast campus in Charlotte, North Carolina, and is expected to net some $450 million in tax incentives there. Centene began working out those details with North Carolina officials months before announcing it would pause development in Clayton.
So far, the value of the abatement in Clayton is just $158,473.75 for 2021, the first year of the incentives.
The state of Missouri has also provided Centene $96 million in incentives, largely for jobs created with its Clayton expansion.
Centene employment in Clayton grew from 1,288 workers in 2016 to 2,879 last year — well more than the 1,000 Centene told Clayton the expansion would bring.