Air cargo expert says St. Louis wants a $360 million ‘ransom’
Business and political leaders in Missouri want Lambert-St. Louis International Airport to become a major receptacle for stuff made in China. State lawmakers are considering an incentive package worth $360 million in an effort to remake Lambert into an international trade hub.
The St. Louis Regional Chamber & Growth Association says Aerotropolis, as it’s being called, will generate thousands of new jobs and billions of dollars in new economic activity. The skeptics include the liberal Missouri Budget Project, the libertarian Show-Me Institute, and a guy who co-wrote a recent book with the very title Aerotropolis. “Calling some cargo flights and warehouses an aerotropolis doesn’t make it one,” Greg Lindsay, the author and Fast Company writer, said in a tweet in July.
One of the fiercest opponents of Aerotropolis lives in Prairie Village. Michael Webber, an air cargo consultant and self-described “insurgent,” spent a portion of his summer pelting the media with criticism of the project, which he has described as a “boondoggle” and a “white elephant.”
