Mayor Cara Spencer Meeting with Other Cities This Week

Mayor Cara Spencer will spend the next week traveling to Cincinnati, OH, and Detroit, MI. She will be accompanied by other city leaders, including the City’s Chief Operations Officer and Chief Economic Development Officer. The team will be building intercity collaboration to import and test other cities’ models to revitalize downtown St. Louis.

While in Cincinnati, the Mayor will meet with Mayor Aftab Pureval and other city leaders to discuss civic space programming and overall development. The purpose of these meetings is to gain insight from their recent success in revitalizing their urban core. The city is positioning to invest the $55 million in Rams settlement dollars, aimed at further transitioning downtown St. Louis into a space where people can live, work and connect.

In Detroit, Mayor Cara Spencer will meet with Mayor Mary Sheffield to learn about the city's successful approaches to blight elimination, neighborhood revitalization and public-private partnerships. The goal is to assess strategies already proven to work, and identify opportunities to mirror those strategies in the City of St. Louis. 

Mayor Spencer has previously identified downtown revitalization and vacancy mitigation as core and strategic priorities for the City of St. Louis. The path toward that revitalization requires neighborhood investment, economic development and partnership with community leaders. Building smarter, more resilient solutions by joining forces with leadership in other Midwestern cities tackling the same issues is essential to implementing strategies that are deeply vetted and innovative.

The Mayor will return October 28, 2026.