North Side Set To Be Home Of Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Center

DIGITAL MANUFACTURING. ADVANCED COMPOSITES. Geospatial sciences. Robotics. Artificial intelligence. Even manufacturing in space.

Within St. Louis City’s North Central Corridor, the area around Ranken Technical College is set to emerge as a hub for technologies like these over the next decade or two. That’s because the neighborhood will be home to the planned Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Center St. Louis, also known as AMICSTL.

(McPherson’s companion story on the North Central Corridor can be found here.)

Right now AMICSTL exists only in concept renderings. But its backers hope that in the long run, the center will grow to cover as many as 100 acres, with engineers, researchers, students and support staff working and collaborating across clusters of labs, small manufacturing facilities and prototyping shops. The setting could evolve to be similar to that of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in Creve Coeur.

“This is something where you could have literally dozens of offices and factories,” AMICSTL board chairman Dennis Muilenburg told McPherson in a recent interview. A key goal, he added, is to develop new manufacturing techniques and apply them immediately, “with the idea that we’ll ultimately spin out new start-up businesses and grow a broader manufacturing ecosystem in the St. Louis area.”

AMICSTL was established as a nonprofit last year. It’s still flying mostly under the radar of the general public, but this is likely to change soon. (The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported some details of the project in January.)

The nonprofit organization’s board of directors is starting on detailed architectural and site planning for an initial facility of about 80,000 to 100,000 square feet, to be built adjacent to Ranken’s campus.

With its eye on the Biden administration’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan, AMICSTL is also in talks with potential industry partners and donors. The organization hopes to raise $25 million to $30 million to build and equip the first building, Muilenburg said.

“There’s no specific date for opening, but we want it to be sooner rather than later,” said Muilenburg, who served as chairman and CEO of Boeing Co. from 2016 through 2019 and has lived in the St. Louis area with his family for almost 20 years. “A reasonable target would be to have that operation up and running within a couple of years.”

Other members of the board include retired McDonnell Douglas chief executive John McDonnell, Ranken CEO Stan Shoun, and executives from the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership.

Risks and opportunities

The origins of AMICSTL date back to 2014, when the partnership won a grant from the Department of Defense to study the risks to the region’s economy posed by the fact that the St. Louis metro area has traditionally been highly dependent on defense spending.

But with those risks also come tremendous opportunities, according to John Hixson, vice president of Defense Initiatives at the partnership and a member of AMICSTL’s board.

“Part of that planning study recognized that St. Louis has a rich history, and a very active advanced manufacturing sector,” Hixson told McPherson. “It doesn’t get a lot of profile, but because of the region’s long history with automotive and aerospace, we have a supply chain network that is pretty sophisticated and broad.”

AMICSTL’s goals are threefold: to lead research & development of technologies that result in new materials, new processes and new products; to lead collaboration among manufacturers that advances their capabilities in sectors such as aerospace & defense, agriculture, biomedicine, transportation and energy; and to drive workforce development, generating thousands of jobs at all levels of education as the impact from AMICSTL’s work ripples through the region’s economy.

The project, including the workforce aspect, is mentioned in the draft STL 2030 Jobs Plan from the region’s new business-civic group, Greater St. Louis Inc. Here, Ranken will play a leading role.

“The No. 1 impediment to economic growth, both in our city, our region and the state, is the lack of a skilled, trained workforce,” Ranken’s Shoun said. “On any given day there are thousands of unfilled jobs simply because of the skills mismatch. If we were to match the unemployed with the skills, the economy would go through the roof.”

During the Obama administration the federal government provided funding that helped set up over a dozen advanced manufacturing centers around the country. AMICSTL’s model, however, is the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre in Sheffield, England, because of its similar areas of focus. The AMRC was founded almost two decades ago with backing from Boeing and other industrial partners.

Steve Foxley, CEO of the AMRC, told McPherson the organization has about 2,500 people working at its manufacturing park about five miles from Sheffield’s city center. About 600 of those are in the AMRC itself; the rest work for onsite industrial partners such as Boeing, Airbus, Siemens and UK defense contractor BAE Systems.

Foxley said the AMRC has attracted over 300 million pounds of investment (about $414 million) since inception; in addition, the organization has trained nearly 1,500 apprentices to work for its partner companies. About 1,000 houses have been built nearby; another 2,000 are planned.

“That’s the bit we’re really proud of – that whole community impact,” Foxley said.

(McPherson has also published a full interview with Steve Foxley.)

Muilenburg, who was directly involved with the AMRC during his time at Boeing, says AMICTL is aiming for an even bigger manufacturing center in St. Louis. (Boeing has no formal involvement in the St. Louis project, but AMICSTL executives hope the company will be a long-term partner.)

“You think about where we have incredible capabilities in the St. Louis area: in sectors like aerospace, plant sciences, bioscience and now the geospatial capabilities that are ramping up, including what’s happening at NGA West.,” Muilenburg said. “There’s really no other place in the country that has depth in those four areas.”

The NGA West project on North Jefferson Avenue, about two miles east of Ranken, is a $1.7 billion facility under construction that will house the western headquarters of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. When it opens in 2025, NGA staff will move from their current location near the Anheuser-Busch brewery in Soulard.

An emerging triangle

The planning study that led to AMICSTL considered about 25 different sites around the metro area, Hixson said.

“The ideal location it came up with was somewhere in a triangle formed by Cortex, the NGA West and Ranken,” Hixson said. “Proximity to WashU, UMSL, the airport: All of those things came into play. It’s part of the St. Louis Promise Zone area; it’s an area of interest to the St. Louis Development Corporation. It was head and shoulders the choice location.”

Hixson added that AMICSTL will work to blend its facilities into the existing residential area. “Modern manufacturing is not dirty, grimy plants with heavy trucks 24 hours a day. That is not modern manufacturing,” he said.

Muilenburg said the center’s backers are also keenly aware of the historic lack of investment on the city’s North Side, and the social issues they must address.

“By creating this manufacturing base in north St. Louis, I think we have a chance to really address some of those longer-term social challenges, and create a great opportunity generator for the community,” he said.

“The ideal location…was somewhere in a triangle formed by Cortex, the NGA West and Ranken.”

Similarly to the AMRC in Sheffield, AMICSTL expects to fund itself with a revenue mix split roughly into thirds: One third via sponsorships from corporates that partner with AMICSTL and benefit from its work; one third from philanthropy and grants, including government support; and the remaining third from fees, such as contracts for research.

Since December Muilenburg has also been chairman and chief executive of New Vista Acquisition Corp., one of dozens of special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) that have gone public in recent months. SPACs, sometimes called “blank check” companies, are normally set up for the purpose of acquiring other companies.

New Vista raised $240 million in a February share offering. It is targeting companies in the aerospace & defense sector for possible acquisitions.

New Vista has no formal relationship with AMICSTL, although Muilenburg said there could be opportunities to work together in the future. He added that by reembracing its manufacturing heritage, St. Louis is headed in the right direction.

“If you can build manufacturing innovation, that’s particularly attractive to capital investors right now,” Muilenburg said. “I think that’s a theme you’re going to see across the country and in the region: to rebuild and amplify U.S. manufacturing capacity.” –McP–

More stories from McPherson on the North Central Corridor:

• Now Emerging in St. Louis: The North Central Corridor
• The North Central Corridor: A Gallery of Images
• To Understand AMICSTL, Look to Sheffield, England

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