Turns Out, the Door to Privatizing St. Louis Airport Isn't Completely Closed

ST. LOUIS — Five months after Mayor Lyda Krewson declared as dead the idea of privatizing St. Louis Lambert International Airport, the city has yet to bury the idea.

The mayor said Friday that “we will at some point in time” yank the city’s preliminary application to federal authorities to allow consideration of the idea.

But she said in an interview that she might leave the application in place for now to explore whether there might be a way to use the privatization option to develop some of the excess unused land owned by the airport.

She didn’t elaborate but added, “I don’t think it’s anytime soon.”

She emphasized, however, that she had no intention of restarting the controversial process of seeking bids from would-be private operators to lease all of Lambert that stirred three years of controversy.

Comptroller Darlene Green, a longtime foe of privatizing Lambert, asked the city’s Board of Estimate and Apportionment last week to formally withdraw the application to the Federal Aviation Administration.

The FAA’s approval of the preliminary application in 2017 allowed the city to begin negotiations with private entities interested in operating the airport as part of a pilot program set up by a 1997 federal law.

In response to Green’s request, Krewson said at the estimate board meeting that withdrawing the application was her call because the application had been submitted by her predecessor, then-Mayor Francis Slay, shortly before the end of his final term.

She said she would consult lawyers for the city on “the proper way of doing it.”

Meanwhile, an aide to the third member of the estimate board — Aldermanic President Lewis Reed — said Friday that Reed opposed withdrawing the application at this time.

“It’s not hurting the city to leave it in place especially considering the current financial situation the city is facing,” Reed’s legislative director, Mary Goodman, said in a text message.

That was a reference to the $40 million city budget gap caused by steep tax revenue shortfalls due to the coronavirus-spurred economic slowdown.

While privatization was being considered, Reed and others who wanted it studied had cited the hundreds of millions of dollars that the city could potentially pull in for city programs under a lease deal.

Goodman said Reed wasn’t pushing now to restart the lease consideration process but simply to leave that option available in the future.

Green at the estimate board meeting said Lambert’s airlines need some assurance about the airport’s future governance.

“As long as there is a limbo-like application out there, it does not send a strong signal as to the support that the city government can give to our precious asset,” Green said.

Krewson said she, too was committed to working with the airlines to improve Lambert.

In abruptly ending the city’s exploration of privatizing Lambert last December, Krewson had cited criticism from residents, business leaders and other elected officials.

In January, the estimate board voted to end contracts with a team of consultants that had advised a city committee on the issue.

The issue resurfaced in late March when some city residents got phone calls from a polling firm asking questions about their view of a potential ballot issue that could raise $1 billion for city services through leasing Lambert.

Krewson and Reed both said they had nothing to do with the poll. So did officials with a carpenters union group and the St. Louis chapter of the NAACP, which had previously called for privatization to be revisited.

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