News

Welcome to St. Charles County, Blue Bell Creameries! The Texas-based ice cream favorite recently opened a 16,000 SF distribution center in St. Peters that will supply stores throughout the St. Louis metro, along with parts of Central Missouri and Southern Illinois. As no products are produced on-site, the location includes a cold storage space that houses

The EDC of St. Charles County has again landed at the top of the St. Louis Business Journal's ranking of the largest SBA lenders in the St. Louis region. With $18.51 million in total annual loan production, the organization nearly doubled its 2022 output. The EDC's SBA 504 loan program provides affordable fixed-asset financing for qualified small business

General Motors had a big year in St. Charles County! The automotive giant completed a $1.5 billion investment in its Wentzville facility, the largest private investment in Missouri history. It then closed out the year with an exciting announcement from MotorTrend—the 2024 Truck of the Year (announced in late 2023) is the Chevy Colorado, made at GM

An increasing number of manufacturers are choosing to grow in St. Charles County, thanks to a blend of competitive operational expenses, logistical perks, and supportive local governments. Founded in 1992, Patriot Machine has been growing in St. Charles County for over three decades and is a leading manufacturer of precision machined components and

In today’s tight labor market, the demand for talent is at an all-time high. Manufacturing and skilled trades roles have been especially hard to fill, leaving many employers scrambling to fill customer orders, often in critical areas such as healthcare, telecommunications, and aerospace. Proactively building a pipeline to fill these critical

The EDC of St. Charles County is pleased to announce the promotion of Thomas Redd to the position of Assistant Vice President of Economic Development. In this role, Redd will use a data-driven approach to promote St. Charles County business development opportunities to site selection consultants and corporate decision-makers around the world while

Medline today celebrated the opening of its 800,000-square-foot LEED-certified distribution center in St. Peters, Missouri. Governor Michael L. Parson joined leaders from St. Charles County and the City of St. Peters, as well as Medline team members during a ribbon-cutting event at the distribution center located at 5000 Premier Parkway. Representatives

In 1993, the Economic Development Council (EDC) of St. Charles County opened a 30,000 SF small business incubator to provide an affordable location for businesses to start and grow. Demand for space was so great that just two years later, the facility doubled in size to 60,000 SF. Since that time, the incubator has played an integral role in the regional

BayoTech is building 50 "Hydrogen Hubs" across the US and UK, and the first one will be in St. Charles County on the campus of Ranken Technical College in Wentzville. Hydrogen Hubs are small, localized production plants designed to produce hydrogen faster and cheaper than larger-scale facilities. Rather than making large quantities of hydrogen at one

NorthPoint Development has broken ground on a new master-planned industrial park in the Lakeside Logistics Center in St. Peters. The completed development will include five buildings totaling ±1.6 million SF across 190 acres. The largest building in the development will be nearly 500,000 SF. Grading for that building is scheduled to start this

EDC President & CEO Scott Drachnik recently sat down with Thomas Wilmer, host of the award-winning NPR podcast Journeys of Discovery with Tom Wilmer, to talk about St. Charles County's rich vinicultural history. Most people don't realize St. Charles County was the first recognized American Vinicultural Area (AVA) in the US and was the largest wine

Excerpt via Travel + Leisure Oenophiles looking for an under-the-radar wine region may want to consider the Midwest — particularly, Augusta, Missouri, about an hour west of St. Louis. I recently visited this hidden gem of a destination during its annual Augusta Harvest Festival, and it surprised me from the start. During my first night, I attended the