By August of 2001, construction was moving from exterior to the beginning of interior build-out. I wanted to see a different perspective, and to record it for the project album I had been assembling.
Enter a check ride in the County Police helicopter, which was conveniently based at the Chesterfield Airport about half a mile from our construction site. The St. Louis County Police did contract policing of our City of Wildwood, and were very savvy about marketing their services to local Mayors. I had been in office about 18 months at that point, and our precinct Captain suggested I might want to show our latest City Administrator the width and breadth of our 67 square mile city. He was just coming on (our fifth administrator since 1995)at that time. The flight operations facility was in Chesterfield, the city next door - so we drove there and took off. I had the foresight to take my camera along, and our pilot was accommodating. The shot of the building was taken on the return approach into the pattern.
While you can't see them from this perspective, the building had a wedding cake top floor, with two large patios. One patio was off the employee cafe, the other off my offices and the Board room. Both were great vantage points to watch air shows every year. Those rectangular shapes on the roof are air conditioning units - we built everything over-sized, to allow for growth. The building cost $12 million, and the payback has already been reached, as cost against the rent we had paid at the prior leased locations. Today, the building remains a legacy I am very proud to have left to the citizens of the State of Missouri.
P.S. - That City Administrator is still there today, so some decisions made under my term as Mayor indeed had "legs" - but I gave Dan good advice "to keep your head down, and let Joe run the place". Joe has been there since 1995 - he's the true Survivor.
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