After living and working in St. Louis for the last four years, Joe Downs understands one thing about this key Midwest city: It’s a great place to build retail centers, office towers and multi-family housing.
This is why Downs is so excited about taking over the new St. Louis office for Minnetonka, Minn.-based Opus Development Corporation. “I truly enjoy living in St. Louis,” said Downs, senior director of real estate development with Opus. “It has all of the cultural resources of a big city while maintaining the feel of a smaller community. It is an extremely convenient place to live. There is a very talented workforce here, and St. Louis is home to a lot of strong companies. We have top financial-services companies here and information technology providers. The healthcare providers are strong. A wide variety of industries serves this area.”
Opus in late October opened its St. Louis office, establishing a headquarters in a city in which the company has already developed condo towers, an office warehouse and retail power center. Downs will lead this new office.
Coming back to Opus represents a homecoming for Downs. He most recently worked in St. Louis for The Love Companies, where Downs served as a vice president. Before moving to St. Louis and taking his position at this company, though, Downs worked for more than eight years at Opus Northwest, L.L.C., where he worked on the design-build side of hte business. Downs first worked as a project manager in Minneapolis before moving to St. Louis to take on the role of director of construction and general manager.
Now Downs is looking forward to growing Opus’ already strong presence in the St. Louis region.
“I want to help build a business in which Opus is ingreained in the community to the point where we are doing everything from closet remodels as a service to good corporate clients to campuses and towers, big development projects,” Downs said. “We have the platform to do it. Once we start bringing deals to this market, I’m confident that we’ll be able to build a very successful and diverse business here.”
— Dan Rafter
