1957: Bill Bangert and A New Champ

As covered in the recent essay, https://lafayettesquarearchives.com/?p=5062 Norman Champ was a man with a solid and profitable business in Lafayette Square, In addition to a home in St. Louis’s north county, he managed a thriving dairy and cattle herd. As chair of the board of aldermen, Champ guided the municipal incorporation of Berkeley, Missouri, and served the new community as alderman and deputy marshal for several years. 

To call Bangert a ‘character’ would be to short change the term. Born in 1924, he was thirty-five years younger than Champ, who was in his early 70’s when they first met in 1959.

A municipal opportunity arises

This was an interesting time to be a municipal developer in St. Louis. The Internal Revenue Service in 1954 formally conferred tax-exempt status to certain industrial development bonds. An amendment to the Missouri state constitution cleared the way for a law permitting municipalities to issue bonds for industrial development. This bore particular significance for St. Louis, as city and county were distinct entities since the 1870s, and ninety individual municipalities resulted in the county. Each now had the potential to issue bonds to finance development within its borders. 

In January of 1959, Norman Champ sold 62 acres of his unincorporated property to Bill Bangert. The tract lay very near what is now the junction of Interstates 70 and 270 in northwest St. Louis County. The county council approved expansion of this to 308 acres, taking in additional land owned by Bangert. The incorporation of the Village of Champ was ok’ed and five trustees were ratified for the new municipality. Norman Champ, his son, his secretary, Bill Bangert, and Bill’s wife, Rosemary formed the five person board of trustees. 

The village had no services, no businesses; only four homes and fourteen residents. Bangert built a house and lived in Champ, but Norman Champ maintained his residence in Berkeley. The scheme from the start was to develop a large sports stadium and industrial center in the new municipality. Again, it was an interesting time in St. Louis. In 1959, the Chicago Cardinals NFL franchise was looking to relocate. It wasn’t clear that the original Busch Stadium at Grand and Dodier would be enough to attract the franchise. 

In stepped Bill Bangert, a man of vision, although that may be the wrong term for a man who lost most of his sight at the age of twenty-eight.

Some backstory on a local star

It helps to have a bit of background on the fellow who is central to this story and gets the sole credit or blame for what transpired. 

Born in 1924, Bill Bangert came from a family of eleven children. Some of the boys grew up to form Bangert Brothers Road Construction. This firm prospered and built many of the highways that facilitated the spread of St. Louis County westward. Bill harbored even bigger ambitions. 

He also fought in the St. Louis Golden Gloves, making it to the finals one year. He dreamed of boxing in the Olympics. 

Many older St. Louisans will remember Bob Burnes, “the benchwarmer,” who is in the St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame. Burnes was a sports writer for the Globe-Democrat during a half-century long career. At the Globe, he penned over 15,000 articles. In 1948, Burnes devoted his entire column to an upcoming Golden Gloves matchup between Bill Bangert and another young heavyweight contender from St. Louis. 

 One of eleven children, Bill’s family construction business, Bangert Brothers, was one of the two largest in St. Louis. It was responsible for much of the area highway construction. In 1958, he left that enterprise to seek his own fortune, one based more on his own ‘individual effort.’

A truncated career in local politics

Fresh from college, Bangert joined his brothers in the road construction business, and dipped a toe into the political pool. Recall that Norman Champ was a longtime member of the Berkeley board of aldermen, First elected mayor in 1950, Bill Bangert served three terms as Berkeley mayor by 1957.

Mayor Bangert’s six stormy years as mayor featuring disputes with his police department, the city engineer and finally, the board of aldermen. During his tenure, he also unsuccessfully sought to annex Hazelwood and the St. Louis municipal airport. This experience raised his consciousness to the upsides of municipal annexation, and reinforced his ‘go it alone’ political mindset.

In 1952, Bangert lost the sight in both eyes, result of a rare disease that essentially detached his retinas. One year, he finished second in an AAU meet in shot put, while technically blind. Doctors were able to restore some sight in one eye, and Bill went forward from there. 

When Berkeley voters opted for a council/manager form of government in 1957, Bangert was out of a job. The following year he also left Bangert Brothers, and decided to pursue a vivid dream of real estate development.

A stadium for Champ

So he and former Berkeley alderman, Norman Champ, joined forces to put the village of Champ on the map of St. Louis County. Norman owned undeveloped acreage in North County. They intended to incorporate the area as a new municipality, then build a massive stadium and shopping center there. Tax-exempt revenue bonds issued by the municipality would finance construction. In 1960 Missouri amended its constitution to allow issuance of revenue bonds for leased manufacturing facilities.  Rentals from businesses occupying facilities owned by the municipality would retire the bonds. Tenants could write off that rent, creating an attractive reduction in federal tax due. A clear win/win.

So if one is a dreamer, the only limit to the scale of the dream is the size of the imagination behind it. Bill Bangert had imagination in spades. This was not to be just any stadium, but a gargantuan $87 million enclosed dome, seating over 100,000 spectators. It would be multi-purpose, for exhibitions and conventions, track, basketball, hockey, football, and much more.

There would be a restaurant seating over a thousand diners at a time, suspended 380 feet in the air, served by 600 foot moving sidewalks. The accompanying mall would be 2 million square feet of retail, with a 25,000 car garage on seven levels beneath the ground. This garage would qualify for federal emergency civil defense funds, as it could convert to a fallout shelter capable of accommodating 600,000 people at a time. The details are fascinating, and there is a link to them at the bottom of this essay.

Bill had a large scale model built, and travelled extensively to promote his plan. The initial hope was to lure a new NFL team, and host the 1964 Olympics. He had several businessmen, including the presidents of Schnuck markets and the Chase hotel as boosters. 

The downside of individualism

Bangert’s successes in life had always relied on his own determination, overcoming obstacles while bulling forward. The reality of St. Louis area politics contrasted with this approach, rewarding associations, accommodation and consensus. Bill was not good at this sort of thing, but had a world of faith that he was sufficient to the task of pushing against a well-entrenched status quo. 

Friction was predictable from downtown St. Louis. It foresaw a challenge to its own status, and the threat of a wholesale exodus of business and sports from downtown. Established city politicians had weight with state government that far exceeded what Bangert could bring to bear. Things were looking up for him when the state legislature approved Champ village issuing $87 million in revenue bonds for the planned complex. Governor James Blair vetoed this approval in 1959, and it was the beginning of a costly thirteen year struggle for Bangert. 

Awake to the challenge, city politicians quickly began to coalesce behind financing a new stadium downtown to attract the football team and to keep the baseball franchise. Bangert’s idea then morphed into the general industrial development of Champ. 

Annexation and bonds

In 1961, the tiny 300 acre municipality attempted to annex 3,100 adjacent unincorporated acres. The St. Louis County Council not only denied the annexation, but demanded the disincorporation of Champ itself, stating that its trustees failed to carry out earlier plans for the stadium complex. Bangert defended his project as “revised, but not abandoned.” The county ordered a grand jury investigation.

What Bill Bangert had going for him was a completely compliant board of trustees, and a village population with nearly guaranteed unanimous votes to support his actions. In late November 1961, a municipal vote was held at Champ’s only polling place – Bangert’s house. The twelve registered voters of Champ passed a $3.2 million bond issue. This was to finance the initial construction of a new plant for the R.C. Can Company, then of Overland, also in St. Louis County. Construction would begin as soon as the Missouri Supreme Court approved the state’s new industrial bond law making interest on such bonds tax-free. 

Within a week, the county grand jury recommended that a court determine whether Champ was a legally established municipality, given its failure to builda stadium complex. There were questions about the legitimacy of trustee Norman Champ, who didn’t reside in the village, and was not registered to vote there. Perhaps rashly at the time, the Champ trustees had pledged to disincorporate if stadium plans fell through, and this did seem to be the case. 

Critics were starting to gather, expressing themselves in the newspaper. The main complaint was that taxes avoided by industries relocating to Champ would have to be offset by taxpayers in the rest of the county. Taking it to an extreme, one declared that this would set a precedent allowing all industry in the county to operate tax-free, putting the entire burden of police, fire protection, schools and roads on individual taxpayers. 

Bangert pushed ahead with the physical development of his one closed deal. A billboard went up on I-70, stating, in Arabic, that this was the “home of the R.C. Can Company.” He explained that Champ had been crucified for bringing job opportunities to the area, so it was “appropriate to use a language from the time of the original crucifixion.”

A hard fought win for Champ

Some advocacy for Champ came from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. It noted an estimated 120,000 jobless in the St. Louis area, and the promise of Champ to “lick this problem.” It blamed both city and county for keeping its development at a standstill. The Globe pointed to Century Electric, which intended to leave the metro area unless Champ got the go-ahead. It pointed out that the 1960 constitutional amendment finally brought Missouri into line with an advantage that Kansas and many Southern states had exploited for years. “When the (municipality) owns the land and buildings, the property is tax-free, so a leasing firm gets a benefit.” The main point was that without approval to annex 3,200 acres, no development would be possible. The County Plan Commission had recommended it, but the County Council refused to agree. The Globe op-ed asked, “Isn’t that like shooting Santa Claus?” 

With some fire to its fanny, the County Council three weeks later listened for over seven hours as 37 individuals (26 in favor, 11 opposed) debated the Champ request for annexation. Proponents expounded on its ideal location, with highway, river and rail access, and no conflict between industrial and residential development. There was a claim of the direct and indirect creation of 180,000 jobs – 60,000 more than the current total of the area’s unemployed. Those against the approval cited a failure of the proposed scheme to pay its fair share of tax burden. Champ was not a real municipality, in its lack of people and municipal services. Bangert owned 1,300 acres of the disputed annex, leading to charges of self-dealing. 

Bangert maintained his plan for a stadium (the original reason for Champ’s incorporation) if the county approved annexation. He argued that failure to approve would doom the stadium plans. R.C. Can Company would have to occupy part of the site designated for the stadium. 

This was really the only hand he could play, and it was a vital one, if St. Louis was going to compete with states allowing tax-free industrial bonds. Terms of the 1960 Missouri constitutional amendment excluded both St. Louis City and County from participating. It only authorized action by incorporated towns and cities within St. Louis County. 

Three weeks later, the County Council caved, approving annexation of the 3,100 acres. Work began on the R.C. Can Company site the next morning. There remained a suit by Missouri Attorney General Eagleton with the state Supreme Court, to determine the legality of Champ as a municipality. 

Bangert searches for momentum

As the village continued to ignore an earlier 1961 County Council order to disincorporate, the state’s attorney general filed suit testing the legality of Champ’s incorporation. 

Even though the village earlier authorized a $3.2 million bond, none was issued, pending the Supreme Court ruling on legality of the constitutional amendment of 1960. Private funds totaling about $2.7 million covered the cost of building and improvements for R.C. Can Company. Bangert secured this on a loan from Community Federal Savings. Bangert and wife were the owners and contractors, so on the hook for this expense. For its part, R.C signed a thirty year lease, and invested about $2.5 million in equipment and inventory. 

Bangert took out a nine page supplement in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, boosting both Champ village and the concept of municipal revenue bonds. It’s easy to see that he was a true believer, eager to get past the legal noise and on with the big work ahead. A link to much of that supplement is below. 

A day after this enticement to business appeared, Bangert hired access to three helicopters, making them available to interested principals for free flyover tours of the Champ area. He was sure that the big picture of the village’s position on river, highways and rail would be just the thing to spur investment. 

A village’s namesake takes a powder

In the summer of 1963, Norman Champ apparently decided to ease out of this story that once looked so promising on paper. He testified to selling his original 100 acres of Champ years earlier to Bill Bangert for $350,000. Although an original incorporator of the municipality and chairman of its board of trustees, he’d never resided in the village. Champ was 74 years old, a distinguished member of the community. He was most likely appalled that his family name attached to such an active controversy. 

Bangert needed desperately to make something happen on the Champ site. Six other companies, including Century Electric and American Beauty Macaroni Company were weighing commitments. There was good news in that the Supreme Court upheld the 1960 amendment approving tax-free municipal industrial bond status. The village of Champ was now up to 3,800 acres. Bangert claimed to have $4 million in additional financing commitments to develop Champ, and was working New York interests for another $10 million.

Disputes and grudging approvals

Attorney General Eagleton’s objection was that Missouri law didn’t “contemplate creation of a municipality for the patently non-municipal purpose of issuing bonds to finance its own development as an industrial park.” A former state supreme court judge opined that the question “is whether the law recognizes the right of one man to promote and organize a municipality in which he, or a select few, would have exclusive control.” 

Things got more contentious yet, when the county sued Bangert for delinquent real estate taxes in the amount of $12,000. This was a step toward the county foreclosing on the Champ acreage. That land would then be sold at public auction. This looked bad to Bangert’s prospective future tenants. He claimed the money was in escrow, and his attorney was researching the matter. He added that none of the land occupied by R.C Can Company was threatened. Bill was also at work building a 2 ½ mile rail spur, and a 3 ½ mile highway with an interchange connecting to I-70. 

In July of 1964, a supreme court commissioner recommended that the village be deemed legally incorporated. His opinion was extremely critical at the same time. He noted that from its original purpose of building a stadium, Champ had become an industrial park development. It paid no officials nor employees, levied no taxes, provided no services. “From its inception, the village has existed for the furtherance of private interests of Bill Bangert and associates; not for any public purpose.” 

Tied up in court with bills coming due

Buzzards were circling. In August of 1964, another suit was filed in circuit court to satisfy a $10,000 mechanics lien against Bangert. Five other firms had already filed liens against the R.C. Can Company property, totaling $18,000. An electric contractor sued for $23,000. Community Federal held the deeds of trust on the property, totaling over $2.7 million. It must have felt like it was holding an unredeemable collateral. 

Three weeks later, in an attempt to change the narrative, the county Municipal League adopted a resolution proposed by Bill Bangert to study bringing the 1972 Olympic Games to St. Louis. He said St. Louis had all the required facilities for such an endeavor, but would need track and field quarters and a 125,000 seat stadium. Details. 

Bangert announced a vote within Champ to issue three revenue bonds totaling $12.5 million. The Missouri Commerce and Industrial Development Commission approved these proposals, contingent on the three projects represented being located within Champ. These included construction of a new plant for Century Electric, another for American Beauty Macaroni and a bond to pay off $4.2 million in construction costs for R.C. Can Company, built three years earlier. 

Champ approved the three bond issues unanimously. In its nearly seven year history, it never had less than a unanimous vote for anything. This proved useful, as a 1963 statute made circuit court approval of an annexation unnecessary in the event of a unanimous vote in favor of it. 

Bangert’s win was tempered by a squabble with his neighbor, who rebuilt a levee Bangert leveled out for truck access. The only road leading to the loading docks of R.C. Can Company was now an “impassible mountain of mud.” The neighbor already had Bill in court, seeking $100,000 for damages to his property as a result of the same road. 

Bill’s idea takes off – just not in Champ

Poor Bill Bangert. The rest of the state, by early 1967, had moved well ahead with the idea he popularized. During the preceding year, Missouri cities approved $36 million for twenty-two projects financed by municipal industrial financing. They included the 3M plants in Springfield and Nevada and a Donaldson plant in Kirksville. Interco planned an $8.5 million warehouse in Jefferson City to replace two St. Louis operations. It was a rural area panacea. Places like Dexter, Crane, Glasgow, Joplin, Marceline, New Haven, Shelbina, Stanberry, Union, Wellsville and Chillicothe all found ways to put muni industrial bond issues to work. The protocol for this seemed neither daunting nor exotic when the basic matter concerned jobs and growth. It was a classic “pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today” approach to development, and proved remarkably popular with voters. 

The village of Champ took to the offense again, voting to annex 700 acres west of the Missouri River in December of 1967. It included the 300 acres previously annexed but blocked by St. Louis County court action. Bangert already owned most of this land. He had improved it with a levee, drainage canal, rail spur and utilities. He intended this new front in his efforts to be a litigation-free lure to both Century Electric and American Beauty Macaroni. The county counselor indicated that St. Louis County would most likely file suit against this second annexation attempt. Again, the county said council approval and a circuit court judgement were required. Bangert argued that these were unnecessary, due to the unanimous vote in favor of annexation by Champ voters. 

When the levee breaks

Bill Bangert had $450,000 in escrow with the State Highway Commission to build the I-70 interchange; already approved by that body and the U.S. Bureau of Roads. It was, however, ensnared in the legal action brought by Bangert’s neighbor over the levee issue. Bangert argued that only a quick resolution could ensure the selection of Champ for the summer Olympic games. That looked ever more like a pipe dream. 

On December 1st, the battle of the barricade resumed. Bangert brought in a bulldozer to take down the levee. He also had a court injunction in hand, authorizing him to remove the earthworks. His neighbor blocked the bulldozer with his car, and said he had filed a petition earlier that morning to stay the injunction. Bangert grudgingly backed down. 

If it weren’t for bad luck…

A month later, in January 1968, Bangert announced yet another election; this time regarding a $25 million bond issue to finance construction of a plant on the Missouri River to convert garbage into agricultural fertilizer. The British principals would lease the plant from the village, which would retain ownership. He foresaw no problems this time, although the Century Electric and American Beauty plants remained stymied over the access road dispute. Of course, as predicted, St. Louis County now filed suit to challenge Champ’s recent annexation of 700 acres, including the fertilizer plant. 

By the end of that month, the circuit court upheld the 700 acre annexation, so the trash to treasure gambit was still on track. The two prospective companies looking to build in Champ indicated willingness to proceed if the annexation went through. Could it be that Bill Bangert’s fortunes were changing? 

Less than two weeks later, the U.S. Department of Treasury announced that it planned to withdraw the federal tax exemption granted to industrial development revenue bonds. Missouri had voted for over $80 million in such bonds, and the government action would thwart millions more. Missouri’s two U.S. senators and St. Louis mayor Cervantes were livid. After rural Missouri had taken quick and effective advantage of such bonds, they were going to be unavailable to the big cities, now ready to adopt them. 

Bangert said his $25 million garbage to fertilizer plant was unaffected, as it would be built as a municipal operation, serving other municipalities under a franchise agreement. But the $12.5 million bond issue Champ voters approved in 1966 would surely be affected, impacting both Century Electric and American Beauty projects. Nor could Bangert look to a future round of bond issue to refinance the R.C. Can Company plant. 

Bonds rock while Champ sits

Local governments had embraced industrial development bonds in forty states by this point. The tax exemption permitted the sale of bonds at lower rates than regular corporate bonds. The rents paid by tenant firms paid off the municipalities’ revenue bonds over time. Meanwhile, the municipalities owned the plants, so no property taxes were assessed. Small wonder that industry favored them, and small communities found a golden goose for employment and wage growth. In 1967, sale of such bonds totaled $1.4 billion. 

Ironic then, that the Post-Dispatch headline of March 10, 1968 read, “The Village of Champ Can’t Sell Its Bonds.” Despite all the hard fought and drawn out approval processes, the municipality had yet to actually sell any actual bond. Bangert blamed the county and all its legal maneuvering, but expressed confidence that he could easily clear the remaining legal hurdles.

A legal unwinding

What he may not have known is that just then, the county was planning to appeal Champ’s 700 acre annexation to the Missouri Supreme Court. The timing, as usual, was terrible. A village vote within the month would approve a $25 million bond issue for the fertilizer plant. 

In February of 1969, the Missouri Supreme Court invalidated both the 1965 and 1967 Champ annexations, calling both unreasonable. The court judged that Champ had failed to show that either annexation was necessary for governmental operation. This ruling affected 1.100 acres. If St. Louis County’s objective was to prevent municipal industrial financing, this was a clear victory.

On the other side, it was a clear disaster for Bill Bangert. He euphemistically said it “placed in limbo” his industrial development plans for Century Electric, American Beauty and the rubbish conversion plant. 

The court was unsympathetic. It wrote, “the village of Champ is not bursting at its seams. It is not growing into either area. There is no residential, commercial or industrial expansion taking place within its limits, except for the start of one plant (R.C. Can Co). It has no present facilities or demonstrated future ability to provide any sort of municipal service to the areas sought to be annexed. There is no showing that the annexations are necessary or convenient to the proper existence of municipal government in the village.” 

Ouch. The opinion continued that the only real tie between Champ and the two areas of annexation was that annexation constituted a way of getting plants built. This would make the financing of industrial development the main aim of annexation… “such financing cannot constitute the sole justification for annexation. There is nothing to show that bond buyers are likely to buy the revenue bonds that Champ proposes to issue.” 

The court closed by coldly noting that the annexations “might not be followed by any industrial development at all, and if so, there would be no need or desirability for annexation in the first place.”

Could’a been a contender

Bill Bangert’s sand castles had crumbled, and it was a rude awakening. “What could I do (now) with that land? I couldn’t sell it as industry, I couldn’t develop it. I couldn’t do anything with it.” No other industries followed R.C. Can Company to Champ. R.C. itself merged into Boise-Cascade, and the plant in Champ lasted only a couple of years longer. 

Bangert filed for bankruptcy in 1971, listing outstanding debts of $3.3 million. Thirteen years in single minded pursuit of his Champ dream resulted in him losing everything, living month to month in a small rented home.

Getting up off the mat

He was, however, the first man in more than a century to have carried the Dinnie stones, one 430 pounds and the other 345 pounds, across a bridge over Scotland’s River Dee. In June of 1970, he was proclaimed the Strongest Mayor In The World by the Lord Mayor of Aberdeen, and presented with a gallon of whiskey. 

Bangert took to giving inspirational speeches to small groups, traveling in a small rented camper van. He kept his pride intact, despite forty-six judgments and tax liens pending against him. Reticent government and a threatened status quo ultimately outweighed this one strong individualist with a clear vision. “It’s a sad state of affairs when the whole country subsidizes mediocrity. Someone with a big idea, (without) the blessing of all the powers that be, doesn’t have a chance.” 

Bill Bangert’s reach generally exceeded his grasp. He rued the hesitation of local leaders to pursue the hosting of the 1968 Pan-American Games. “Then we would have been in lined for the Olympics, host to all the Western Hemisphere, the focal point of world attention. We could have had rapid transit to Kansas City and Chicago….but it was too far ahead of them. St. Louis doesn’t think big.”  

A namesake’s son weighs in

Norman Champ, Jr, whose father originally conspired with Bill Bangert, had some thoughts. He said his father hooked up with Bangert partly out of frustration with Lambert Field progressively taking Champ family land. With buyout money to reinvest, he bought the 120 acres and then sold it to Bangert for a profit. Norman’s memory was that Bangert came up with the idea to build a stadium and incorporate it into a municipality so that the Olympics would come to St. Louis. “We got involved (in the name of the village) because Champ is a more Olympic name than Bangert,” 

Champ felt that Bangert always believed the stadium was a good and progressive idea for St. Louis. He deserved credit for spurring downtown forces into action for the new Busch Stadium. 

It was a pity that, as Bangert said, “people keep you embroiled in court battles, and the wheels just grind to a halt.” 

All else aside, the man could lift half a ton

Jaime Escalante famously wrote; “It’s not about how many times you fall down, it’s about how many times you get back up.” Bill Bangert was never one to go off into any good night. In his mid-40s, he took up Scottish sports and competed in their games, like tossing the caber, a 120 pound wooden pole 19 feet long, and tossing the 26 pound Scottish stone. He made a 1976 run for lieutenant governor with a platform that included bringing the Olympic games to Missouri. Bangert also promoted horse racing to subsidize public schools and reduce taxes. He lost, but you’d have to give him credit. The Missouri state lottery essentially did what he proposed that horse racing could do. Domed stadiums and malls, built with tax-exempt bond issues, eventually became commonplace. 

In the late 70s, Bill and his wife moved to California, where they managed an apartment complex. He competed in the Senior Olympics. They sang in church recitals. He wrote a screenplay based on his life and pitched it to Disney (unsuccessfully.) 

The downside of being first

Champ today, as mentioned at the outset of this essay, is little more than a quarry turned landfill. There are no monuments to a dreamer of failed dreams, but Bill Bangert always felt he was simply too far ahead of his time. The bottom land he dreamt about has now largely settled, with industry and warehouses and the Hollywood casino complex. Municipal bonds paid for by the leases of businesses in new facilities do resemble the common TIF (tax-increment financing) plans of today. 

Former County Executive Gene McNary remembered Bill Bangert as someone who “wasn’t so far off with his ideas, but sure was pretty far ahead of his time.” 

Bill and Rosemary Bangert, together through thick and thin (a sure tribute to Mrs. Bangert), returned to Missouri in 1997. She won Mrs Senior Missouri and he kept busy in senior level athletic events, continuing to win trophies well into his 70s. 

He had time to dream up many more ideas for the area: a U.S. Taxpayers Party, an island at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers with a jet of water that would shoot 1,000 feet into the air. (This was even tried. The Gateway Geyser on the Illinois side of the Mississippi. It shot a water jet 100 feet into the air for nearly thirty years. It was discontinued as its expensive infrastructure failed.) 

Bill Bangert always viewed Champ as the greatest accomplishment of his life. That the powers that be didn’t align with him was their problem. “They may have wiped me out, but they can’t wipe away the history of (Champ). It’s still there. I started it, and I don’t care who reaped the profits – they can’t deny that it’s there… I can lift 1,000 pounds and that’s something few men can say.”

A guy with an attitude like that can lose a hundred times and still ultimately be remembered as a winner. 

Epilogue

Back in 1962, a poem called To The Village Of Champ encapsulated the vitality of Bangert’s dream – as well as the slight melancholy of realizing the dream is not universally shared. It was billed as written by a “prominent St. Louis industrialist,” but it’s easy to guess the source. Just a couple of stanzas:

Resources

To see highlights from the nine page supplement to a 1962 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, extolling the village of Champ and its benefits to business, click here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/o528w6mb1tnybyh5lokbu/Champ-brochure-1962.pdf?rlkey=jtkk5sez1vq473d21j7thuwjd&st=0ip7e9ji&dl=0 

A primary source was the longform essay, The Champ; Laura Higgins; Riverfront Times; February 14, 2001. https://www.riverfronttimes.com/the-champ/

An excellent profile entitled Bill Bangert’s Busted Dream; written by Dickson Terry after the dust settled in Champ. It appeared in the Post-Dispatch of October 10, 1971 

Some of Bill Bangert’s college day activities came from the Columbia Missourian; February 24, 1945 and St. Louis Globe-Democrat of February 6, 1948

Mayor Bill Bangert of Berkeley Resigns To Promote Harmony from Globe-Democrat; February 20, 1957

Various stories about the R.C. Can Company and Champ appear in the Post-Dispatch of October 13, 18, 22, November 30 and December 7, 1961

The 1961 Champ bond issue vote and Norman Champ’s involvement, from Post-Dispatch; November 12, 1961

The offer of helicopter overviews of Champ, from Post-Dispatch; March 7, 1962

An insightful Post-Dispatch op-ed; May 24,1962

Other articles from Post-Dispatch of July 12 and 26, August 23, and September 6, 1962

Why Shoot Santa Claus, an editorial from the Globe-Democrat of August 6, 1962

The search for New York investors from the Post-Dispatch; November 25, 1962

Bangert on dealing with blindness from a self-written essay; Globe-Democrat; June 15, 1963

Other articles from the Post-Dispatch of January 11 and 13, June 15, August 11 and 13, 1964, and January 10, September 12 and 24, October 20, and November 19 and 26, 1965; January 23, February 3 and 25, 1966; April 11 and 19, June 14, December 1 and 7, 1967; and January 24, February 7, and March 10, 1968

The April 11, 1964 article by William H. Kester, Post-Dispatch Financial Editor is a good look at the thinking around that time, regarding municipal industrial financing.

The article The Village Of Champ Can’t Sell Its Bonds was in the Post-Dispatch of March 17, 1968

The final voiding of annexations by the Missouri Supreme Court from the Post-Dispatch; Louis J. Rose; February 10, 1969

Bangert’s quote about subsidizing mediocrity from the Post Dispatch; Neal Russo; November 1, 1985

An obituary for and tribute to Bill Bangert from Michael D, Sorkin of the Post-Dispatch; July 15, 2011