CHESTERFIELD, MO-Prominent developer Louis Sachs, the creator of the $5 billion Chesterfield Village and Downtown Chesterfield projects, has died of heart failure. He was 83.

Sachs, the founder of Sachs Properties, basically created the city from scratch from two purchases of 125 acres starting in 1967. His company developed and owned the 31 buildings that eventually made up the 1,500-acre, mixed-use Chesterfield Village and his newest project, Downtown Chesterfield.

“He was known as the father of modern Chesterfield,” a company spokesman tells GlobeSt.com. Sachs was known for a famous line given in an ad answering detractors after building Chesterfield Mall, with partners Arthur Baer II and Dick Jacob in an undeveloped area of town in the mid-1970s. “Perhaps you’ve wondered why we put a major shopping center in the middle of a field,” he said in the ad placed, in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1976. “Because Chesterfield Mall wasn’t built as an end in itself. In a few years, it will be in the middle of a town.”

His prediction came true. Chesterfield Village now includes more than one million square feet of office and retail, and about 2,400 homes at Highway 40 and Clarkson Road. The company is now working on the second phase, Downtown Chesterfield, which is to include 200 acres of 1.7 million square feet of retail, office and restaurants, and more than 1,000 housing units. In 2008, the company completed the 100,000 square foot Central Park Square I office building for the second phase. The building is 98% leased, according to the firm’s Web site.

Instant Insights /

Local Development Leader Sachs Dies at 83

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