Maxine Clark is one of the true innovators in the retail industry. During her career, Clark’s ability to spot emerging retail and merchandising trends and her insight into the desires of the American consumer have generated growth for retail leaders, including department, discount and specialty stores. In 1997, she founded Build- A-Bear Workshop, a teddy-bear themed retail-entertainment experience. Today there are more than 400 Build-A-Bear Workshop stores worldwide.
In June 2013, Clark stepped down from her Chief Executive Bear role to apply her entrepreneurial skills and pursue her passion for education, families and children. Clark’s latest venture is the Delmar DivINe, located in the old St. Luke’s Hospital on Delmar Boulevard. The buildings will be transformed into apartments and collaborative co-working space for nonprofit organizations. “Forest Park is basically in our front yard,” said Maxine Clark, founder of Build-A-Bear Workshop. “It’s going to be a great legacy for St. Louis.”
Maxine credits her teachers, mentors and her mother as the foundation of her success. “My mother worked for Eleanor Roosevelt as her private traveling secretary,” Clark said. “She only worked when she traveled, but she traveled frequently so my mom had many stories to tell. We were always doing for somebody else. Giving comes in my blood.”
Tell us a little about yourself.
I have tremendous curiosity – that’s my strength. It can also be a challenge because everything intrigues me and the internet feeds into making that possible. My third grade teacher wrote to my mother on my report card that I asked too many questions. My mother went to school and said, ‘how can you even say that about a 9 year old? She should have all the questions in the world.’
I went to school to be a lawyer, but I had to go to work to pay for it, and I ended up getting a job in the training program at the Hecht Company in Washington, D.C. I never went to law school after that. Retail was the perfect job for me. It was all about results. I tell young people, if you want to prove your success and how smart you are, work at a company where results are measured every day.
How are you involved with Build-A-Bear today?
I’m on the board and visit Build-A-Bear stores whenever I’m in a city or here in St. Louis – it will always be my passion. Customers still write to me, but I don’t have the day-to-day responsibilities of running the business, so it frees up my time for other important projects.
With Build-A-Bear’s success I have been able to do many things for children, families and education. After all, our customer’s invested in us, and we want to give back.
Tell us about Delmar DivINe and how it got started.
I learned about this neighborhood when the Clark-Fox Family Foundation invested in the opening of KIPP St. Louis and our KIPP Victory Academy in 2014. I met many of the neighbors and couldn’t believe this gem of a neighborhood was not booming. Around the same time, I was frequently at Cortex meeting with young entrepreneurs and also women in our Prosper Women Entrepreneurs Accelerator. I kept thinking, Cortex is such a good model of success in St. Louis, why can’t we replicate this for nonprofit organizations?
Delmar DivINe is the first collaborative space dedicated to maximizing the human and financial capital of St. Louis’ social initiatives and institutions. There will be mixed-use development of office space, shared services and other resources for nonprofits, as well as 160 apartments for young professionals. The office tenants will have access to a shared training center, a library, an evaluation center, an IT department, accountants, public relations, marketing and more.
Delmar DivINe is located at the former Connect Care and earlier, St. Luke’s Hospital between Clara and Belt Avenues on Delmar on the eastern edge of the West End neighborhood. Forest Park is a half-mile away, along with two MetroLink stations and the Loop Trolley – it’s incredibly accessible.
It’s a fantastic building. It was first built in 1904 at the time of the World’s Fair and is structurally sound; the elevators and stairs are all in the right places. It’s the ultimate sustainable project because you don’t have to tear anything down except some of the facades that were built, but it’s really got gusto. There are ten buildings on the property, a total of almost 500,000 square feet – it’s half of a shopping mall. We will have ground-floor retail like a restaurant, a bank, a shipping store – maybe some other things.
How did you decide on the name?
There’s always been a dividing line in St. Louis. It’s a play on words, divide – divine. There hasn’t been much, if any, investment north of Delmar. People will come from the south to Delmar, and they’ll come from the north to Delmar, but they don’t cross over. The Delmar DivINe gives St. Louisians the opportunity to change the outlook, making the neighborhood a living model for the city and eventually our country.
The ‘IN’ represents investment and innovation. It’s definitely about investment. It takes investment to turn anything like this into something positive. It would have been a strategic loss if the building had been torn down.
Can you update us on the timeline?
We have about 50 percent of the building leased – all letters of intent. We’ve done the legwork, but there’s still much to be completed. The building is going to be a $90 million project and we are funding it with a combination of debt, tax credits and private donations for the shared spaces. We think it’s a great way to leverage the donors that already support these organizations and make the organizations even more effective. After the funding is organized and the tax credits are lined up, we are hoping to start construction this summer. By the time both phases are complete in 2020, there will be approximately 1,000 people working and living here.
Advancing St. Louis highlights local leaders of small businesses and large corporations that are impacting the St. Louis region from a variety of industries. These leaders are Advancing St. Louis by inspiring change and starting conversations. Are you interested in having your story told? Contact Jennifer Mason, who coordinates marketing content, at jmason@stltoday.com.