We believe in Downtown. We want to be part of its future.

Downtown St. Louis is the center of our region, and its future belongs to all of us. Downtown is meant to be a hub for culture as well as commerce, a place where we go to experience the extraordinary and a place where we start businesses, build careers and create wealth for ourselves and our families. It should be the place we take out-of-towners and a neighborhood where we build traditions of our own.

We recognize the enormous work already underway to strengthen it. Strategic planning, economic development, major investments, public improvements and large-scale programming are essential to Downtown’s progress. The institutions, businesses, civic leaders and public agencies doing that work have our support.

We believe there is another layer of that work where thousands of ordinary people can contribute.

It happens at a smaller, more personal scale.

It is the person who starts a running club and gives 20 people a reason to meet Downtown every Tuesday. The artist who organizes a show. The neighbor who gathers people to clean a block. The musician who puts together a performance. The architecture enthusiast who leads a walking tour. The person who starts a chess night, a supper club, a book discussion, a dance class or something we have not thought of yet.

These activities complement the investments and strategies shaping Downtown. They create more ways for people to form relationships with Downtown and with one another. They create a stronger street-level ecosystem and can improve investor confidence as much as they improve quality of life for residents.

They help people lay down roots. A stronger community means stronger attendance for Downtown’s major events. It means greater occupancy in our residential buildings. It means more customers for local businesses and more opportunity for vacant storefronts to fill.

And there is already so much about Downtown that we treasure. That is why we want to be part of it.

We want Downtown to be a place where it is easier to make a friend. Easier to find people who share an obscure interest. Easier to try an idea. Easier to gather around something you care about. Easier to move from attending something to creating something yourself.

We want to help build that layer of Downtown.

Doing so will require more than participation alone. We hope planners, philanthropists, city government, businesses, institutions and others investing in Downtown will find even more ways to fund, encourage and promote community-led activity alongside the larger strategies already underway.

That can mean accessible funding that helps people turn good ideas into something real, alongside the encouragement and promotion that helps those ideas find an audience. An investment of even $1 million could catalyze as many as 1,000 community-led gatherings and activities across Downtown, while supporting regional storytelling that invites more people to discover them, participate and see themselves as part of Downtown’s future.

Who administers those resources is less important than the opportunity they create. The structure can take many forms. What we support is the principle: Alongside the major investments being made in Downtown, there should be accessible ways for people who care about this place to contribute directly to its daily life.

By signing this letter, we are making that commitment ourselves. We are willing to show up for what other people create. We are willing to invite others. We are willing to share our ideas, talents, interests and time. And many of us are willing to create something ourselves.

There is extraordinary value in having more people invested in Downtown’s success because they have experienced themselves as part of it.

We add our names to this letter as a statement of that commitment, and we invite the community to do the same.

We believe in Downtown. We value Downtown. We want to be part of its future.