Business View Magazine - October 2016 133
ral parts of Wildwood,” he says. “And a number of the
trails are open to equestrian use as well.”
When Wildwood first became a city, it was founded with
the notion that local control would help foster more
responsible development, preserve the area’s natural
environment, and elevate its residents’ quality of life.
That decision has resulted, among other things, in bet-
ter maintenance of the local infrastructure. “St. Louis
County didn’t give our streets and bridges as much at-
tention as we’ve been able to,” Thomas declares. “We
were not seeing a great deal of maintenance before
Wildwood incorporated as a city. We had about 50
bridges, and many of those were either in a sub-stan-
dard condition or were functionally less than desirable.
We had many one-lane bridges, which, when first built,
were probably fine, but with the population moving out
here, had become a problem. So, one of the major fi-
nancial allocations, early on, was to address some of
the bridges. We’ve replaced close to half of them since
we incorporated and we’ve been able to do so with the
help of a lot of federal grant funding. We were very suc-
cessful in applying for federal transportation grants to
fund, in most cases, 80 percent of the cost of those
