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The Kings of Kingshighway

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The Roberts brothers' businesses started gaining momentum in the late 1980s when the Federal Communications Commission granted their first UHF-TV license. Mike convinced the Home Shopping Network to loan them $3.8 million to build a studio on the third floor of the Victor Roberts Building. Since then they've bought and sold stations throughout the southwest and the south. Last year they ditched the Home Shopping Network for UPN, which targets a young, urban audience with a lineup of new and recycled black sitcoms.

But their greatest triumph came in 2001, when the brothers struck gold in the wireless phone market. Mike convinced Sprint that his company could build a PCS network throughout Missouri and the rural Midwest. Needing $95 million to build the network, they put the entire company on the block as collateral and managed to get a loan from Lucent, a network-equipment manufacturer that wanted to break into the Midwest.

The gamble paid off. In six months of nonstop work, the Robertses built the network, then flipped it to a Sprint affiliate for $400 million in cash and stock.

"In politics, you don't have the reward of seeing the final product," Mike explains. "Being in business is like having my own laboratory. I get more out of being able to create real jobs for people."

Mike reclines on a tan leather chair that faces a gas-burning fireplace. On the mantel above -- just below the flat-screen TV -- sit two replicas of Mike and Steve's private jets, one of which they bought from actor Jim Carrey. They invested in the aircraft as a tax shelter and now rent them to business executives and anyone else who can afford the $3,600 hourly fee.

Mike usually flies out of Lambert rather than using the planes himself. His calendar is booked with speaking engagements around the nation -- celebrity events like the NAACP's Image Awards in Los Angeles and real-estate scouting expeditions throughout the United States and the Bahamas with Steve. He and his wife, Jeanne, also frequently visit Malibu, California, where their four children attend Pepperdine University.

In Steve's equally spacious office, about 50 photos of his wife, Dr. Eva Frazer, and their three children (ages ten, fourteen and sixteen) adorn his walls and ultramodern desk. Before choosing to stay home with the kids, Frazer worked as an internist at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. Nowadays she serves on Saint Louis University's board of directors and tag-teams with Steve on chauffeuring their kids to baseball practices, play rehearsals and parties.

When Mike and Steve are both in the office, they usually scarf lunch from the Saint Louis Bread Co. between constant cell phone calls and a packed schedule of appointments. But they never seem hurried. "I get here at nine o' clock and every day is a sprint to keep up," says Jerry Altman, chief counsel for the Roberts Companies.

Jazz music pours out of the office Victor Roberts, the companies' chief financial officer, shares with his daughter, Lori. Mike gives his dad a wave as he strolls down the hall to the conference room, where a team of architects from the Lawrence Group are sitting around an enormous marble table. Everyone jumps up to shake his hand.

The architects are here to brief the brothers on several projects in north St. Louis. "We're playing Monopoly these days," Mike says. They just purchased the vacant Enright School, located northwest of Union and Delmar, from the St. Louis Board of Education for $1 million. They plan to spend $15 million converting the structure, designed by the St. Louis firm of Mauran, Russell & Garden, to upscale apartments and to build at least twenty new houses around it. [Editor's note: A correction ran concerning this paragraph; please see end of article.]

"A lot of baby boomers grew up in this neighborhood," Mike says, noting that new homes are being built to the west and that older houses to the south are large and tidy. "Maybe they will be interested in moving back."

Mike and Virvus Jones, now a vice president in the Robertses' real estate firm, kick around the idea of building a nine-hole, par-three golf course at nearby Visitation Park. Mike is wearing black slacks and a bright blue-and-white striped shirt highlighted by cuff links. His diamond pinkie rink sparkles under the soft lights above.

Steve answers his cell phone as the architects pore over drawings for Roberts Commons. What they envision are 110 residential units and 40,000 square feet of retail space to sprout on the southeast corner of Euclid and Delmar. A condo project -- priced from $175,000 to $225,000 -- is also in the making on the south side of Washington, just east of Kingshighway.

"Alderman [Terry] Kennedy has written the letter to start a blighting study," Mike tells the men gathered in the room. If the city decides the area around Euclid and Delmar is blighted, the development will be eligible for tax abatement. The Robertses have met with Rodney Crim, executive director of the St. Louis Development Corporation, and Rollin Stanley, the city's Urban Agency Design director, to discuss their plans for the area. Eventually they would like the city to approve a tax-increment financing arrangement to pay for infrastructure improvements and possibly a transportation district, which could finance sidewalk and park upgrades.

"All of the infrastructure is here -- the sewer, the streets, the water, the parks," Steve says. "But it's been completely ignored by the city government."

The biggest challenge, however, will be convincing people to cross the "mental demarcation line at Washington," explains Virvus Jones. "The problem is getting people to migrate closer to Delmar. These are mental issues, so you have to do something spectacular."

Building a residential and retail complex with parking at the corner of Euclid and Delmar will "complete the block," reasons Jerry Altman, a company vice president. "It will cause people to feel more comfortable."

The Roberts brothers already own a substantial portion of the property along Kingshighway between Delmar and Martin Luther King, including buildings that house Schnucks, Hollywood Video and Blockbuster Video. Ultimately, the Robertses would like to reopen the Mercedes Club, which they own at 4915 Delmar, and create an even greater impetus for people to move north to the Fountain Park neighborhood, located two blocks from the Central West End.

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