Chesterfield's Modest Growth Was As Expected

Chesterfield's modest population gains are in line with expectations, City Administrator Michael Herring said.

The , census data released last week showed. The estimated population is 47,484, which is up 682 since 2000. At one point, the population was expected to surpass 50,000. With less opportunity to expand the city's borders than in decades past, growth had to be internal, and the economic downturn slowed that, Herring said.

"We realized we were not going to attain that number (50,000), and had geared up to serve that many, especially with police," Herring said. Last fall, the city laid off at least 17 employees, including several police officers. Slower than anticipated growth was one of the factors cited in the layoffs, which were the city's first since its incorporation in 1988.

Despite coming in under 50,000 people, Herring said the city is pleased with the gains. Chesterfield, he said, has always focused on planned and quality growth—not simply growth for growth's sake. 

"It's a modest little increase, but we've never been about trying to become the biggest," he said, adding that even minimal growth is postive in the current economic climate. The population of both the city of St. Louis and St. Louis County dropped. The city of St. Louis' population dropped to the lowest it's been in a century, at 319,000. St. Louis County's population dropped about 1.7 percent; less than a million people now live in the county. 

Chesterfield's low number of vacant homes is also a good sign, Herring said. There are 1,169 vacant homes in Chesterfield, which is about 5.73 percent of homes in the city. That bests both the county and the state's vacancy rates, which came in at about 7.59 percent and 12 percent, respectively.

Herring said the number of foreclosures in Chesterfield has been relatively low in the last three years. "The fact that those numbers are low shows that folks are taking caring of business," he said. "For the most part, they're employed and taking care of their obligations."

The city isn't expecting any big changes based on the growth. The slight growth should mean a bit more in sales tax revenue that's distributed by the county. Herring said the city doesn't anticipate having to redraw the boundaries of the city's four wards. That process was done in both 1990 and 2000, when the city grew at a much more rapid pace. 

Population data from the 2010 Census: