From the St. Louis Public Radio Station 90.7 KWMU 10.29.15Cortex Pavilion
ROBERT W. DUFFY | ST. LOUIS PUBLIC RADIO
“Anyone who’s a frequent driver, cyclist or pedestrian along Forest Park Avenue has an idea what the research and development phenomenon called Cortex looks like – at least an imposing architectural chunk of it.
As Cortex president and CEO Dennis Lower notes, there’s much, much more than the average passerby might imagine in the district, more than what’s presented by the modern building at 4320 Forest Park Ave. with the tilted glass façade and, across Boyle from it, the skeleton of a new building rising on the corner.
Cortex, the acronym for Center of Research, Technology and Entrepreneurial Expertise, sprawls over 200 acres of urban real estate in the west end of St. Louis, and is bookended by the venerable Washington University School of Medicine and related institutions on the west and IKEA on the east. Of those 200 acres, 60 percent is yet to be built upon. Cortex – now officially called the Cortex Innovation Community – has 205 companies operating in its environs, providing 3,600 jobs to date.”