Feasibility Study Consultant in St. Louis, MO: SBA and USDA

A feasibility study in St. Louis is read by a lender or a Certified Development Company before anyone else, and it has to answer the questions that institution asks of a metro whose geography does not match the national template. The St. Louis, MO-IL Metropolitan Statistical Area holds 2,811,927 residents on the Census Bureau's 2024 estimate, led by St. Louis County with 992,929, St. Charles County with 423,726, the City of St. Louis with 279,695 and Madison County, Illinois, with 263,017. The city at its centre is, under Article VI section 31 of the Missouri Constitution, both a city and a county, so a parcel inside it has no county government above it. The city's earnings tax survives only while voters renew it every five years under RSMo 92.111. The metro sits within reach of the New Madrid seismic zone, and it straddles a state line, so the statute that governs a site is decided by the parcel, not the metro name. A study that imports a single-state, single-jurisdiction, low-seismic template misses each of those, and an underwriter will notice. MMCG Invest, LLC is a feasibility study company serving St. Louis borrowers, SBA 7(a) lenders, 504 CDCs, USDA Rural Development guaranteed lenders and conventional banks across the metro's fifteen member counties on both sides of the Mississippi. The work covers ten of the asset classes the firm studies, among them hotels and motels, car washes, self-storage, RV parks, assisted living, gas stations, restaurants, fitness centers, marinas and child day care, and each report is written so the lender's credit committee, the CDC's underwriter and, where the address qualifies, the USDA state office can read the same document. Fees start at $4,900. Standard delivery runs 9 to 16 business days, a rush track is available at 5 business days, and every intake request receives a response within 12 business hours.

The St. Louis, MO-IL metro is home to about 2,811,927 residents per the U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates, led by St. Louis County at 992,929; St. Charles County at 423,726; St. Louis city at 279,695; Madison County at 263,017.

A city that is also a county, with no county government above it. Article VI section 31 of the Missouri Constitution provides that the city of St. Louis, as now existing, is recognized both as a city and as a county unless otherwise changed under the constitution. For a feasibility study that is a geographic fact before it is a legal one: a site inside the city has one fewer layer in its taxing, permitting and assessment stack than a site in St. Louis County a mile away, the two are governed by different bodies with different rates and review calendars, and a comparison between a city site and a county site is a comparison across jurisdictions, not within one. A study that treats St. Louis County as the county containing the City of St. Louis has the geography wrong, and every tax and permitting assumption downstream is wrong with it. MMCG names the jurisdiction on the first page and builds the expense and entitlement lines from that jurisdiction's own schedule.

An earnings tax that must be re-approved by the voters every five years. Under RSMo 92.111, after December 31, 2011 no city, including any constitutional charter city, may impose an earnings tax, except that a constitutional charter city that levied one on November 2, 2010 may continue it if it submits to its voters the question whether to continue the tax for a period of five years and a majority of those voting approve. The statutory summary at RSMo 92.105 states the consequence: if the majority votes to continue, the tax runs five years and is voted on again; if the majority votes against, it is phased out over a period of ten years. A ten-year projection for a city site therefore carries a tax line with a scheduled political expiry. The study cannot hold the earnings tax constant and cannot assume it away; it states the renewal cycle, takes the current rate from the city's own published schedule at intake rather than from this page, and models the operator's exposure both ways, so the credit officer sees the sensitivity rather than a silent choice.

The New Madrid seismic zone. The U.S. Geological Survey records that in the winter of 1811 and 1812 the New Madrid seismic zone generated a sequence of earthquakes lasting several months that included three estimated between magnitude 7 and 8, that the three largest destroyed several settlements along the Mississippi River, and that they caused minor structural damage as far away as Cincinnati, Ohio, and St. Louis, Missouri. St. Louis is therefore an inland metro where seismic design, and the property insurance question behind it, are live rather than nominal. A construction budget copied from a low-hazard inland comparable will understate structural cost, and an insurance assumption carried over from such a market will understate premium and deductible structure. The study does not borrow a recurrence estimate from a secondary source; it states the seismic design assumption explicitly with its source, and carries the resulting cost and premium lines.

Three jurisdictional layers in one metro: the city, the Missouri counties, and Illinois. The two Missouri instruments above do not even apply uniformly within Missouri. The earnings tax is levied by the City of St. Louis, and the city-and-county structure is the city's alone; the ordinary Missouri counties around it have a county government the city does not have, and across the river the metropolitan statistical area continues into Illinois. A project therefore falls into one of three quite different stacks, and they differ in the number of taxing layers, in whether an earnings tax applies at all, and in which state's assessment and incentive law governs. The Missouri statewide regime is treated on the Missouri feasibility study page, not here. Establishing which stack the address sits in is the first site-work step, not a formality, and a study that treats the metro as one jurisdiction carries the wrong tax line from its first page to its last.

An SBA 504 feasibility study in the St. Louis metro is written for two readers at once: the Certified Development Company that packages the debenture and the third-party lender that holds the first lien. Both underwrite under SBA SOP 50 10 8, and whether a study is required on a given file is their call under that SOP; when one is requested, MMCG writes it to that standard so a CDC analyst and a bank credit officer can each trace every input to its source. A 7(a) study follows the same discipline for a single lender, with the same four St. Louis variables carried through. The SBA closed fiscal year 2025 having guaranteed 84,400 7(a) and 504 loans for $44.8 billion, comprising 77,600 7(a) loans for $37 billion and 6,750 504 loans for $7.8 billion, per SBA News Release 25-83 of September 30, 2025, and the St. Louis cut below is the metro's share of that activity.

The St. Louis metro record is computed from the SBA's 7(a) and 504 FOIA release, labelled as of June 30, 2026, by summing the fifteen member counties, never read from a district total. In fiscal year 2025 the metro recorded 491 7(a) approvals for $264,149,700 and 54 504 approvals for $77,808,000, up from 425 7(a) approvals for $217,050,700 and 42 504 approvals for $44,043,000 in fiscal 2024. The most active 7(a) lenders in fiscal 2025 by approval count were U.S. Bank, National Association (86 loans), Northeast Bank (39), Newtek Bank, National Association (30) and Midwest Regional Bank (25 loans for $30,904,000, the largest dollar total among the lenders named). On the 504 side, St. Charles County Economic Development Council approved 25 loans for $30,755,000, followed by Rural Missouri, Inc. (12 loans, $28,290,000) and Small Business Growth Corporation (9 loans, $7,744,000). Across fiscal years 2010 to 2026 disbursed, the ten asset classes in this analysis account for 766 7(a) loans for $538,258,500 and 121 504 loans for $103,729,000 in the metro. The method and the full asset-class table sit in the St. Louis feasibility market research post.

USDA Business and Industry and Community Facilities credit runs on a statutory geography, not a county line. Under 7 U.S.C. 1991(a)(13)(A) the terms rural and rural area mean any area other than a city or town with a population of greater than 50,000 inhabitants and any urbanized area contiguous and adjacent to such a city or town, and the USDA Rural Development eligibility map is the authoritative test for any address. The St. Louis urbanized core is therefore out. What remains is the outer parts of the member counties in both states. Because the test turns on the subject address and the urbanized-area boundary around it rather than on the name of the town, no town is named on this page as eligible. MMCG verifies eligibility at the address on the USDA map at intake.

When the address qualifies, the study is written to the 7 CFR Part 5001 standard that USDA Rural Development and its guaranteed lenders apply, and it carries the same St. Louis variables as an SBA report: a qualifying address on the Missouri side and one on the Illinois side sit under different state regimes, so the study names the state whose statutes apply before anything else, and the seismic lines do not stop at the urbanized-area boundary.

A hotel feasibility study St. Louis lenders can underwrite starts from the metro's own SBA record. Across fiscal years 2010 to 2026 disbursed, hotels and motels in the St. Louis MSA drew 44 SBA 7(a) loans for $95,874,000, the second-largest 7(a) dollar total among the ten asset classes in this analysis after restaurants, and 24 SBA 504 loans for $40,411,000, the largest 504 dollar total of the ten. Both resolved cohorts are under 30 loans, so no charge-off rate is shown for either. Against that lending history the study sets the St. Louis variables that shape a hotel pro forma: a hotel inside the City of St. Louis and one in St. Louis County answer to different bodies with different rates and review calendars under Article VI section 31; a city site carries the earnings tax with its five-year renewal and ten-year phase-out run as a sensitivity; and the seismic design and property insurance lines the USGS New Madrid record makes live sit in the construction budget and the expense schedule. The report documents demand and competitive supply for the specific site and flag, projects the operating statement and tests debt-service coverage in the format an SBA lender, a CDC or a conventional bank expects, without importing a national hotel template.

Each of these traces to a statute, a federal survey record or the SBA's own file, not to a market report.

An engagement begins with three things: the project address, the asset class and the name of the lender or CDC contact who will read the report. At intake the address is placed in its jurisdiction and its state, checked against the USDA Rural Development eligibility map under 7 U.S.C. 1991, and, for a city site, the earnings tax renewal cycle is logged against the projection horizon. MMCG sends a first response within 12 business hours. Fees start at $4,900. Standard delivery runs 9 to 16 business days from engagement, and a rush track at 5 business days is available when a loan committee date requires it.

The report is formatted for SBA, CDC, USDA and conventional submission in one document, with a sources list that lets an underwriter check every figure against the Missouri Constitution or statute, the USGS record, the United States Code, the Census Bureau estimate or the SBA FOIA file it came from. The draft goes to the lender or CDC contact named at intake so questions are answered before the credit memo is written, and the final report is prepared under USPAP and written to SBA SOP 50 10 8 for 7(a) and 504 files and to 7 CFR Part 5001 for USDA files.

MMCG Invest, LLC is a feasibility study consultancy that specializes in SBA and USDA feasibility studies for lenders, Certified Development Companies, USDA Rural Development guaranteed lenders and the borrowers they serve, with St. Louis among the markets it covers. The practice is led by Michal Mohelsky, J.D., FMVA, Practicing Affiliate of the Appraisal Institute. Reports are prepared under USPAP, written to SBA SOP 50 10 8 for 7(a) and 504 files and to 7 CFR Part 5001 for USDA files, and built on primary sources named in each report: state constitution and statute, federal survey and Census records and the SBA's 7(a) and 504 FOIA release, from which every metro lending figure is computed in-house by county membership. Every figure on this page traces to one of those sources, and each report names its sources the same way.