Belleville’s new economic development director eyes growth, vacant buildings
.jpeg "Austin Albert started his job as director of economic development, planning and zoning for the city of Belleville in early April. He replaces Cliff Cross, who resigned last June.")
Belleville’s new director of economic development, planning and zoning is a 39-year-old Illinois native with a background in public planning and private real estate development.
Austin Albert also served more than four years as a U.S. Army intelligence analyst and four years as a reservist before earning a master’s degree in city and regional planning.
Albert sees himself as a “utility player” whose varied background can be an asset in guiding Belleville’s growth. The city of about 41,000 people continues to attract new business but struggles with problems related to vacant and derelict buildings.
“I’ve been blessed and had such great opportunities and great mentors to teach me about all the elements of working around the proverbial table, to show me what ‘right’ looks like and, honestly, in many cases, what ‘wrong’ looks like,” he said.
Albert started the job April 1. His annual salary is $150,009, according to Finance Director Jamie Maitret.
The city had been without an economic development director for nearly a year. Cliff Cross resigned last June. He told the BND he was taking a similar position in Georgia that would put him in a better position for retirement, but he ended up in Texas.
Cross was hired in 2021 by former Mayor Patty Gregory, who was defeated in the April 2025 election by Jenny Gain Meyer, the former city clerk. His ending salary was $119,260 a year.
“When you go through these elections as an appointed director, you start putting out feelers a month or two before the election, just in case your mayor doesn’t get reelected and the new mayor says, ‘We don’t want you,’” he said when he resigned.
“But I want to be clear, that’s not the case with Jenny. She has not done anything to make me feel I’m not wanted.”
Meyer made changes after Cross left, turning most zoning-related duties over to Dusty Hosna, who filled the new position of zoning administrator last fall. His salary is $71,011 a year.
Meyer couldn’t be reached on Thursday for comment on how many people applied or interviewed to be economic development director or why Albert was selected.
Albert said he was attracted to Belleville, partly because of its diversity of people, businesses and housing.
Albert and his wife, Amanda, an assistant librarian at Washington University, and their two daughters, Rosella, 7, and Greta, 4, live in a century-old home in south St. Louis.
Albert was born in Morris, but his family also lived in Wisconsin and Minnesota before returning to Illinois. He graduated from a Peoria high school and studied international business and international relations at Webster University in St. Louis.
“I graduated in December of 2008, about two weeks after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, so that was right at the beginning of the housing crisis,” Albert said.
In other words, it wasn’t a great time to start a career. Albert continued working part-time for a law firm that specialized in representing municipalities and held other jobs before enlisting in the U.S. Army, which deployed him twice to Afghanistan.
Albert then earned a master’s degree in city and regional planning at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. He and his wife moved back to her hometown of St. Louis in 2016.
Albert got a job with the consulting firm Development Strategies, whose projects included City Foundry, a food hall and shopping and entertainment complex in a former St. Louis electric company foundry.
“We helped them design their redevelopment plan,” Albert said, noting that it involved tax-increment financing. “We did the blighting study. We did the economic-impact study.”
Albert later worked for St. Louis Development Corp.’s “land bank,” known as the Land Reutilization Authority, helping the city of St. Louis manage vacant and delinquent properties.
That got Albert interested in private development and prompted him to join a small commercial real estate company in 2019, just in time for business to be halted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Albert worked briefly for Vatterott Properties before holding two positions with the Missouri Department of Economic Development, first as St. Louis regional engagement manager and later as a project analyst with the Missouri Development Finance Board.
Albert calls getting the job as Belleville’s economic development director a “full-circle” moment, a time when he can start taking all that he’s learned in the past 20 years and use that knowledge in his own community. He and his wife plan to move to Belleville.
“I’m excited,” Albert said. “It’s an exciting prospect to be part of an administration, to be part of a staff that all wants to try to do something new to make a positive impact.”
