Bruce Sommer, key executive at downtown convention center for 25 years, dead at 83

ST. LOUIS — Bruce Sommer, who played a key role running the downtown St. Louis convention center complex for 25 years until his retirement in 2009, died Sunday at Cedarhurst, a retirement facility in St. Charles. He was 83.

Sommer had been a St. Louis alderman for nine years when he was picked by Mayor Vincent Schoemehl in 1984 to become director of what was then just the Cervantes Convention Center.

During his tenure there were two major expansions of the complex, including the addition of the domed football stadium. The overall facility was named America’s Center and came under management of the regional Convention and Visitors Commission.

“He ran the place ... at its peak when they had some major events,” said Brian McMurtry, who worked with Sommer as executive director of the Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority and on the America’s Center staff.

“He ran the building very efficiently.”

Among those events, he recalled, was the Mass celebrated in 1999 by Pope John Paul II at the stadium (then called the Trans World Dome), the NCAA Final Four basketball tournament in 2005 and Rams playoff games.

A son, John Sommer of St. Charles, said one of his father’s standout memories was of a private meeting he had with the pope before the Mass.

Sommer first ran for alderman in 1971 in the city’s old 8th Ward, narrowly losing in the Democratic primary. In 1972, he became chairman of the St. Louis area’s New Democratic Coalition, then a leading group in the party’s liberal wing.

He was elected in 1975 as 6th Ward alderman and twice reelected. In 1981, he ran unsuccessfully for comptroller.

During his initial years at City Hall, he was sharply critical of the city’s political leadership, at one point filing legal complaints accusing then-Mayor John Poelker, the comptroller and license collector of willful misconduct in office.

He also was known for unsuccessfully proposing a red light district where prostitution could be legal, controlled and taxed; as well as a staunch opponent of tax abatement for downtown developers and an advocate of abolishing political patronage.

“He was very, very independent; he was very, very dedicated” in those years, said former Aldermanic President James Shrewsbury. “He wasn’t always practical.”

Sommer later in his aldermanic tenure became less critical of the status quo, changing his position on tax abatement, for example.

“Like most people, I guess, I’ve been changed by time, experience, seeing how things are done,” he told a Post-Dispatch reporter soon after he was named convention director.

In addition to overseeing the convention center for the city, Sommer was in charge of the old Arena and Kiel Auditorium before they were closed.

Sommer grew up near the Missouri Botanical Garden in south St. Louis and went to Chaminade College Preparatory School. He was in the Army for three years, then earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science from the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

In the 1970s, he began working for St. Louis University’s community medicine department, where he became director of neighborhood programs. He also taught human biology and ecology to St. Louis U. medical students.

From 1978 to 1986 he operated a downtown restaurant called Sommer House.

In 2007, he was given the UMSL Chancellor’s Award.

Among other survivors are another son, David Sommer of Los Angeles; a brother, Joe Sommer of Wildwood, and two grandsons.

Sommer’s family in an obituary said he asked that no services be held “but to instead honor him with your memories.”