Starting Monday, WhoLou.net will join nextSTL. Over the past year, Geoff Whittington has routinely broken news on his "St. Louis Business News and Gossip" site. A dedicated page will feature Geoff's weekly Monday column and be titled, "WhoLou - primary sources". Time and again Geoff has displayed the ability to go to the source of the news and inform readers days or weeks ahead of traditional media outlets. His reporting will expand the reach of nextSTL and offer readers insight into breaking regional business development news. Select prior news published on WhoLou will be made available on nextSTL.

Among recent breaking news items from Geoff was the surge in the capital improvement budget from $3-$6M annually to $16M for 2012 for Dial Corp.'s North Riverfront Business Corridor (NRBC) facility. The item further revealed that Dial Corp., a personal-care and household-cleaning products manufacturer, is planning to expand their popular Renuzit brand of air freshener. Geoff was also first to report that the St. Louis College of Pharmacy would embark on a $100M campus expansion and renovation project to be led by Canon Design. Commercial real estate broker Michael Convy of the Convy Group LLC has been selected by the college to be owners representative for the project. In 2005 Convy Group LLC was developer for the CORTEX One building project.

We're excited to welcome Geoff and WhoLou to the nextSTL family and look forward to his weekly business news column. Geoff was born in Houston and raised in St. Louis. He has spent his adult life living in Kirkwood where he is fostering his journalistic identity while simultaneously pursuing a finance degree. In the past he has worked at the Post Dispatch and was a business news columnist at the AOL owned news website Patch.com. Plan to start off your work week with nextSTL and Geoff Whittington by getting a first look in his business news and development column. After all, you don't want to be the Business Journal last to know, do you?