Cortex officials say their master plan calls for $2.3 billion of construction, producing more than 4.5 million square feet of mixed-use development to house 13,000 jobs in technology.

[10][11] In 1998, William Henry Danforth, former chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, sought to help the region better build upon its strengths in medicine and plant sciences.

Danforth and John Dubinsky, CEO of financial consulting firm Westmoreland Associates and the eventual chairman of the Cortex board, went to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to study Kendall Square, a noted innovation district, to see how the concept could be used in St.

St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay allowed Cortex to redevelop the area broadly in the "public interest" by issuing tax abatements and using eminent domain.

[14] In summer 2014, Square, the payments company set up by St. Louis natives Jim McKelvey and Jack Dorsey, opened offices at Cortex 4240.

[16] In March 2020, Washington University School of Medicine announced the construction of a new $616 million, 11 story, 609,000-square-foot neuroscience research building which will sit at the eastern edge of the Medical Campus in the Cortex Innovation Community.