Walmart and Wing’s first drone nest in the St. Louis suburbs died on Thursday night without a single council member touching it. At 58 minutes into the October 15 meeting of the Kirkwood City Council, Mayor Liz Gibbons read Bill 11153, an ordinance granting a special use permit for a drone delivery facility at the Walmart Supercenter at 1202 South Kirkwood Road, and asked for a motion. Nobody made one. Forty seconds later she read the next item, and the bill was dead.
Kirkwood, Missouri, a suburb southwest of St. Louis, is one of 12 stores in the metro where Walmart and Alphabet-owned Wing want to launch, and the first filed application in the metro to fail. The city’s own Planning and Zoning Commission had recommended approval on September 2 with 11 conditions, and its subcommittee report concluded the application met every criterion in the zoning code.
Mayor Gibbons Asked for a Motion and Got None
Bill 11153 died because no one on the Kirkwood City Council would move it. Five of six members and Mayor Liz Gibbons were present, and a bill needs a motion and a second before a vote. Gibbons asked for one, said “No motion,” and moved on.
That is why the local reporting disagrees on what happened. KMOX wrote that every member stayed silent and the bill could not advance. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch said members refused to cast a vote. KMOV reported a unanimous vote to strike the permit down, which the meeting video does not show: there was no voice vote either, and Council Member Gina Jaksetic was absent. No vote, no findings and no reason were entered in the record.
The silence came from members who had sounded open to the idea days earlier. Council Member Paul Schaefer told KMOX on October 13 that he was “all for it” if the city could control it, and warned that otherwise residents would simply order from Ellisville. Council Member Justin Arnold told the Webster-Kirkwood Times the city was “better off getting it right, rather than ceding it to some other city.” Council Member Deb Lavender’s newsletter, dated the day of the meeting, framed the question as whether drones improve residents’ lives or “clutter the skies about our homes.”
Planners Found the Nest Met Every Zoning Test
SUP-08-26 was filed by Rick Rohlfing of BFA Engineering for Walmart and Wing in the B-5 Planned Commercial Development District. The Planning and Zoning subcommittee visited the site August 25, and its September 2 report found the request met the criteria in Sections 25-20(e) and (f) of the zoning code.
The report, signed by James Adkins, Kevin Chapman and Hart Smith, recommended approval with 11 conditions, and the full commission adopted it the same day. The council held its public hearing on October 1.
The ordinance would have put the nest in the southwest corner of the Kirkwood Commons lot, at least 250 feet from the storefront at Walmart’s own stipulation, inside a six-foot black fence with bollards. It capped the site at 18 drones and 2.5 pounds (1.1 kilograms) per delivery, limited flights to 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. and to single-family homes, required an electric power bank instead of a gas generator, and expired if permits were not pulled within 12 months.
The report also put noise figures on paper: about 43 decibels for a cruising drone and about 63 decibels for a delivering one, which the planners compared to a delivery truck. Wing’s own figures at the October 1 hearing, as reported by KMOX and the Webster-Kirkwood Times, were about 200 feet (61 meters) in cruise and about 62 decibels while hovering to lower a package. Catherine Lovett, Wing’s manager of local policy, told the council the companies aim to have nearly 300 Walmarts flying by the end of 2027.
Residents Heard a Leaf Blower Where the Report Said a Truck
Every resident who spoke about the permit on October 15 opposed it, and noise led the list: Janet Ward Graves had already told the council that residents in other Wing markets were promised the sound of a passing van and got a leaf blower, with traffic that became continuous.
Dixie Mansker asked the council to deny the permit, pointed out that the stated payload had crept from 2.5 to 2.75 pounds between meetings and that prescription deliveries were now being discussed, and asked Kirkwood to coordinate with Crestwood, Sunset Hills, Des Peres and Glendale rather than become the region’s test case. Another speaker cited the National Park Service ban on drones as evidence that the noise disturbs wildlife, and argued that no noise fine would deter a company with revenue in the $700 billion range.
Privacy ran a close second. A resident identified by KMOX as Melissa asked who keeps the records and pictures of homes as the drones fly over. Wing’s answer has shifted with the audience. Lovett told Planning and Zoning on August 19 that the aircraft are not equipped with cameras, the Times reported, and at the October 1 hearing Wing said they carry no live video or audio feed. In August, communications manager Jessie Poole-Strang told KMOV the aircraft do use cameras, for landing only, and that “what we do not use the drone for is any live feed imagery to anyone.”
One resident offered the council a cheaper test than a permit. He asked members to table the bill, bring a Wing aircraft to his house, and drop two and a half pounds of goods through the mature oaks in his front yard so they could hear it themselves. He said he would pay for the groceries.
Eleven Other St. Louis Stores Remain on Wing’s List
Walmart and Wing named St. Louis as a 2026 market on January 11, alongside Los Angeles, Cincinnati and Miami, in the 150-store expansion meant to reach more than 270 stores by 2027. Kirkwood’s subcommittee report counts 12 stores in the metro, with High Ridge in Jefferson County the only approval.
Nine months after that announcement, Wing’s own St. Louis page still says the service is coming soon and offers a waitlist.
The rest of the list is moving at the speed of each council. KMOV named Manchester, Maplewood, St. Charles and Glen Carbon, Illinois, as the other communities Walmart approached in August. Maplewood’s city manager, Amber Withycombe, said any nest at the Walmart and Sam’s Club site there needs zoning approval because the property sits inside a planned unit development. St. Charles Mayor Dan Borgmeyer went the other way, said the FAA regulates the flights and his city already has sound ordinances, and ran his own decibel meter test that put the drone at about a passing car. Kirkwood’s city planner, Amy Lowry, told the council Wing intends to blanket the region.
Kirkwood is the first of those councils to have a filed permit in front of it. Castle Rock, Colorado, froze hub applications 7 to 0 in July after Walmart’s pre-application for an 18-drone port. Northglenn is writing a drone hub ordinance with buffers and a decibel cap. Lincoln County, North Carolina, put Walmart’s pad in front of its commissioners with a 200-signature petition against it. Kirkwood is the only one of them that reached a drafted ordinance and then declined to vote.
DroneXL’s Take
A council that does not want a drone nest should vote no and say why. Kirkwood had the grounds to do that on the record: a delivering drone at 63 decibels over backyards from 7 in the morning to 10 at night, and a stated payload that grew between meetings. Six officials declining to move a bill is a consensus, and a clear one. But it is a consensus with no reasons attached, so the only arguments in the record belong to the residents who filled out comment cards. Wing and Walmart leave Kirkwood with no finding to appeal and no condition to fix, and the next 11 councils get no guidance from the one that went first.
The residents who asked for a demonstration had the better instinct. Northglenn’s memo and the FAA’s July environmental finding both say a city cannot regulate the flights, only the pad, so the noise question will never be settled by a zoning condition. It gets settled by a Wing aircraft over a Kirkwood oak tree with a sound meter underneath it, the demonstration a resident offered to host and the council never took up. Wing had not answered the 30 written safety questions DroneXL sent on September 8 when we last reported on October 5, and the decibel figures in Kirkwood’s report are the applicant’s, not a reading from a Kirkwood yard. I expect St. Louis to keep producing Kirkwoods until Wing flies one in public. High Ridge, the one yes in the metro, is where it should invite every other council to stand and listen.
Sources: City of Kirkwood, October 15, 2026 City Council agenda packet (Bill 11153 and the September 2 Planning and Zoning subcommittee report), City of Kirkwood meeting video, KMOX, KMOX, October 13, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, KMOV First Alert 4, KMOV, August 5, Webster-Kirkwood Times, Deb Lavender’s Kirkwood Newsletter, FOX 2 St. Louis, Wing St. Louis page, DroneXL Wing tracker
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.
