St. Louis-based private equity firm Frontier Group is spearheading a more than $1 billion venture to build a residential ocean liner, and St. Louis stands to benefit.

Frontier Group, co-founded by Sanford “Sandy” McDonnell, former chairman and CEO of McDonnell Douglas Corp., is putting up most of the money to launch Utopia Residences Co., which has ordered its ship be built by South Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries Co. for delivery in 2013.

Utopia is selling private residences, ranging from 1,400 square feet to as large as 40,000 square feet, aboard the ship. Once complete, the vessel will sail to international events — the Cannes Film Festival in France, the Monaco Grand Prix, Carnival in Rio De Janeiro, the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, New Year’s Eve in Sydney Harbor and more — throughout the year.

David Robb, Utopia’s chairman and another co-founder of Frontier Group, said he expects fewer than 20 percent of the residential owners will occupy their on-board homes year round. Many will travel to and from the ship as they please. But in addition to restaurants, swimming pools and other amenities, the ship will feature a state-of-the art business and communications center from which residents can manage their businesses, Robb said.

Utopia and its flagship showroom are based in Beverly Hills, and two additional showrooms grace Madison Avenue in New York City.

But Robb said Utopia has selected St. Louis to be the future home of four infrastructure and support services operations that will receive millions of dollars in investment and create local jobs.

St. Louis will host a call center Utopia will use to interact with customers, suppliers and employees. A travel services operation here will be responsible for booking airline tickets and charter planes to coordinate the movement of 700 people from around the world who will work directly on the ship, another 300 corporate employees stationed around the globe, as well as residents moving to and from the ship. A logistical operation will be responsible for scheduling the ship’s crew and service staff from various countries, and coordinating the supply of fresh food and other goods to the ship. Finally, a warehouse here will hold spare parts for the ocean liner and be responsible for packaging them for air freight deliveries as needed.

Robb said he could not yet provide an estimate for the overall investment these operations would require in St. Louis, nor the number of employees that will be needed to run them. But he said the company’s management reached a consensus decision to base them here.

“The beauty of St. Louis is that because of the number of corporate headquarters in the area there is a large reservoir of highly skilled employees with some of the best work ethic you can find in the United States,” Robb said. “We have a significant sales office in Beverly Hills and two sales offices on Madison Avenue in New York, but neither city was as compelling as St. Louis for housing these business functions.”

Robb said Utopia already has commitments for about one-sixth of the residential units even though the company has not started formal sales and marketing.

“Every industry is being hit hard by the downturn in the economy, and luxury has been hit especially hard,” said David Winter, who leads The Luxury Marketing Council’s operations in southern California and Arizona. “That said, the highest of high-end offerings still seem to be very strong. If you were worth $1 billion and lost even 50 percent of your value you are still worth $500 million. The ultra-wealthy individual is pretty much done sitting on his hands. Now that they see they have gained back a huge amount of their losses in the stock market, they will start spending again.”

The smallest units Utopia will offer, at 1,400 square feet, will cost $3.7 million, Robb said. It takes $24 million to buy a 6,600-square-foot home on the sea. And the prices of a handful of custom residences at 10,000 square feet and more will climb even higher. The 40,000-square-foot unit, being purchased by a European family, will cost more than $160 million, which will likely make it one of the six most expensive new-built homes in the world when it is complete, Robb said.

Utopia owners also will pay annual fees roughly equivalent to the property taxes and association or building fees charged to condominium owners in New York or London to help cover the costs for the ship to produce its own drinking water, treat its own waste, and other functions usually left to municipalities on land.

“We’ll be like our own city on the sea,” Robb said.

A venture called ResidenSea built a similar cruise ship about a decade ago called The World with 165 residential units. Robb has hired the same core team of designers who built that ship to lead his team at Utopia, but stressed there will be differences. Utopia’s vessel will be about twice as large as The World, offer much more luxury and operate as a company rather than as a not-for-profit controlled by its residents, Robb said.

And there will be one more difference for those who don’t fit into the ultra-wealthy category. A portion of Utopia’s living space will operate as a hotel for non-residents.