I thought I saw a T-shirt shop in there as well.

roger wyoming II wrote:^ looks like Alpha One, catering to the SLU Greek community

And also New Testament geeks.

I was walking by the Gerhart building the other day and noticed that in the commercial space at the corner of Laclede and Vandeventer the windows were papered over with the Kaldi's goat logo. Anyone know anything about this? Is Kaldi's opening a new location here?

^ yes, they are opening a location there

^ Wow, this is awesome, but that area is not exactly very walkable, even from across the street at SLU. I would imagine that Vandeventer needs some streetscape and traffic calming improvements, and hopefully developers can justify a new mixed-use residential above retail (City Target) at Vandeventer and Forest Park Ave.

Randy wrote:^ Wow, this is awesome, but that area is not exactly very walkable, even from across the street at SLU. I would imagine that Vandeventer needs some streetscape and traffic calming improvements, and hopefully developers can justify a new mixed-use residential above retail (City Target) at Vandeventer and Forest Park Ave.

I agree, but I do think that the area will see a definite increase in pedestrian traffic even without those improvements thanks to Ikea, Kaldis, various new apartments, etc. So hopefully that will encourage them to make more changes to the streetscape.

Kind of interesting that 7-8 years ago, many of these businesses would have considered Midtown Alley as their preferred location for a Midtown/SLU location. Most of that momentum has obviously shifted to the Southeast corner of the CWE, with the nexus of SLU, Cortex, and IKEA is just too attractive to any business or developer looking to attract clientele at all hours of the day.

As much as I love Midtown Alley and the Grand Center strip, I don't really see the trend abating with the new SLU dorms along the southwest edge of campus, the Boyle Metrolink opening up, and whatever Cortex has in store. It'd be great to see the West side of Vandy become something of a SLU college-town strip. Right now there's an empty lot to the south, and the three blocks to the north are self-storage, parking, and more parking. Seems like it could easily become the main SLU drag and a logical pedestrian corridor from Lindell to Forest Park. If only there were some example for SLU to follow of a local university boosting their own nearby commercial strip by turning under-utilized auto-centric property into a vibrant, student-oriented, multi-use development:

Kaldi's at Gerhart is now open: