Lofty intentions: St. Louis grows downtown into dining destination
By Carolyn Walkup
Celebrated chef Larry Forgione's transplanted An American Place is one of several restaurants to open in St. Louis' loft district over a six-month span.
ST. LOUIS (Dec. 13) - The newly developed Washington Avenue Loft District fast is becoming the hottest restaurant destination in this town.
New restaurants are opening rapidly, ranging from locally based neighborhood eateries to celebrated chef Larry Forgione's transplanted New York landmark, An American Place. In fact, no fewer than seven new restaurants are opening in a six-month time span.
In a downtown neighborhood that until recently was so blighted that most of its loft buildings had stood empty for decades, residents and visitors are being attracted by the upstart dining establishments as well as a new convention hotel, boutiques, and the area's loft apartments and condominiums. Estimates of money already invested in the 12-block stretch of Washington Avenue and adjacent streets range from $1 billion to $3 billion.
Incentives from government programs, including federal and state historic-preservation tax credits, "tax-increment financing" funds from TIF districts and a "forgivable-loan" program have encouraged developers to invest in the neighborhood. A substantial collection of seven- to eight-story loft buildings dating from the 1890s through the 1920s, many built for shoe manufacturing and other garment-industry factories, is proving ideal for conversion to loft residences with ground-floor commercial space, developers say.
"All of the buildings were salvageable ? not a single one has been torn down," said Kevin McGowan of McGowan-Marsh, a developer that also operates the new Lucas Park Grille & Market in one of its buildings. McGowan projects the restaurant will have first-year sales of $2 million.
McGowan is confident that all of the current redevelopment finally will bring back the Washington Avenue neighborhood, although previous attempts to do so in the 1970s and again in the early 1990s failed. He blamed those failures on lack of planning and insufficient investment. "There is too much investment for it not to work now," McGowan said.
"It's a matter of creating critical mass," Jim Cloar, president of Downtown St. Louis Partnership, said. "People are very enthusiastic about it. I've always felt that downtown didn't have enough restaurants."
Pablo Weiss and a partner were the first to open a restaurant, Kitchen K in the loft district some 16 months ago. Weiss said sales are running 20 percent higher than projections, from a customer base comprising new neighborhood residents, suburbanites, tourists and the downtown business community.
"There has been a boom of restaurants coming in on my heels," Weiss said. "It's becoming more of a scene, kind of like Clayton." Clayton, a tony suburb about 20 minutes away, has been one of the St. Louis metropolitan area's premier restaurant destinations for several years.
Residents of St. Louis and neighboring counties have been reluctant to come to the loft district for dinner except on Saturday nights, Weiss said. "Old habits die hard," he noted. Visitors from the nearby America's Center convention center and new residents of both his building and nearby lofts, which are about 95 percent occupied, fill seats on weeknights.
Todd Sanders, a former country club general manager and a friend of Weiss, just opened his fast-casual 10th Street Italian, a contemporary deli featuring gourmet sandwiches and other foods. He chose the loft district over an outlying location he'd at first considered after finding that rent for the city spot would be about half that of the more distant site. But commercial rents in the loft district already have risen since he signed his lease, he noted.
"I thought downtown would be a good market, with the upscale population that's moving in here, plus convention and visitor traffic," Sanders said. His location, on the ground floor of the Renaissance Grand ballroom building, is just 300 feet from the convention center's front door, he pointed out.
His fine-dining neighbor, An American Place, is the newest re-creation of the former Manhattan restaurant that chef-owner Forgione opened in 1983. As he has throughout his career, Forgione has cultivated a relationship with local growers and farmers to provide most of the raw ingredients for his newest restaurant.
"It's a very exciting market," he said. "We are finding people to be not as atypical as New Yorkers think of Midwestern eating habits. People are incredibly excited about trying new things."
Checks are averaging about $55, and roughly 70 percent of the guests are local, Forgione said.
In addition to the food, the ambience of the ornate, two-story, Renaissance-style dining room, with its vaulted ceiling and marble columns, is a major attraction.
The district also has attracted a partnership of two prominent Chicago restaurateurs who've teamed up with Orchard Development and J. Freed & Associates to open Red Moon, a French-Asian fusion restaurant. Doug Roth, former proprietor of Bistro 110 and Blackhawk Lodge in Chicago, and Jerry Kleiner of Chicago's Red Light, Marche, Opera and other restaurants, are Red Moon's managing partners.
Kleiner and his partners were the pioneering restaurateurs of Chicago's West Randolph Street restaurant row. He and Roth see similarities between that street and the Washington Avenue Loft District.
"Restaurants help anchor the neighborhood," Roth said. "As more restaurants develop, our feeling is that people will explore and make their way down here. The neighborhood is creating new habits on the perimeter of where people have gone to dine."
Although Roth is confident the restaurant will be successful, there is risk involved. "Nothing is a slam dunk," he conceded. "Everything is in the hands of the consumer."
Additional restaurants scheduled to open soon nearby in the next few months include Mosaic Modern Fusion Cuisine, Novato Wine Bar, Flannery's Restaurant and Washington Ave. Wine Co.
**Source**
In my opinion, now that it's a restaurant, it kind of looks cluttered and broken up, since it was originally the lobby of the Statler, but it's still an impressive space.