This is an unfinished draft from April 2010 which I decided to publish to see in retrospective what I saw back then. It seems I was at least partially correct:
I hate to say it. People have told me this obituary --- I thought prematurely --- for many years. However, this time around, I'm here to add insults. Why? Oh my --- let me count the ways. Year after year, we watched as Southwestern Bell (now AT&T) moved their corporate headquarters out of town to San Antonio, Texas, and literally dozens of others who fled downtown for the better part of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s for "better" neighborhoods, many of which were not even in St. Louis. So, when I count the ways, it's actually not as easy as it sounds to give it a number. But, suffice it to say, that number would be in the dozens.
Let me reference a post by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (somehow they're still around for 2010, I guess, despite my own prediction that it would be hard to believe if they'd still be here in 2010) online http://interact.stltoday.com/blogzone/business-news/business-talk/2008/02/what-do-you-think-about-the-downtown-schnucks/ blog and the responses from February 2008, when Schnucks announced they were going forward with a plan to open a "new" downtown St. Louis location. Several people felt it was invasive and uncommonly bad to open a "high end" store in the middle of downtown when other stores were doing just enough business to flourish when Schnucks had announced years before that they felt downtown was dead (myself included). Yes, in a sense, Schnucks and their "NAI DESCO" arm, said they felt downtown St. Louis was dead when they closed their Cass Avenue location in 2000.
Somehow, when "The Friendliest Stores in Town" started looking outside their own supermarketing, they lost something "hometown" in my opinion. They became too corporate, looking more toward profits and less toward being a good steward of a neighborhood. I'm sure that Schnucks won't like this post --- but it's true that in the eyes of many, if not most, St. Louisans, closing the Cass Avenue location was not a good neighborly business practice so much as a way of making downtown die quicker.
Yet, as those who lived in and near downtown SCREAMED that there was nowhere for residents to shop, and as the new City Grocers opened in 2004, there must have been someone in the Schnuck family who saw an opportunity to reopen downtown and take business away from a group which BELIEVED in that part of the city. City Grocers becomes a nice "local" market for downtown St. Louis. It had many neighborhood businesses who began to sing its praises almost immediately upon its opening. I made visits to its street-level store and bought myself lunch and/or snacks on several occasions, even though I didn't live downtown or work downtown for many years before it opened. That, however, is not why I am calling downtown dead now. City Grocers, now repurposed as City Deli since some changes in 2009, has obviously done its part to make it live. But one store cannot truly keep an entire neighborhood open, despite my saying the closing the Cass Avenue Schnucks store virtually killed downtown after 2000.
Okay, back to one of the things that causes me to say Schnucks didn't care about downtown, and has helped to kill downtown.
--- Schnucks' opens "Culinaria" at 315 N. 9th Street in downtown St. Louis in the midst of an economic crisis instead of re-opening the Cass Avenue location that SCHNUCKS ABANDONED IN THE FIRST PLACE.
How, you ask, am I saying that they are killing downtown by closing a store and by opening another store several years later? Ahh...it's not that tough to see, now that I've gone downtown to see for myself what it has done to the "neighborhood" in which "Culinaria" resides.
First, let me state that I haven't gone downtown and "walked" for several months --- it was 2009 when I last walked around downtown. Since I last made the "walking tour" through the heart of downtown, along the area east of Tucker, between Washington and Market, and west of Memorial Drive (and I did it almost yearly from 1997 to 2008, mind you), things have DRAMATICALLY changed. If someone had asked me eight months ago if I thought downtown was dying, I probably would have said "no" --- but this week, I had only to drive through that "heart of downtown" once to see the sad truth.
Near where the "Culinaria" arrived USED TO BE several thriving businesses. These businesses were all attempting to keep the doors open in the worst economic conditions since September of 2001 for that part of the city. And guess what happened once that store began to take hold. Doors closed, businesses either moved or closed altogether. Espresso Mod, which was a destination for coffee drinkers as well as lovers of downtown St. Louis, was one of the first victims. Last October, it closed its doors due to a rapid drop-off of customers who were siphoned off by Culinaria. Its owner, Paul Charsley, made that point in an article in the St. Louis Business Journal the week he shut the doors. I'm missing Espresso Mod more than ever after my latest trek through downtown.
Okay, not all sucks about downtown St. Louis. Monday was the LARGEST crowd to grace "new" Busch Stadium for a Cardinals game. Of course, it was the season opener, so it was going to be a large gathering of Redbird fans anyway. But --- the kicker is, I'm not harping about Monday. Monday looked like a huge party. It was celebratory --- the Cardinals are our sports heroes, no doubt about it. Professional baseball players all would love to be one of those who live on the roster in St. Louis, because it truly is "baseballtown America". However, that doesn't mean 50-thousand people showed up to grace downtown St. Louis on Tuesday.
Dateline Downtown St. Louis.
Tuesday, 10:49 am, arriving from I-70 at Memorial Drive, turning onto Pine and traveling west. Stopping at 4th Street and at Broadway, I immediately notice one thing that was not just different, but shockingly different from 1997 when I worked at the Metropolitan Square Building. Foot traffic was all but gone. I watched a couple jaywalk at 4th and Pine, not having to stop for vehicular traffic when walking against the light. I witnessed three smokers outside the Met Square, two others walking into the building, and one exiting on the Broadway side, as two women walked across Pine then traveled west on the south side of Pine Street. It may be my imagination, but I think I saw one other person walking near Caleco's door. Nobody on the east side of Broadway between Pine and Chestnut outside a major building. My drive to the west continues. At 6th Street, I see two people walking on the north side of Pine, while there are perhaps five walking along 6th between Pine and Chestnut (wow, I recall thinking, THAT is where all the people are). I continue west past 7th Street and 8th Street and see a smattering of human life. Probably more at 7th than at 6th, but the light was green so I didn't take it in as easily as everywhere else because of the actual "traffic jam" of 5 vehicles ahead of me. Five vehicles was a jam at almost 11 a-m? What's going on here? Where is the pedestrian traffic? I drive up to 9th street and turn north. What? Espresso Mod is gone and there are more cars parked than people walking. I pull up to the light at Olive and see five people on the northwest corner, three on the southwest corner, three on the northeast corner (at least two of which had just traveled west from 8th to the intersection because there had been one person walking along 9th when I was moving northbound). Oh, this must be the lunch hour rush beginning. [let me interrupt what I am writing to do math. 5 + 3 + 3 = 11. THAT is a lunch hour rush near the Culinaria??? Let me say it in netspeak --- WTF?]
This doesn't look good. Espresso Mod is gone. The Great Clips next to it is open, but it sure doesn't seem crowded despite the lunch hour. I'd think that if downtown were busy, a Tuesday haircut is somewhat possible. Those people looked bored. Yes, there was at least one customer inside. But it didn't look like they were "standing in line" to get their hair clipped. But let me focus again. I have to turn...going up to Locust, I turn left/west and travel to 10th Street...because I wanted to see Olive Street and the "jam" near the entrance to Culinaria, I go east. No traffic jam at Culinaria in the street or at the doors. It's 10:56 am, what was traditionally when you'd see the early lunch crowd rushing into the doors at a downtown eatery.
Okay, so maybe I really "missed" the early rush downtown. Perhaps they are all inside the Culinaria eating lunch already. Is it the $5.69 burgers? Sure, that's a great deal --- for a company who wants to gouge the public.
Okay, right now, I'm not liking this Culinaria place much. Schnucks --- they may just attempt to file a lawsuit against a blogger after I'm done with raking them over the coals.
