Crepes in the City reopening under new ownership

Crepes in the City, a popular downtown eatery, closed last month month after only a year in business.  New owners are taking over the space and plan to reopen with the same menu and name.  Changes will be minor.  For example, more comfortable seating, I’m told.

Each weekend the line was always out the door but Tuesday-Friday business wasn’t enough to make it work.  The new owners hope to do things differently enough so the place turns a profit.  No date yet on when the business will reopen.

Downtown businesses have it tough.  Some in the middle of the central business district tend to cater to the weekday lunch crowd but are closed evenings and weekends.  Get West of Tucker (12th) and you lose the business lunch crowd but the weekend loft dweller crowd becomes important.  Either way they must figure out how to pay the rent.  Staying open longer hours to attract more customers sometimes costs them more in employee salaries and utilities.

I’d heard the Pasta House Pronto at the Old Post Office closed as well but it is still listed on the Pasta House website.  Espresso Mod on 9th Street closed last week.  They blamed the heavily subsidized Culinaria grocery store for their drop in business.

Restaurants or retail, some places endure and some go away replaced with something new.  One thing is certain, I’ll take my changing restaurant options over a series of chain places along the interstate any day of the week.

– Steve Patterson

Grand and Chippewa a few years later

My first post about the McDonald’s at Grand & Chippewa was on February 1, 2005, nearly 5 years ago.    I was alerting everyone about the plan to build a new McDonald’s drive-thru across Grand at Winnebego (map link).

In 2006 the battle began.  The vacant site on Grand where the McDonald’s was proposed had been a Sears site decades ago. It stood vacant.  Neighbors of new nearby homes (and many others) objected to the drive-thru which did not conform to the original blighting plan for the redevelopment.

Many meetings were attended, protests were made.  The Summer of 2006 was a busy time fighting for an urban South Grand.

By September 2006 McDonald’s had won the approvals they needed to build their new location.  In November 2006 I declared the drive-thru project dead, delays took their toll and the local franchise owner closed the old McDonald’s rather than rebuilding on the new or old site.

Not long afterward the now defunct Pyramid Construction began building senior apartments once planned for the old McDonald’s site on the former Sears site.

On January 30, 2008 I posted about a title loan operation wanting to open up shop in the long boarded up McDonalds’s building.  I attended the hearing on the title loan outfit on Thursday January 31, 2008.  I didn’t get a chance to blog about the meeting, the following afternoon I had a stroke.  It was 3 months before I returned home.

During the Spring 2009 campaigns I heard a comment from someone the only thing I contributed to the 25th Ward (just South) was the boarded McDonald’s.  Thanks, I appreciated that.  Since then someone bought the unfinished senior building and finished the project.   And just recently the boarded McDonald’s got a fresh start:

Pho Mama (Mama Pho) Vietnamese Restaurant, a new restaurant in the Dutchtown West Neighborhood Association (DWNA) area is set to open on Monday, November 2, 2009! Pho Mamma is located at the corner of S. Grand and Chippewa. Their phone is 314-802-8348 and they will be open 7 days a week from 9am to 10pm.  (Source)

The old building is not the most urban but it also isn’t new.  Often small local start-up businesses cannot afford the rents on new construction. The site may eventually become more urban.  I stopped by the area yesterday to photograph both places.

Far more tasteful in appearance than the McDonald’s.

Today the former vacant site contains senior housing with street-level retail spaces facing Grand.   I’d say S. Grand is better off without a new McDonald’s drive-thru.  It would have been a tiny building on a large site with too much parking and a duel drive-thru lane.  If only we can get the traffic calmed in this part of Grand as well as a zoning overlay to require new construction to conform to the established urban standard.

Many people were involved in putting a stop to the auto-centric McDonald’s.  We should all be proud of the outcome, I know I am.  We should also go patronize Pho Mama.

– Steve Patterson

Drivers fail to stay within parking space

From my desk at home I can see Locust Street in my peripheral vision through the glass door to my balcony.  As I see movement on the street I’ll glance over that direction.  More often than not when someone parks at the on-street metered space they fail to keep their car behind the parking meter.

When you parallel park sometimes you have no choice but to be off a bit based on the cars in front of and behind your own.  But this space I see off to my left is the one space between our drive and the next corner.   Everyone just pulls front-forward into this space.  And yet most don’t get it right.

Some cities, such as Clayton, mark on the pavement the allotted space where you are to park.

You can sorta see the parking meter in the above picture.

From the sidewalk you see this driver had nothing to prevent parking properly.

And yet the driver missed it by a long shot.  OK, you are right, in this location it doesn’t matter because the city foolishly has too few spaces.  At 11am early in the week there are not many cars around.  The commercial spaces on the 1st floors are vacant at the moment and on the weekends the street is full, especially if a neighbor is having a party.

This bad habit, repeated daily, makes me wonder if drivers need those pavement markings on the street in order to park properly?  But I also think drivers are better at parking naturally.  If we had a “pay-n-display” parking system, where the parking space length isn’t pre-determined by the meter spacing, our drivers would do a better job of parking.

In the meantime I’ll just try to resist the urge to leave these drivers a note saying, “Align the meter with the front of the car, not the side mirror.”

– Steve Patterson

Much of St. Louis region going (mostly) smoke-free by January 2011

November 3rd voters in St. Louis County approved a clean air bill covering their county (65% yes).  Prior to their vote the Board of Aldermen in the City of St. Louis passed a bill doing basically the same thing in the city, which is separate from St. County.

Both will go smoke-free on January 2, 2011. Contrary to reports, the citizen vote in the County is not triggering the city bill – in fact the County bill is delaying the effective date in the city by one day.  The city’s bill called for an effective date of January 1, 2011 unless the County ordinance began sooner.  From section 15 of the city’s bill:

This Ordinance shall be effective on such date that the Saint Louis County enacts Smoke Free Air legislation, or on January 1, 2011, whichever date is later.

Since the county effective date is 1/2/2011 it is one day later in the city.  The city’s language was poorly worded but the 2nd actually makes more sense anyway because you don’t want to try to change the policy on the night everyone is celebrating New Year’s.  I’d have made it effective on 12/31/2010 but such measures usually start at the start of a year, not the end.

The City’s law exempts small bars for five long years from the effective date.  So they will go smoke-free on January 2, 2016.  Here is the exemption language:

Bars in existence on the effective date of this ordinance in which only persons aged twenty one (21) years old or older are permitted to enter the premises, the square footage of the entire floor area of the level of the building on which the bar establishment is located is two thousand (2000) square feet or less. The square footage shall not include kitchen areas, storage areas and bathrooms. The bar shall prominently displays outside of the premises at each entrance and above the bar the following sign in lettering that is black bold Arial font at (ninety-eight) 98 point size: “WARNING : SMOKING ALLOWED HERE”. This exemption for bars shall expire five (5) years after the effective date of this ordinance.

A bar is defined in the ordinance as:

“Bar” means an establishment that is devoted to the serving of alcoholic beverages for consumption by guests on the premises and in which the serving of food is only incidental to the consumption of those beverages, including but not limited to, taverns, nightclubs, cocktail lounges, and cabarets.

My concern is that as most places goe smoke-free all the smokers are going to crowd into the small bars that permit smoking this exemption.  If that happens the non-smoking patrons of those places may shift to non-smoking bars to avoid the increase in smoke.  If this does happen that means these small bars will be increasingly dependent upon smokers. Instead of adjusting their business model to prepare for the coming smoke-free deadline they will be worse off than today.

Note that a new bar opened after January 2, 2011 it will be smoke-free regardless of the size.  Other exemptions include:

2. Not more than twenty percent (20%) of hotel and motel rooms rented to guests and designated as smoking rooms. All smoking rooms on the same floor must be contiguous and smoke from these rooms must not infiltrate into areas where smoking is prohibited under the provisions of this Ordinance. The status of rooms as smoking or nonsmoking may not be changed, except to add additional nonsmoking rooms.
3. Private clubs that have no employees, except when being used for a function to which the general public is invited; provided that smoke from such clubs does not infiltrate into areas
where smoking is prohibited under the provisions of this Ordinance. This exemption shall not apply to any organization that is established for the purpose of avoiding compliance with this Ordinance.
4. Outdoor areas of places of employment.
5. Tobacco retail stores as defined by this Ordinance.
6. Casino gaming areas as defined by this Ordinance.

I’m not overly bothered by these exemptions — except that last one.  Employees of casinos are not immune from the dangers of 2nd hand smoke.  Interestingly, the issue of casino workers exposed to smoke may get resolved in the courts.

Wynn Las Vegas is the second major resort operator to be hit with a lawsuit recently over secondhand smoke dangers. (Source)

One suit involved a pregnant casino employee.  A woman should not have to quit her job to protect her baby’s health (unless her job is something like a race car driver, stunt woman, etc).  Next steps will be to remove the casino exemption, pass similar measure in other Missouri Counties in the St. Louis area.  Ideally the state will finally pass a state-wide measure.

We’ve got a little more than 13 months until places must go smoke-free.  Hopefully some will make the transition sooner rather than waiting until the deadline. By going smoke-free before the deadline establishments can probably get some extra PR for doing so.  Along those lines, establishments that go smoke-free prior to the deadline may want to consider advertising that fact here.  Come January 3rd 2011 nearly every place will be smoke-free so by doing so early and advertising it they stand a better chance of not getting lost in the crowd of places.

On the other hand one restaurant owner told me before Tuesday he wanted to go smoke-free but wanted the law to require it.  He will continue as a smoking establishment until the deadline — he doesn’t want to offend his regulars.  He is glad it will become law so he is finally able to go smoke-free.  I can respect that.  I told him I’d visit him in 2011, but not before.

– Steve Patterson

Readers want change at the St. Louis Board of Aldermen

The poll last week received responses from a little more than 6% of the visitors to the site (174/2,848).  Of those that responded the message is very clear: the status quo is not good enough.

Q: St. Louis City has 28 wards. Many think the number should be reduced. How many is right?

• 8-10: 37 (21%)
• 14-16: 37 (21%)
• Keep the existing 28 wards: 19 (11%)
• Mix of ward, city-wide: 18 (10%)
• 11-13: 18 (10%)
• 5-7: 16 (9%)
• No wards, all city-wide: 11 (6%)
• 20-22: 8 (5%)
• 17-19: 8 (5%)
• Increase to more than 28: 2 (1%)
• 23-25 0 (0%)
• 26-27 0 (0%)
• 2-4 0 (0%)

Only 12% picked keeping the number of wards the same (11%) or higher (1%).  The other 88% of respondents all think 28 wards are too many for the City of St. Louis.  Ten percent, including me, voted for a mix of ward & city-wide representation.  The two biggest groups think a significant reduction in the number of wards with 8-10 and 14-16 each receiving 21% of the votes.

The question I have is this: will the current city “leaders” continue to ignore/fight the need for change or will guide the process to change the city’s charter on their own terms? My bet is they will go with the former, putting their collective heads in the sand and hope the call for change.  They’ll pull their heads out of the sand long enough to object to a coming citizen drive to change the charter.  “We weren’t consulted” they’ll cry out months from now.  Today the choice is theirs to make: show leadership or get out of the way as citizens set about reforming our city’s dated charter.

– Steve Patterson