Second Lucky’s Market Now Open In St. Louis Region

In November I posted about the first Lucky’s Market in our region — occupying a space in Ellisville built by Straub’s just a few years before. If you haven’t heard of Luckty’s Market before:

The Lucky’s Market chain was started by a husband-and-wife team 12 years ago in Colorado. As two chefs, the couple wanted a grocery store for food lovers like themselves, so they opened their first store in 2003 to sell specialty foods at affordable prices.

“We really work to meet people on their personal food journey by simply making natural foods more accessible, and doing so in a comfortable and welcoming store environment,” said Krista Torvik, a representative of Lucky’s Market.

Lucky’s sells “never ever” meats, which have never been treated with antibiotics or artificial growth hormones. In addition, customers will be able to find local produce, fresh seafood and baked goods (like maple bacon doughnuts!), alongside bacon that’s been cured and smoked in-house and homemade sausage.

The market also offers ready-to-eat meats, salads and sides that are made in-store daily, plus fresh juices and smoothies at its juice bar.

For shoppers’ convenience, Lucky’s Market still sells consumer favorites like Coca-Cola and Campbell’s soup, and the store has a bulk items section. (Ft. Lauderdale Daily)

The new location is at 9530 Manchester Rd, in Rock Hill, much later than originally planned:

The company originally planned to open the Rock Hill store in the first quarter of 2014, but was delayed while the developer, Webster Groves-based Novus Development Co., worked out a funding agreement including a community improvement district with the city.

In the year of delay, the store added over 12,000 square feet to the building plans, Chief Growth Officer Mike Phillips said. Though the company would not disclose construction costs, Vice President of Marketing Ben Friedland said it kept costs as low as possible by using refurbished and used equipment and materials in order to give customers the low prices the grocer advertises. (St. Louis Business Journal)

This is their 13th location nationwide.

For 5 years in the early 1990s I worked for a general contractor out of his house located exactly where this store is now! The Schnucks at Manchester & Brentwood is a mile to the East, a Dierbergs Market is a mile to the West — it opened when I worked in the area.

With this Rock Hill location Lucky’s Markets operates 13 stores in 10 states. Five more locations are “coming soon” including one in an 11th state.

By comparison, Trader Joe’s has 457 locations in 39 states and Washington D.C., Whole Foods has 408 locations in 42 U.S. states.  In February 2013 Whole Foods announced a 3rd St. Louis area location, in the Central West End. It was supposed to open by this Fall — but will now open in 2016.

On the other end of the scale, we have local stores like Local Harvest & Fields Foods in the City of St. Louis. It would be interesting to compare the selection & prices at these local stores to places like Lucky’s Market & Whole Foods.

— Steve Patterson

A Century Since the River Des Peres Flood of 1915

One hundred years ago today St. Louis experienced deadly flooding. The problem wasn’t the Mississippi, it was the River Des Peres!

On the afternoon of Aug. 19, 1915, remnants of a hurricane reached St. Louis from Texas. Heavy and steady rainfall fell through the next day, dumping a total of 7.4 inches across the area. (6.85 inches on Aug. 20 remains the one-day record in St. Louis.)

The River Des Peres rushed from its banks, swamping long stretches of Delmar and Lindell boulevards, Manchester Avenue and other streets. People were stranded on the Wabash Railroad platform at Delmar (now a Metrolink station) by a seven-foot-deep current 200 yards wide. Firefighters reached them with ladders and used boats to rescue residents of Maple and Hodiamont avenues. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch — includes vintage photos)

In August 1915, St. Louis was flooded. All roads leading to the suburbs were cut off, and in Maplewood, the waters reached the second floor of some homes. The water was a mile-wide in Forest Park. Three bridges in the park were washed away, the Zoo’s Bird Cage and Bear Pits were flooded. The platforms at the old Delmar Station were destroyed. Passengers at the Wabash Station were surrounded by seven feet of water and had to be rescued by firefighters. Other people were trapped in their homes, and some even drowned. By the time the disaster was over, 11 people had died and more than 1,000 homes were lost.

The cause of the disaster was not the Mississippi River but the smaller River Des Peres, which ran along the City’s western edge.

River Des Peres, or “River of the Fathers,” was named after two Jesuit priests who founded a mission on its banks around 1700. Problems associated with flood and sewage control became obvious as St. Louis grew. In 1887, city officials planned to drain River Des Peres and Mill Creek. This plan was not completed, though, and River Des Peres had become an open sewer by the early 1900s.
Parts of the river were covered or diverted in preparation for the World’s Fair in 1904, and monitoring of flooding conditions began in 1905. However, no steps had been taken by 1915 that could have prevented the devastating flood that same year. (St. Louis Public Library)

Perhaps the first sewage the River des Peres received was from St. Louis’ Central West End chamberpots. In response to the volume of waste, the city wrote an ordinance in 1887 “to prevent discharge of sewerage or offensive matter of any kind into the River des Peres.” If the city had funded the ordinance, then a separate sewer system would have been built and the River des Peres’ history might have taken a different course. Instead, the government of St. Louis began a trend that has plagued the river for more than a century: St. Louis would support ideas to protect the River des Peres as a sewer more than as a river.

As St. Louis grew westward, so did the expanses of pavement. With less open ground to soak up the rains, the River swelled with runoff. The River des Peres flooded in 1897, 1905, 1912, and 1913. The flood of 1915 killed 11 people and forced 1025 families from their homes. Flooding – not sewage – prompted St. Louisans to action. Mayor Henry W. Kiel called for a hydrologic study, which was completed by W.W. Horner and presented to the St. Louis Board of Public Service in 1916. St. Louis voters chose to implement Horner’s recommendations, which cost $11 million.

The project was called the River des Peres Sewerage and Drainage Works, and it took nine years to complete (from 1924 to 1933). Workers re-graded and paved the River’s banks and straightened its bends. Elsewhere the River was directed below ground to join with the sewer. The engineering innovations brought national recognition for Horner (who was also the project engineer). Scientific American and Engineering News-Record featured the marvelous new River des Peres. In 1988, the American Society of Civil Engineers recognized the project as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. (River Des Peres Watershed Coalition)

The bond issue vote was in 1923 — 7 years after the plan was presented.

Problem solved? Wrong.

Explore any city enough, and at some point you’re likely to walk on water, so to speak. San Francisco is full of ghost rivers. So are Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. In the urban core of Baltimore, up to 98 percent of streams are underground. 

Early city planners may have hoped for healthier cities when they covered up these streams, but it turns out they created new problems. Paving over and piping waterways often worsens flooding. And as new research by scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency indicates, buried streams can also exacerbate pollution. 

In a paper published in PLOS ONE, lead authors and EPA research scientists Jake Beaulieu and Heather Golden found that nitrates—nutrients that can become pollutants—travel on average 18 times further in buried urban streams than they do in open streams, before they are taken out of the water column. (City Lab)

From February 2014:

Starting in a few days, MSD will begin construction of a 3,028 foot-long tunnel under the River Des Peres, just south of Carondelet.

The tunnel will hold a pressurized pipe that will carry sewage to the Lemay Wastewater Treatment Plant.

MSD spokesperson Lance LeComb said the new pipe will increase the plant’s capacity to take in sewage, and also serve as a back-up in case the existing “force main” ? which dates back to the 1960s ? has a problem.

The project is the first of about a dozen tunnels, totaling nearly 33 miles in length, that the MSD will be digging under St. Louis in the next couple decades. Most of the tunnels will hold a mix of stormwater and sewage. “The longest one will be nine miles long, running underneath the River Des Peres, almost 200 feet below ground,” LeComb said. “And 30 feet in diameter.” (St, Louis Public Radio)

Hopefully this will keep our sewage out of the waterways and not create more problems! The River Des Peres starts in St. Louis County, flash flooding remains an issue.

— Steve Patterson

Readers: Year Later Conditions ‘Slightly Better’ In Ferguson

In the Sunday Poll readers indicated conditions were “slightly better” than they were just before Mike Brown was shot a year earlier. Protests, rightly so, continue because conditions are only slightly better, rather than significantly better.   And criminals use the protests as an opportunity to cause chaos.

Aside from the political & institutional, the physical isn’t much better. Most buildings burned are now just vacant sites. Only one was rebuilt.

The results:

Q: It’s been a year since Mike Brown was shot in Ferguson. How would you rate conditions today compared to just prior to his death?

1. Slightly better 16 [44.44%]
2. Unchanged 7 [19.44%]
3. Significantly worse 4 [11.11%]
4. Slightly worse 3 [8.33%]
5. TIE 3 [8.33%]
   1. Worse
   2. Other:
      1. better in what way?
      2. Tougher for the lawmakers; open season for the law breakers.
      3. Same, but with more awareness of how bad conditions are
6. TIE 0 [0%]
   1. Better
   2. Significantly better
   3. Unsure/No Answer

The current conditions are institutionalized and will take decades to change.

— Steve Patterson

Sunday Poll: How would you rate conditions today compared to just prior to Mike Brown’s death?

One year ago today Michael Brown was fatally shot by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson. For today’s poll, a barometer of how things stand today compared to a year ago.

Please vote below, the answers are presented in random order. The “conditions” are left up to you to interpret.

The poll is open until 8pm.

— Steve Patterson

Readers: Remove/Change The Confederate Memorial

First, let me apologize for the lack of posts Monday & Tuesday, our new fiber optic internet in our building went out last Saturday night. Our building’s IT provider didn’t get it fixed until after 4pm yesterday.

Sunday the poll software didn’t automatically close the poll at 8pm like I had set it to do. As a result, the poll stayed open until I noticed it Monday morning — closing it via my smartphone. That said, the percentages are roughly the same as they were at 8pm the night before:

Q: What should St. Louis do about the confederate memorial & street name in Forest Park?

1. Change the street name & remove the memorial from Forest Park 20 [28.17%]
2. TIE: 14 [19.72%]
   1. Do nothing
   2. Change the street name & supplement the memorial with additional information
3. Change the street name, leave the memorial in Forest Park 11 [15.49%]
4. Leave the street name, supplement the memorial with additional information 10 [14.08%]
5. TIE: 1 [1.41%]
   1. Unsure/no answer
   2. Other: Change the street name and move the memorial History Museum grounds 
6. Leave the street name, remove the memorial from Forest Park 0 [0%]

The “do nothing” vote was less than 20%, conversely those who wanted change of some type was more than 78%. This is a great opportunity for a public process to brainstorm possible solutions that’ll help us reach a consensus. Last week I visited the confederate memorial to check it out, I’ve lived here almost 25 years and didn’t know about it until recently.

I also asked landscape architect Eären Hummel for her thoughts, which were:

• I think there should be a dialog, rather than a reactionary move. Further, I don’t think the monument should have been placed there to begin with.
• City parks are meant to be places for all people to have a respite away from their busy lives, I think a park is no place for a confederate memorial, especially without the balance of a union memorial. That may sound “politically correct”. A civil rights garden could be created of the area, if the process is inclusive of all the players that civil rights – or lack there of – has affected. Whatever is done, I think it is important that it is not just a bandage, but true dialog.
• As far as I can tell, there is no monument to the Union soldiers in St. Louis, nor a Civil Rights monument/memorial other than the “Naked Truth” sculpture at the Compton water tower. And that is really a monument to 3 German men, and not really for the cause of civil rights. Meaning there is not civil rights memorial significant to African-Americans.
• The lack of other memorials in St. Louis, I think speaks volumes about the attitudes of the people of StL. Reinforcing the notion of white supremacy, everyday racism… It is the ongoing issues that were raised in Ferguson last summer, but have since fallen silent. Personally, I think focusing on removing flags or memorials skirts around the true issues and are only platitudes to quiet the cries of racism.
• One thing that greatly bothers me about the monument, is the statement on it about the “battle to preserve the independence of the states…” The war was fought over slavery, as very clearly stated in the southern states on declarations. It was treason. The statement on the monument is revisionist history of the “lost cause”. That I find offensive and reprehensible. For that alone, I wish the monument was not there as it perpetuates erroneous “history”.
• I would leave the language as is, but definitely have a panel next to it explaining that it is wrong, and why many people wanted to rewrite the history of the war.
• It is a beautifully crafted monument by a notable sculptor.
• I believe a civil rights garden could be sensitively incorporated into the park. There have been numerous additions to the park over the years.

I agree the memorial represents revisionist history and shouldn’t have been built. Let’s take a look…

Renaming, or even removing, Confederate Dr is a given — relatively easy. The memorial is a much more complicated issue. The words are offensive, but it is a good reminder of St. Louis’ race problem. I think we should discuss the creation of a civil rights garden that would educate visitors on events from our history, for example:

• 1911: restrictive covenants enacted, see 1948 Shelley v Kraemer Supreme Court decision
• 1917: East St. Louis Race Riot
• 1963: Jefferson Bank sit-in
• 1969: Rent strike
• 1972: Unveiling of the Veiled Prophet
• 2014: Ferguson, court fees, etc

There are many more that could be included in a civil rights garden, these could all be told.

— Steve Patterson