ST. LOUIS • It was lunchtime, and the cobblestone streets of Laclede’s Landing were empty.
Nine diners sat at the hightop tables inside Big Daddy’s on Wednesday. Two booths held patrons at Joey B’s, two at Drunken Fish and two at ±á²¹²Ô²Ô±ð²µ²¹²Ô’s. Morgan Street Brewery was closed; it had quit serving Wednesday lunches three weeks earlier.
Mark Taylor, owner of ±á²¹²Ô²Ô±ð²µ²¹²Ô’s, was in a foul mood. “It’s bad, that’s my sense,†he said. “It’s been bad.â€
Laclede’s Landing, a 150-year-old corner of downtown along the Mississippi River, known for tourists, bar hops and cobblestones, hasn’t ever been easy to get to. But recent construction — first to fix the cobbles, now to redo the Gateway Arch grounds — has made it a world harder.
In the long term, the Arch renovation will almost certainly showcase the Landing, opening pedestrian paths under the Eads Bridge, and link the Arch grounds directly into the historic district. If planners build a professional football stadium on the north riverfront, the Landing will be sandwiched between two of the city’s newest renovations.
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But business owners aren’t sure they can last that long.
“I think it’s going to be a nice place when it’s done,†said Show Me’s President Ron Cote, who shuttered his Landing location of the bar franchise three months ago, after 21 years in business. “It’s just going to be a long wait.â€
Seven of 14 Landing bars or restaurants have closed over the last 18 months. Morgan Street is for sale. Other owners privately admit they are on the brink.
Moreover, the casualties aren’t limited to entertainment. A nonprofit children’s theater is struggling to get school buses in. Job applicants can’t find their interviews. Office space goes unfilled.
Many here worry that it’s not going to get better soon. Crews have — finally — dug up and releveled the cobblestones. But roadwork for the $380 million Arch grounds renovation surrounds the Landing.
The Missouri Department of Transportation is reconfiguring traffic to the west, simplifying driving but muddling an already muddled walk from downtown. Southern access, on Leonor K. Sullivan Boulevard, is closed until this fall — the trails district Great Rivers Greenway is .
And Washington Avenue, a main artery into the Landing, is now permanently closed from Memorial Drive to the river. The National Park Service began demolishing the Arch’s lone parking garage last week. In about a year-and-a-half, the northern stretch of the Arch grounds will turn into winding paths, children’s gardens, a grass amphitheater and open pathways leading straight into Laclede’s Landing.
All of that leaves just one direct entrance from downtown: a right turn at the northernmost edge of the Landing. It is a strange fork in the road, renowned by drivers who have missed it and ended up stuck on the Martin Luther King Bridge, diverting them across the river into Illinois.
“Nobody down here’s too happy about the plans to cut us off,†Joey B’s bartender Paloma Douma said last week, standing in front of a bar-length menu describing 124 shots and the bar’s two shot minimum.
Walter Metcalfe, chairman of CityArchRiver, the foundation spearheading the Arch grounds renovation, said the public agencies involved are working in earnest to solve the problems.
But he doesn’t like the intimation that the Landing was kept in the dark.
“I don’t want to sound unsympathetic and tell them I told them so,†he said, “but these issues were very much in front of everybody.â€
‘JUST A HOLE’
Taylor opened ±á²¹²Ô²Ô±ð²µ²¹²Ô’s 37 years ago. Five floors of Ralston-Purina executives rose above him. They packed into the cushioned wooden booths with brass lamps and ornamental florets. He had to have four bartenders working lunch just to keep up with drink orders.
“It was so busy down here in the early ’80s,†Taylor said. “But that’s gone.â€
Over the last decade, the Landing has subsisted largely off tourists, parking at the Arch garage and wandering across Washington Avenue into the Landing for lunch or an afternoon beer. It still serves a small business crowd. And it has gathered a reputation for bar hops, late nights and messy drunks.
The Lumière Place casino, opened in 2007, hasn’t helped the Landing. Nor have newer entertainment districts on Washington Avenue and in Ballpark Village.
Then came construction, .
Workers started ripping out cobblestones — a $1.5 million project sponsored by the Landing — in the fall of 2013. Taylor thought it was supposed to take three months to finish. It took nine.
“There was no street, it was just a hole, 6 feet deep in places,†he said. At one point, the main drag, North Second Street, was closed to cars and pedestrians from one end to the other.
At the same time, MoDOT began tearing out roadways for the Arch project, including the two-block stretch of North Third Street that marks the western front of the Landing. Three months ago, planners closed Washington Avenue and the Arch grounds’ only garage, which butted up to the Landing. This January, Great Rivers Greenway closed the northern section of the river road, leading into the Landing.
Suddenly, Taylor said, directing a tourist to the Arch wasn’t a finger point down Second Street, but a 15-minute, traffic-filled, multiturn walk.
Taylor said a normal winter lunch looks like 80 to 100 in ±á²¹²Ô²Ô±ð²µ²¹²Ô’s. Wednesday last week, he had 35 — and it looked emptier than that.
For several minutes at a time, not a single pedestrian walked down Second Street.
‘I TRIED’
Steve Owings, owner of Morgan Street Brewery, said he let the lease run out two months ago on Sundeckers bar and deck, after 30 years in business. Scott Scully, president and founder of Abstrakt Marketing, said he’s had job candidates miss interviews because they couldn’t get to his offices above the Old Spaghetti Factory.
Shannon Woodcock, executive director of a nonprofit children’s health theater, said she’s had school buses full of children turn around and go home because they couldn’t find parking. “It’s been an absolute nightmare,†she said.
About two weeks ago, the issues came to a head. Landing owners called a meeting with the Arch planners. It was tense, several said.
But the two sides are now hammering out a list of possible solutions before roads and parks reopen over the next two years: A tourist shuttle from Laclede’s to the Old Cathedral? Reopening Lucas Avenue from Second Street to Memorial Drive? A flurry of marketing?
Business owners are far from satisfied. Many say they were ignored for too long. “In two years,†said Jerry Glick, a real estate developer and owner of the Spaghetti Factory building, “there won’t be anything there.â€
But John Clark, president of the Laclede’s Landing Community Improvement Corporation, said he tried to bring up the issues with planners and businesses, years ago. “No one was going to listen,†he said. “This project was so big.â€
A few owners now acknowledge their own role, and say they wished they’d been more attentive. “I think I wasn’t doing a very good job listening,†Owings said.
And nearly all agree that — if they can make it — the renovation could change everything for Landing owners.
“When the project is done, we will be their north gateway. We will be it!†said Laura Tobey, executive director of the Landing Neighborhood Association. “I’m really trying to stay positive.â€
But in the meantime, she said, the rest of the Landing is laughing at her.
