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ST. LOUIS • It’s been a tough stretch, to put it mildly, for Laclede’s Landing.

The Rams NFL franchise left, and so did the football game-day traffic from the former Edward Jones Dome nearby. New competition from another entertainment district — Ballpark Village — on the other side of downtown didn’t help.

But the real culprit, says Laclede’s Landing Community Improvement District President John Clark, was the five years of construction on the Gateway Arch grounds. It flattened a parking garage that served the Landing, cut off road access to Washington Avenue and kept the visitor count at the city’s famous monument down.

The number of restaurants and bars in the downtown entertainment district just north of the Arch grounds dropped to seven from 17.

“It’s just hard to withstand all that,� Clark said last month.

But the Landing’s fortunes may be on the upswing. The Arch construction is finished, and the revamped tourist attraction now has a pedestrian connection into the brick-lined streets of the historic riverfront district. Investors are planning or already building apartments in the Landing’s historic buildings that would add an influx of residents.

And St. Louis officials are trying to help with a new road access to downtown that Landing officials hope will make finding a way in that much easier.

Property owners are already starting to get a few more knocks on the door. Clark’s building at 710 North Second Street, for instance, just signed a new tenant, Mexican restaurant Mas Tequila, to fill a vacant storefront.

With Fair St. Louis returning downtown from Forest Park in less than a month, Clark is confident the tide is turning for Laclede’s Landing.

“I think people will definitely want to see the Arch grounds,� he said.

Two buildings owned by David Jump are under contract: the 1881-built Greeley Building at 618-624 North Second Street and the Hoffman Brothers Produce Building at 700 North Second Street. The potential buyer, Philadelphia-based Red Rocks Group, hopes to put about 60 apartments in the two buildings and renovate the street spaces for commercial use. The sale could close by the end of the summer.

“People want to be on the river,� said Mark Zvibleman, whose St. Louis-area company, , is representing Red Rocks in the transaction.

Zvibleman said his clients had embarked on historic renovations on Pittsburgh’s riverfront and saw similar opportunities in St. Louis’ historic river district, another “up and coming turnaround-type� area.

Those apartments would follow the new lofts being put into the building at 701 North First Street after Advantes Development finishes its $12 million renovation of the 120-year-old building.

“We saw it as an amazing downtown submarket very ripe for the pickings, being able to springboard off the Arch grounds opening up and the fact there was no residential on the Landing at all,� Advantes owner Brian Minges said.

His company is in the midst of renovating the structure, Metro transit operator Bi-State Development’s former headquarters, into 49 apartments set to open by the end of the year. The lower levels will also house offices for Abstrakt Marketing, which plans to expand from its current offices next door at Raeder Place. Abstrakt is growing to about 300 people with the addition of about 100 jobs.

Between the Arch grounds and the views of the Mississippi River and downtown St. Louis, “it’s just a matter of time before it all fills in down there,� Minges said. He’s happy other apartment developers are coming in close behind Advantes.

“I think it just took someone to lead the charge,� he said. “The more people who are down there 24 hours a day, the more it’s a viable community.�

A new green space is planned for the Landing on the block just north of Eads Bridge and east of First Street. Great Rivers Greenway, the regional trail district, is turning the vacant lot it owns there into a riverfront garden. A gift from Katherine “Kitten� Burg, who loved the riverfront, is funding the new park, to be known as the Katherine Ward Burg Garden.

Great Rivers spokeswoman Emma Klues said construction should start in the fall and take about a year.

To show off all the work going on in the Landing, from 4 to 7 p.m. Wednesday at 612 North Second Street.

The event will be on the fifth floor in that building’s new event space, called the VUE. Building owner Munsok So has swapped his Drunken Fish sushi franchise for a new Korean concept, Kimchi Guys, and a coffee shop, Miss Java, on the ground floor. A smaller ground floor event space with a patio overlooking the river called KOR is also opening there.

City negotiates with Drury for road access

Also in play is the potential extension of Lucas Avenue through a parking lot that Drury Development owns on the perimeter of the Landing.

To extend the road, the city is negotiating with the company to reimburse it for the lost parking spots.

As a bargaining chip, the city offered more tax breaks for the Witte Hardware building, a historic structure next to the lot that Drury wants to renovate into more offices to draw tech and creative firms. It’s about half vacant now.

The city’s Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority, which oversees the city’s tax abatement offers, changed an agenda item at the last minute last month to boost the tax break that Drury would receive on its Witte renovations. Instead of five years of 90 percent abatement and five years of 50 percent abatement, LCRA Director Otis Williams asked the board to offer 10 years of 90 percent tax abatement, which he called “a negotiated solution.�

No one directly mentioned the plan to extend Lucas through Drury’s parking lot, but Williams said that “we have a major effort ongoing to get more activity into Laclede’s Landing.�

Already, the St. Louis Port Authority is considering buying Drury’s parking lot and leasing it back to the company, facilitating a property tax break on that real estate and allowing the extension of Lucas to Memorial Drive.

LCRA board member Matthew McBride, who is also chair of the Port Authority, asked whether the city should require some assurances that the extra abatement would to an agreement on Lucas .

“I’ll let you guys make that decision,� Williams said, indicating that Drury had been “a great partner� and he was hopeful the offer would help the deal go through.

A city attorney said the abatement amount could be amended later should the city not be able to reach an agreement with Drury on Lucas