Empty storefronts prepare to fill out on Meramec Street
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| Larry Nolte takes a look at progress on renovations of the former Knights of Columbus Hall on Meramec Street which is being renovated as a parish hall for St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church. |
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The lights are going back on on Meramec Street, both literally and figuratively.
Residents of the area east of South Grand Boulevard say the new street lights added last year to Meramec from Grand to Compton Avenue, and later to Michigan Avenue, are bringing more light to the street, as well as an added sense of safety.At the same time, they say new life and light has been added to the residential and neighborhood business area that sits under the shadow of the towering St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church on Meramec.
"We have a great little business district reminiscent of the old small town main streets," said Debbie Irwin, executive director of the Dutchtown South Community Corporation, a community organization with its office at Meramec and Virginia Avenue.
Where almost all of the storefronts were shuttered, new business is slowly coming back. A revitalized business group - the Downtown Dutchtown Business Association (DT2) - is busy working on efforts to improve the street as a way to bring new life to the Dutchtown neighborhood.
"I think it's coming back. I think it's going to take some more time," said Annie Pogue, owner of the Corner Cafe at the northwest corner of Meramec and Virginia.
Pogue, a 54-year-old South County resident, said she saw the place empty and knew it was where she wanted to locate her restaurant and coffee house. "It just looked like the perfect spot." She opened her shop Dec. 18.
Pogue rents from John Chen and his wife, Caya Aufiero, who own the 18,000-square-foot, two-story commercial building where the cafe is located.
The two bought the building about two years ago. They renovated the second floor into a super-sized loft for themselves and the first floor into commercial space and offices for their real estate investment and hospital computer support businesses.
People around the area give the leadership the couple provided a lot of credit for the change on Meramec, particularly in their work in DT2.
"The goal is to really create a vibrant commercial neighborhood," said Aufiero, who is secretary of Downtown Dutchtown Business Association.
"It is a main street in South St. Louis. Not many exist," said Chen, a board member of the association.
While Aufiero and Chen represent the new on Meramec, Larry Nolte represents people who have been in the neighborhood for a while.
A professional illustrator, Nolte has lived for the last 17 years in a house on Meramec near Nebraska Avenue. "I bought my first house in the neighborhood 30 years ago," Nolte said.
Nolte, 52, who raised his three children in the neighborhood, is on the board of DT2 and is president of the pastoral council of St. Anthony Church.
St. Anthony's is paying nearly $1 million to buy and renovate the former Knights of Columbus Hall at 3133-35 Meramec for use as a parish hall. The approximately 9,000-square-foot facility will include a meeting room, general-purpose hall and kitchen.
"Because of the investment, it shows how dedicated the parish is to the neighborhood," Nolte said.
The neighborhood has changed since he arrived, Nolte said. "The reason we stayed for 30 years is the people who live in the neighborhood," Nolte said. "The future looks very good."
The alderman representing the area, Dorothy Kirner, D-25th Ward, said the street is being helped by young blood, like Aufiero and Chen. "They're very diversified, very neighborhood-minded," she said.
Kirner knows about the old days on Meramec. She and her husband, the late Dan Kirner, operated a grocery store there from 1959 to 1964. Dan Kirner went on to be a city police officer and an alderman after his retirement from the police department. Dorothy Kirner succeeded her husband after his death in 2004.
"St. Louis Bakery was the best bakery in South St. Louis," Dorothy Kirner said, noting there actually were two bakeries in the neighborhood, along with a jewelry store and a Catholic supply store, she said. "I think it's ready to come back, small specialty stores."
Looking way back, there's evidence of settlements near present-day Meramec and Virginia by the 1820s, said NiNi Harris, an author and historian on St. Louis topics who lives in the Carondelet neighborhood.
The neighborhood took form as a community in the 1850s and went into a boom after the Civil War, she said.
In the 1970s, many storefronts were losing their original purpose of providing neighborhood services as they competed with suburban malls, Harris said. Now the old storefronts and the commercial district are finding new uses, spurring neighborhood redevelopment, she said.
The street itself is a hill that slowly rises to a high point at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church with its twin 175-foot spires. Then it descends slowly to South Broadway.
"It feels like a medieval European village with those great church steeples of a Romanesque church towering over the village center," Harris said. Around the church are turn-of-the-century brick storefronts, she said. Among the storefronts are antique shops, Winkelmann Drug-Home Health Care at Virginia and Meramec, Behrmann's bar at Compton and Meramec and the Feasting Fox restaurant at Grand and Meramec.
Among people who live in the neighborhood, feelings are mixed.
"It's convenient to shopping, convenient to take a bus. It's a quiet neighborhood as far as I can see," said Deborah Jennings, who recently moved from downtown to an apartment on Virginia Avenue south of Meramec.
But others worry about gangs and crime.
"I think it's kind of worse now than when I first moved in," said Lisa Losh, 32, who has lived about three years in the Sheraton Apartments on Michigan south of Meramec. "I wouldn't go out at night or early in the morning."
Chen agreed that Dutchtown ranks high in the overall number of crimes compared to other city neighborhoods. But Aufiero said it is improving. The new streetlights on Meramec are helping to make people feel more secure, she said.
"One person commented that you actually see families out walking together in the evening," Aufiero said.
