7-Up vs. Coke, Part 2: From dot-com darling to disaster, the spectacular flameout of Andrew Gladney. Heir to a fortune, Andrew Gladney went from John Burroughs to Yale and came home to found Savvis Inc. Then he squandered it all.

Jeanie Haines had left him in 2002, this time for good. According to a Division of Family Services report in a court file, she was fed up with his alleged addictions to drugs, alcohol, sex and gambling. Gladney had twice gone to rehab but was kicked out once and failed once, according to a statement Haines made to a DFS social worker. The exes had become embroiled in a custody battle. That made two for Gladney, who was still fighting Cindy for guardianship of his elder son. Clayton Police Department memos document several occasions on which officers stood by at Gladney's townhome, at the women's requests, on the days his sons' visits with him ended. Both Haines and Lee had sought protection orders against Gladney, alleging that he repeatedly threatened them.

Court papers also show that Gladney's fortunes were diminished; though he was getting by on $8,750 a month in 2003, among other alleged debts he owed $175,000 to friends and family.

But in the summer of 2004, Gladney (who handily dispatched Joe Taylor at Ping-Pong) was finally getting into a new line of work. He and a former Savvis employee, Joel Crater, had formed G&C Capital in January 2003, in order to develop real estate. For months they worked to seal a deal on their first property, the 1903 Hadley-Dean Glass Building, and on June 1, 2004, they closed, paying $1.6 million.

An attractive brick seven-story set back from Washington Avenue at 1101 Lucas Avenue, the Hadley-Dean was the longtime home of locally based megadeveloper McCormack Baron & Associates (since renamed McCormack Baron Salazar). Shabbiness notwithstanding — it was last renovated in the early 1980s — tenants like Taylor were enraptured with the building's exposed brick, lofty ceilings and expansive windows.

"His architectural renderings looked really exciting and wonderful, and the neighborhood was coming back," says Ken Keiser, another long-standing tenant who was so taken with Gladney's luxury plans, which included a downstairs restaurant and a rooftop pool, that one of his companies bought a second-floor unit before renovations began. "At that time Andrew was very articulate and charming, with real goals and visions."

Another Gladney convert was chef Claus Schmitz. A native German, Schmitz had worked in London, New York and Australia and had moved to the United States in 2003 to marry. He met Gladney and Crater while managing and tending bar at his brother Frank's restaurant, BARcelona in Clayton. Gladney, Claus Schmitz recalls, was "boisterous" and "eccentric," "an excitable chap" — all qualities the 45-year-old chef enjoyed.

The Schmitz brothers, along with Frank's then-partner Mike Johnson, had aimed to spin BARcelona into a small-scale regional chain, but in early 2004, for a variety of reasons, the men abandoned the plan. When Schmitz spoke of opening his own eatery, Crater and Gladney proposed the perfect location.

"There was nothing but vagrancy down here then," Schmitz recalls. "No retail, and for restaurants just Pablo [Weiss, owner of Kitchen K], who was so generous and who said, 'This place is going to be something!'"

Schmitz recalls celebrating an amusing Fourth of July that year at the Kimmswick estate of Gladney's Aunt Lucianna, with Gladney and his cousin, John Ross — well known around town as a gun enthusiast and firearms instructor — entertaining friends by shooting into the Mississippi River. Two weeks later a lease for the Hadley-Dean's ground floor was drawn up. Plans were made for Crater's and Gladney's company — now called Downtown North Development Group — to become a minority owner in the restaurant, to be dubbed Mosaic.

Unlike Joe Taylor, Schmitz doesn't recall any initial misgivings about Gladney. "Although he was exuberant," the chef says, "he was not out of whack."

In early 2007 Claus Schmitz sat down for a glowing Q&A with St. Louis Magazine in which he was asked what advice he'd give to would-be restaurateurs. "If you're not business-savvy, find a partner who is," Schmitz replied. "That being said, choose your partners wisely."

By then Schmitz must have been kicking himself for the choice he'd made.

---

When Mosaic opened in December 2004, the local food press showered praise upon Schmitz's tapas and the gorgeous interior design by Baseline Workshop. But two former bartenders have unpleasant memories that go all the way back to the eatery's earliest days.

Aimée Boss, then 28, of Belleville, and Morgan Hagedon, then 25, of St. Louis, claim that from the moment Mosaic opened, Andrew Gladney sexually harassed them.

Boss quit on January 19, 2005; Hagedon was gone by the end of February. On July 14 of that year, the two went to the Missouri Commission on Human Rights and filed charges of discrimination, alleging that Gladney's offensive behavior had forced them out.

"From the beginning there was trouble with Mr. Gladney," Boss states in her harassment claim. "He cursed, using the word 'fuck' over and over again and shouted at me and other bartenders. He screamed 'Don't point your fucking finger at me!' and 'Get your fucking ass over here and make me a drink!'"