When Jassen Johnson was an undergrad, he drove through Midtown St. Louis so much that it changed his entire life.
At the time, Johnson was studying architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, but he was working on a project in East St. Louis, and to prevent a long commute back and forth to campus, or a costly hotel stay, he crashed with a family member in the Central West End. At that time, 24 ago, streets like Locust were the obvious path.
But for Johnson, Locust wasn't just the fastest way to the Poplar Street Bridge. It was a source of fascination. "Driving back and forth, I used to wonder, 'Why isn't this getting redeveloped? There are so many good things around it,'" he recalls. It reminded him of the Delmar Loop — "the scale of the buildings, how pedestrian-friendly they are," he says. "It had the exact same sort of vibe."
Johnson was onto something, as a stroll down the street today makes clear. In recent years Locust Street has seemingly come out of nowhere to compete with, and even surpass, the Loop in attracting buzzy restaurants and creative white-collar companies with ambitious plans. It is, in many ways, the coolest street in St. Louis right now, with destinations for shopping (the Golden Gems empire has its flagship here) nightlife (Brennan's Work + Leisure, the brand-new Hidden Gem, Small Batch) and everything from a chance to reset your brain (Float STL) to the opportunity to catch a rock show (Red Flag).
It didn't happen by accident. Not only did Johnson draw up a neighborhood development plan for Midtown as a master's student in architecture, but he went on to found a company, Renaissance Development Company, that can boast rehabbing no fewer than 76 buildings in the immediate vicinity.
In many ways, Johnson says, only a company like his could have done it. The same pedestrian-friendly scale that attracted him to the buildings on Locust made them prohibitive to others. "The economies of scale weren't very viable for a bigger developer," he says. "But at the same time, they were kind of too big for the average do-it-yourself-er."
Andrew Weil, executive director of the Landmarks Association of St. Louis, says Johnson's efforts didn't just lead to a thriving district. They also saved dozens of buildings from the wrecking ball.
The neighborhood got its start as Automotive Row in the early years of the 20th century. Not long after a host of small manufacturers sprung up in and around Midtown, seeking to make new-fangled "horseless buggies" and the parts that went into them, dealerships moved in, many on Locust.
The district's successful application to the National Register of Historic Places, completed in 2005, tells the story: "Around 1920, dealers began to demand that buildings be constructed to 'fit' the automobiles they demonstrated. This trend started even earlier in St. Louis, with several such buildings along Locust Street dating to as early as 1914. Converted buildings were problematic — automobiles could not be easily moved in or out of existing doorways, and interior supports limited movement inside the building. More often than not, buildings constructed for sales and service were brick commercial style properties 'with a large door facing the street, which was used as a vehicle entrance into the rear service area. Space was allotted in the front for offices and for the display of one or more new vehicles.' Such buildings were typically constructed with facades that reflected commercial styles popular during the early 1900s, like those that remain along Locust Street today."
By the time Johnson was driving the streets, in the early aughts, those dealerships were long gone, headed to bigger plots of land with better highway access. And Saint Louis University's famously autocratic president, Father Lawrence Biondi, was unenthused about what he saw as blighted buildings on the perimeter of campus.
"I remember they tore down an 1880s livery stable around 2007," Weil recalls. "That was at the point where the Locust Street Business District was starting to coalesce and people were investing in these buildings." But, he says, "SLU was still in the mindset that these were unusable eyesores."
That mindset had led to major clearances of the surrounding residential neighborhoods, something Weil can't help but mourn even today, recalling Mill Creek Valley, the thriving Black enclave in Midtown that was cleared in the name of urban renewal in the 1950s. "If that 'intervention' hadn't happened, if those neighborhoods were left alone, they'd probably be among the most desirable in the City of St. Louis today," Weil says.
But in the case of Midtown, preservationists and entrepreneurs got there before the wrecking ball. One such pioneer was Joy Grdnic Christensen, famous as "Joy in the Morning" on KSHE, who opened the beloved restaurant Fountain on Locust in 2008. "She put her money where her mouth was and invested when there was not yet a business district," Weil says. Christensen sold a few years ago, but the place is still going strong today.
For Johnson, making the district what it is was a matter of going building by building, block by block, slowly building a critical mass — and taking pains not to cannibalize the businesses that moved in by also bringing in competitors. Johnson's company has also worked hard to help startups grow without leaving the district, letting them out of their leases early if they needed more space, even while working with them to find a spot in the district. Other startups have then swiftly stepped up to take their places.
It's taken two decades, but Johnson finally sees the kind of critical mass of businesses and residences that can support businesses like the new Hidden Gem bar or the cigar bar that's coming soon. "All the hard work has been done on building density," he says. Having a new major league soccer stadium constructed on the district's eastern edge, something even Johnson never anticipated, proved the cherry on top.
For someone who dreamed about Midtown's potential as a kid fresh out of small-town Illinois, the reality is sometimes enough to stop Johnson in his tracks. He sometimes wonders how different his life would be if he'd gravitated to Chicago instead of St. Louis after graduation. And St. Louis should probably be contemplating the same question. How different would Midtown be if a young architecture student hadn't seen its potential? How many other great walkable districts have we lost?
Editor's note: A previous version of this story referred inaccurately to the construction of I-64. A reconstruction effort closed it for years beginning in 2007, but the highway itself predated that project.
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