Loft dwellers aren't complaining about new grocery-store options ... but is the time right?
By Matthew Halverson
Photograph by Katherine Bish
Rance Baker isn’t what you’d call a shameless self-promoter. In November, the co-owner of City Grocers announced plans to expand the loft-district market and move it to a 14,000-square-foot space at 10th and Olive later this year—but to hear him talk about the decision, you’d think he thought he’d lost his mind. “We’re making this move before any demographic [study] would show that we should be moving,” he says. “It’s still a very fragile market down here.”
Unless Baker’s blowing smoke to scare away the competition, the downtown supermarket scene may be on the verge of descending into an all-out food fight for customers. Chivvis Development has something in the works at Fourth and Chouteau, and the Post-Dispatch reported last summer that Mambo Development was eyeing a site near City Museum.
Andy Murphy, son of Chivvis founder Steve Murphy, says they’re still “homing in on the right plan,” but that the store could be as big as 30,000 square feet and include surface parking. Not only is he not concerned about the store’s having to compete with Baker’s in an already tight market, he’s ready for the match-up. “I think we can pull it off,” he says.
Talk about food for thought: Just two years ago, you couldn’t buy more than a gallon of milk or a frozen burrito downtown, but before long, the lofties could have three destinations for a deli platter. Is it overkill? As far as Jim Cloar, Downtown St. Louis Partnership’s president and CEO, is concerned, City Grocers’ growth says a lot about downtown development, but he echoes Baker’s assessment of the potential grocery-store glut: “If you get ahead of the market and you don’t have the support, it’s a very tough business.”
Baker is painfully aware that he may not be the only game downtown for long, but for now, he’s just minding his peas and BBQ. “How do you prepare for something like that?” he asks. “If something happens, it’ll happen, and I’ll just have to deal with it when it does.”
