Washington Avenue has seen its fair share of ups and downs. The loft-lined street in downtown St. Louis has the right makings for a vibrant urban setting, but as some have lamented, the street doesn’t boast as much activity as maybe it could or should.
But some locals carving out their own niche on Wash Ave, and finding new success.
Keep up with local business news and trends
Subscribe to the St. Louis Business newsletter to get the latest insights sent to your inbox every morning.
Take The Moniker, a new higher-end cocktail bar and restaurant that opened in June at 1000 Washington Ave. Britteney Ofodile, who works as a business consultant/strategist for The Moniker, says the new venue offers an atmosphere that wasn’t broadly available in the neighborhood in the past.
Owner Jordaryl Logan had been the bar manager at One Cardinal Way, where Ofodile lives, and which has its own indoor-outdoor bar for residents. Their goal with The Moniker was to recreate what worked at that bar. Ofodeli says Logan would create special cocktails and good food for her and her neighbors.
“He would literally corral us, text and say ‘Everybody come down,’” she says. “We wanted to create the exact same experience—the love, the friend and the family, the belly laughs that we had at One Cardinal Way, we knew we wanted it to be in this space.”
As it turns out, St. Louisans wanted that too. “We’ve heard it over and over again: ‘We don’t have anything like this. Where have you all been?’” Ofodile says. “St. Louis has been asking for a place they can go and feel welcomed, excited, that they can dress nice, look nice, get good food and feel safe.”
Ofodile did analysis and polling to help Logan develop what The Moniker could be.
“I have had the opportunity as a business strategist, business consultant, to see St. Louis from a bird’s eye view. You’ve got to give St. Louis what they asked for,” she says. “Can’t give them what you want; you can’t give them what you think.”
The owner of another business on Wash Ave has found success by leaning into experiences. Ashley Morgan, founder and CEO of Whip It Goods Skincare opened her storefront along Wash Ave last year with the help of a retail pop-up grant from the St. Louis Development Corporation.
A key part of what Morgan says she sought to create was a business setting that could offer memorable experiences for her customers like a workshop to make a custom body butter.
“They’re just coming in to have a fun experience, but they end up leaving introduced to me, the product, to my brand,” Morgan says. “I didn’t think this would be my pathway to scale, and it has become [the way] for my business to grow and give me a competitive advantage in a market that is highly saturated.”
Revenue at her plant-based skincare company has quadrupled, since opening the space, she says. Morgan credits her success downtown to maintaining a clear vision and not making quick decisions that didn’t align with her business goals.
“There were points along the way that I didn’t think I was going to find the right space and that I was going to have to forgo the grant,” she says. “I was going to be OK with that because I didn’t want to put my brand and my store in the wrong place.”
Being a bit picky is a throughline for other success in the corridor. Developer Alex Oliver says a clear vision and intention behind which properties he chooses to take on has helped him avoid boondogles.
“There’s a lot of projects that we’ve passed on,” he says. “We’ve looked at almost every building downtown. Some of them the pricing doesn’t work, some of them there’s other challenges in the building that we’re not really sure we can fix.”
Like Ofodile and Morgan, Oliver says it helps to pursue projects that are responsive to the community’s needs. In his case that’s acquiring historic apartment buildings on Washington Avenue and adding modern residential amenities and stronger management while keeping rental pricing competitive. The strategy has yielded strong leasing activity, to the point where some of the buildings his firm has taken over are above 90 percent occupied.
“There’s a demand for this A-/B+ product that we’ve got at a very reasonable price point,” he says. “It’s always easier to serve demand than try to create demand.”
Oliver has been intentional about trying to curate street-level businesses for the buildings in his portfolio, and says experiences are what makes sense for the street right now.
“The demand drivers of walk-up retail aren’t that strong right now, not yet. But [with] an experience, there’s a reason for people to come in,” he says. “Those are the type of retailers that are going to do well along Wash Ave and downtown today.”
