Sweetie Pie’s Progress in Grand Center

My love of Grand Center (and my addiction to the Best Steak House) has kept me driving past the future fourth location of Sweetie Pie’s, keeping me up to date on the swift progress that is being made on this project.  A few days ago, to my delight, I noticed that as the outer layer of the building was being peeled off to reveal the brick underneath, Ghost Signs were also revealed on the West side of the building.

San-Del Strickland Printing Co Sign @ New Sweetie Pie's Location

Here is a closer look at the wall in 2 chunks:

San-Del Strickland

S-D Bindery Co.

Google doesn’t seem to know much about the business advertised here but I hope to come across more information as I continue to look.  Still, it is exciting simply to see history excavated like this (even though in this case the brick will still have to be covered up again because of the strong adhesive used to initially cover it).

Sweetie Pie’s: Coming to Grand Center!

From the St. Louis Business Journal and the St. Louis American:  Sweeetie Pie’s is opening up a third location (not including the Granite City restaurant/bar/nightclub Sweetie Pie’s East) on Delmar in Grand Center!

Future Home of Sweetie Pie's

This is wonderful news for all of us because Grand Center needs more activity and Sweetie Pie’s is delicious!  Governor Nixon even came down to the Sweetie Pie’s location in the Grove for the announcement.  Pretty cool.  Check out this Living St. Louis video on Sweetie Pie’s.  As soon as I watched it for the first time I went straight down Manchester and got myself some of that Mac & Cheese.  If you haven’t been, you really should go.

UPDATE: This month’s St. Louis Magazine has a great interview with Robbie Montgomery, Owner of Sweetie Pie’s.

UPDATE 2: This project hasn’t had any activity for some time now and may be dead.

Joe Edwards’ Trolley

I really love any idea to add any sort of public transportation to St. Louis, but this particular idea just seems silly to me.  Joe Edwards wants to run a Trolley from the Missouri Historical Society in Forest Park, to Kingsland and Delmar at the far western end of the Delmar Loop.  Both of these locations are in close proximity to a Metrolink station.  Consecutive Metrolink stations.  The history museum, according to Google’s Walking Directions Beta (which doesn’t really get the walking route right but does provide a good distance estimate in my opinion), is .2 miles away from the Metrolink.  A 3 minute walk.  If they were really serious about adding something beneficial to the city  and not just attracting attention to the loop, this is not the route they would have chosen.  I think that the choice of the history museum as one end of the “Loop Trolley” is because the planners of this project think of the trolley as an exhibit for the history museum and site for tourists to see in the loop, not as an addition to our city’s useful infrastructure.

Loop Trolley Route Map

On the other hand I really do like the idea of a Loop Trolley.  Not too long ago I lived close to Metcalfe Park, not far from the western end of the Loop.  I enjoy using Metrolink to get around and was pleased to be in an area in which I could walk to a station (3 in less than 15 minutes each), but I still complained about the walk and really wished I could hop on something like a trolley and get to the Metrolink station (or home from it).  I commuted to work Downtown on Metrolink for a while and would often dread the walk down Delmar to the train, but in actually making the walk I would always enjoy myself the whole way and found that the real problem was getting distracted on the walk and being late for the train!  This walk will be more enjoyable when more buildings and businesses are added around the station (which I really believe will happen soon).

It does seem counterproductive to simply complain about the current plan and not propose anything better, but lots of people have proposed plans for extending this trolley and I enjoy complaining.  I must concede that this plan could be a wonderful thing for the stretches of Delmar and DeBaliviere that would be served by the trolley but the scope just seems too small to justify such a large expense.  A project like this failing would really set us back in making real improvements to a system of public transportation which badly needs them, and a need to make visiting opposite ends of the loop easier could be solved by increasing the frequency of MetroBuses.

UPDATE:

Maybe this project could be combined with Paul McKee’s NorthSide Trolley and turned into something more substantial?

Also, WashU Students seem to have voiced opinions similar to mine in comments on this article.