A Sense of Place
Date Posted: June 17, 2014
Posted In: Ideas, News,
by Tom Finan
Executive Director
Construction Forum STL
One rainy afternoon, stepping out of Tip Top Cleaners on Clayton Road just East of St. Mary’s Hospital, I discovered a very special place. Located behind the cleaners, at the corner of Oakland and Yale, was Parker’s Table.
I had seen the small sign – the size of a real estate “open house” sign– stuck in the curb strip on Clayton Road advertising a “wine shop”. I had even driven by the shop’s old location in Clayton. But what I experienced on that first visit was far more than a wine shop, although owner Jonathan Parker did indeed greet me with a glass of wine.
Parker’s Table is all about places, and is a celebration of this place – St. Louis. Jon Parker told me his story: He had worked in restaurants at Yellowstone while in college and had found his passion. After many years in that exhausting field, he opened his Clayton store. That closed three years ago, when the building was demolished.
Following a brief stint in winemaking at Mount Pleasant Winery, Jon found his current location, the former Richmond Heights Post Office. It is a gem of a building, which he is in the process of beautifully repurposing. He showed me the secret door to the loading dock, which accesses a ladder to a ceiling gallery. Postal inspectors used to secretly climb the ladder to the gallery to observe postal workers. Having restored old buildings myself (I can remember the “hose tower” in the firehouse and a floor safe we discovered in the feed and grain warehouse) I can identify with his passion for bringing new life to a piece of local history.
His store is very much about place. He can tell you why his Italian tomatoes are more expensive than a lot of those on the Hill (they’re all from the region of Italy where the very best tomatoes are grown). He is a believer in local sourcing, from locally cured meat, to Missouri cheese, down to having an artisan baker on site making bread every day.
We talked about change in St. Louis and I repeated a quote I used a few weeks ago in a column, “Change for Good”. The quote was from the late food and entertainment critic Joe Pollack, who said, “St. Louis is where trends come to die.” Jon lit up, “I have Joe’s record collection in the back here.” I felt like I’d made a new friend.
After that column on ConstructForSTL.org, George Holbrook, sales and project manager at Blakely Sheet Metal, LLC, commented: “I would like to see an article from you on the ‘collective psyche’ of the residents of Greater St.Louis. It seems to me that we (GSL) have gone through undulations of great pride, humiliation, and awkwardness and yet we seem to retain ‘hope’ in spite of the disruption caused by our economic downturn.
“I would be interested in learning your thoughts on the affect the sale of AB to InBev and the loss of our airport as a hub has had on our ‘collective psyche’.”
My thoughts, such as they are, George, is that St. Louisans have always been resilient. At this point – 250 years into the game – we are also learning to be “mature.” That sometimes happen when you get old.
On the wall of my office is a lengthy definition of “Maturity”. It begins, “Maturity is the ability to control anger and settle differences without violence or destruction.” The definition further addresses what has been our preoccupation with the endless process in St. Louis, “Maturity is the ability to make a decision and stand by it. The immature spend their lives exploring endless possibilities, then do nothing.”
It concludes by stating, “Maturity is the art of living in peace with that which we cannot change.” Amen to that. We may not be able to change what has happened. But we can be a part of shaping what is to come.
I am writing this column in a loft office on the site of the former St. Louis Arena (Checkerdome).
I remember entering the Arcade Building through the polished brass of the lobby as young man. I remember shopping in the maze of jewelers on the upper floors of the building. Minneapolis-based Dominium is working with Webster University as anchor tenant in a plan to convert the Arcade into classrooms, an auditorium, and a café
I remember attending the press conference when Bill Maritz and Tom Purcell made the announcement of a new place called Laclede’s Landing. That area is now being spiffed up and the apartments that Maritz envisioned are being planned in anticipation of the completion of the City/Arch/River project.
I can remember when Lewis Sachs started Chesterfield Village. There was a time when Mr. Sach’s amazing vision seemed to have played out into a series of endless strip malls and big boxes. And while that’s still part of the Chesterfield scene, his idea of working and playing where you live is being reinforced in projects like the Mercy virtual medicine building – first of a series for that site, the new RGA headquarters, which will finish soon and should be followed by another project; and the massive Monsanto bioscience campus, which is being reinvigorated with a $400 million expansion.
My family came to St. Louis in 1857, George. We’ve seen a lot of change in our six generations here.
But whatever change came, we never lost our sense that this place is home. Whether you’re a purveyor of food and drink or a builder of buildings, you can make St. Louis a better place if you celebrate what’s come before and use that sense of place as a foundation for the future.