City Foundry STL Food Hall Slated for Mid-Summer Opening
Date Posted: February 11, 2020
Posted In: Projects,
From St. Louis Magazine: Four years ago, amidst the rust, rubble, chipped paint, and standing water inside the former Federal-Mogul foundry, it took a developer’s eye to imagine what, by mid-summer 2020, will become St. Louis’ first bona fide food hall. The dilapidated 180,000-square-foot, nearly century-old building, located just feet from I-64 in Midtown, had been vacant for a decade.
At the time, shuttered industrial buildings and warehouses in bigger cities across the country were being transformed into culinary hubs called food halls. The Lawrence Group’s Steve Smith had been scouting St. Louis for possibilities, and when he discovered the foundry site in 2015, he bought the 15-acre complex and fired up City Foundry STL.
The Lawrence Group churned out renderings of an elaborate multi-use facility and began signing up big-name tenants. In addition to office space and retail options, the complex includes three major “eatertainment” venues, with more to be announced. An esports gaming center is located within the complex as well. Fresh Thyme is part of the mix. Several health clubs are currently being courted.
The most recent major addition (“not even on the radar screen when the project was conceived,’ says Smith) is 18 Rails, a 700-person event space named after the number of cross-country railroad lines that converged nearby. Operated by Butler’s Pantry and chief culinary officer Vince Bommarito, Jr., the venue is accessed through the food hall, a cross-marketing maneuver designed to create maximum exposure. The space has a dedicated dock for offloading food, event supplies, and sound equipment, as well as a mezzanine that serves as a decluttering nerve center for any sound, light, and audio-visual equipment. 18 Rails is slated to open late this year.
Smith explains that while the food hall’s mission statement remains the same (“The overarching idea is to build a community of local chefs doing out-of-the-box concepts within their areas of expertise,” he says), the tenant mix has changed over the past two years. “As time passes, situations change,” he explains. “Some people have found other projects and interests in the interim, while others have come on board.”