Midtown Metamorphosis

Date Posted: March 23, 2018

Posted In: Projects,

From Ladue News:  Approximately two years ago, area residents began to hear whispers of plans for a large-scale project in the Midtown neighborhood of St. Louis, an area experiencing a remarkable renaissance.

Lawrence Group, a design, development and project-delivery firm headquartered in St. Louis, began to move forward on City Foundry STL, the mixed-use development of a 15-acre historical site, adjacent to the Cortex Innovation Community, IKEA St. Louis and Saint Louis University. A nod to the property’s past, the project name, as described by a Lawrence Group press release, “is a redevelopment of the historic 89-year-old Century Electric Foundry Complex (later operated by Federal Mogul Corporation), originally a manufacturing site for electric-motor castings and later for automobile parts.” As part of St. Louis’ manufacturing heritage, the foundry property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. City Foundry STL completed site cleanup of the complex late last year, as a precursor to launching the redevelopment to include 122,000 square feet of restaurant and entertainment space, 105,000 square feet of shops and 111,000 square feet of offices in City Foundry STL’s first phase.

“[Lawrence Group founding principal/CEO] Steve Smith, this is his brainchild,” says Brad Beracha, Lawrence Group’s director of culinary services. Smith’s son, who attended Georgia Tech, invited his dad to the South to check out Atlanta’s Krog Street Market, a mixed-use historical site that includes a food hall and retail stalls. Smith also had the opportunity, before its opening in 2015, to tour Atlanta’s Ponce City Market, a project that transformed the city’s historic Sears, Roebuck & Co. building into a community hub replete with a food hall, shops, apartments and offices. “[Smith and his son] were both in agreement: We need to find somewhere in St. Louis to do this,” Beracha says.