An Urban Renewal and a New Wave of Chic Eateries

March 18, 2007

By Jerry Soverinsky, Globe Correspondent
THE BOSTON GLOBE

ST. LOUIS -- I wasn't supposed to like it.

Not enough variety. Mediocre quality, at best. Certainly not sophisticated enough. And that from friends who grew up here. Say again, they wanted to know, why I was traveling from Chicago, a city with a rich culinary resume, to check out the St. Louis dining scene?

After all, they had left St. Louis behind a decade or so ago in search of post-college, twentysomething adventures. And they were not alone.

The US Census Bureau estimates the city's population in 2003 was 332,223, down 4.6 percent from 2000. From 1990 to 2000, the population shrank by 12.2 percent, falling to well under half of its high point of 856,796 in 1950. (The city's image had shrunk, too. Hollywood director John Carpenter, searching for a believable post apocalyptic setting for his 1981 science fiction thriller , "Escape from New York," chose St. Louis.)

But rather than retreat into a self-pitying funk, something remarkable has happened in St. Louis: A city and its people mobilized and took action. Noting a surplus of commercial and industrial buildings and the infrastructure for contemporary loft-living developments, the Missouri Legislature in 1998 enacted legislation that provided a 25 percent tax credit for the rehabilitation of historic buildings in downtown St. Louis.

That, coupled with the city's 1999 commitment of $1.2 billion in mixed public and private money for downtown improvements, "galvanized the city," according to Rollin Stanley, the city's director of planning and urban design, encouraging local entrepreneurial and financial investment, an important first step toward civic revival. "The results were nearly immediate," he said.

Consequently, the St. Louis that frightened moviegoers in the '80s and that prompted my friends' departures in the early '90s scarcely resembles the St. Louis of today. The $1.2 billion originally earmarked for improvements by the city has ballooned to $4 billion, resulting in widespread and dramatic change. Since 2000, more than 6,600 apartments and condominiums have been built or are in the planning stages, and thousands more people are projected to live downtown by 2008.

Those figures have attracted the attention of restaurateurs nationwide, many wishing to find new outlets to showcase their culinary talents before an ever-more sophisticated and expanding client base. "I'm seeing far more of my clientele coming from New York and Chicago," said Steve Komorek, owner of the city's highly acclaimed Trattoria Marcella. "This, plus the influx of young professionals living in the city -- diners are open to trying new items, they're requesting tasting menus, and exploring new things."

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