St. Louis Magazine - April, 2008

Road to Recovered -Morgan Ford Road is a study in how to do things right

By Stefene Russell

When St. Louis city shut down the crumbling railroad bridge at the 3300 block of Morgan Ford in January 1997, it wasn’t supposed to be closed for a year and a half. Construction cut through the center of the business district, and by the time the bridge reopened in ’98, many of the little shops and bars (there were 17 taverns alone in the early ’90s) had shuttered.

Empty storefronts are often breeding grounds for criminal mischief, and Morgan Ford developed a reputation, deserved or not, for being sketchy. You’d never guess that now: It seems like a new business opens every few months. The crazy thing is, when the Tin Can and Grove Furnishings opened their doors here in spring 2005, people thought they were nuts. The street was pretty quiet then, even though businesses like Guarantee Electric, Imo’s Pizza and 7-Eleven had managed to hang on for years.

Ana Casey, Morgan Ford Business Association president, says that neighborhood associations, residents and police did a lot of heavy lifting before she and Bill Waggoner opened Grove Furnishings three years ago. “You just stay on top of things,” she says. “If you see graffiti, it comes down. If you see someone who might be causing trouble, you tell them to move along. It’s amazing what a little ownership will do.”

Many of these small businesses own their buildings and are therefore invested in the neighborhood. But Morgan Ford’s greatest resources may be its human ones, the network of relationships between friends and neighbors who are invested not only in property, but also in each other.