Independent grocer Fields Foods will open a Downtown West grocery store in the recently completed Monogram apartment building at 1706 Washington Avenue.
A grocer below 168 new apartments, where tenants can literally take the elevator down and go 鈥渟hopping in your pajamas,鈥 is the kind of location Fields Foods owner Chris Goodson was looking for.
鈥淚t fits our model of being a true urban grocer, which means being retail on the first floor with residential up above,鈥 Goodson said.
With a planned opening early next year, the Downtown West location would be the third location for the 最新杏吧原创-based grocer, which operates a store on Lafayette Avenue at Truman Parkway near Lafayette Square. Local development website first reported the planned downtown store Tuesday.
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Around the same time as its new Downtown West store opens, Fields Foods expects to open a second location in the 100-unit Hibernia apartment building under construction in Dogtown.
In recent months, residents have begun moving in at the 168-unit Monogram on Washington. Kansas City developer Michael Knight bought the building in January 2016 from real estate investor David Jump.
Knight鈥檚 $51 million renovation turned the building that formerly housed portrait studio CPI Corp.鈥檚 headquarters into the latest loft apartment building on Washington Avenue. CPI, which operated portrait studios in department stores around the country, went bankrupt and closed its locations and downtown office in 2013.
Monogram building at 1706 Washington (1989 file photo by Renyold Ferguson/Post-Dispatch)
The building originally opened in 1910 as the Monogram and housed hatmaker Rosenthal-Sloan, which claimed to be 鈥渢he world鈥檚 largest millinery establishment.鈥 The building is within the Washington Avenue Historic District, and Missouri historic tax credits helped finance the redevelopment.
Fields Foods opened its first store, just south of downtown, at the beginning of 2014.
The Fields Foods would cater to downtown apartment and loft dwellers who previously had just Schnuck Markets鈥 Culinaria at Ninth and Olive streets.
At 16,000 square feet, Fields Foods will take up about two-thirds of the ground floor at the Monogram building, with the rest used by the building鈥檚 leasing office and fitness center.
Goodson said he expects to pull customers from the nearby apartment buildings as well as midtown, Carr Square and the downtown office-worker lunch crowd. He said there will be about three dozen parking spots in the lot just to the west because, even in the midst of the urban core, 鈥渢his town still drives.鈥
Though it鈥檚 less than two miles north of his existing Fields Foods location, Goodson said there鈥檚 a dearth of grocery options nearby, and he pointed to several new developments. To the west, Jassen Johnson鈥檚 Jefferson Connector envisions a hotel and apartments near Locust Street and Jefferson Avenue, and Twain Financial Partners is moving into a renovated building at 2200 Washington. To the east, Fe Equus Development is turning the International Shoe building into a 143-room hotel and restaurant.
The independent grocer in Lafayette Square will open a new location next year in a new 100-unit apartment complex on Clayton Avenue.聽
鈥淚鈥檓 really bullish about that area,鈥 Goodson said.
Two years ago, Lucky鈥檚 had considered opening in that stretch of Washington, though plans never materialized.
