Located in Dutchtown in South St.Louis, the building at 4141 South Grand has enjoyed a long history as a neighborhood Italian restaurant. The 8000sqft mixed-use building has ground-floor retail and potential for four large residential apartments on the second floor.

CURRENT STATUS: We have not yet acquired the space but have toured the building, and are working up business ideas while attempting to secure funding for the project. We will likely either move forward with this project (or abandon it) by June 2024.

Our idea is to create four live-work spaces for local artists upstairs, while reimagining the ground floor as an event space, commissary kitchen, and small-business offices.

RESIDENTIAL: The second floor is currently set up to be offices, and seems to have been a boarding house at one point in time. We see the potential to divide this into four large live-work spaces for artists. This would be done via a non-profit with a focus on supporting our local arts community by providing high quality spaces at below market-rate rents. We would design this with common areas that would serve as both a display gallery for art and as a community gathering space for the tenants. The existing structure has skylights, and many intact vintage-styled wood windows, which let in a ton of natural light. Tall ceilings and interesting layouts make this an inspiring space to work in.

RETAIL: The previous restaurant was a massive space, with four full dining rooms capable of seating 200+ customers. However, the neighborhood has not been hospitable to sit-down restaurants of this nature for a while, especially not a huge one like this! We see this as an opportunity to leverage the existing commercial kitchen in the building, turning it into a rentable commissary kitchen, focusing on delivery-app only restaurant concepts. One of the dining rooms can be turned into dry storage and a walk-in cooler. Another can be converted to a medium-sized office space for a small business. The remaining two dining rooms comprise a beautiful historic bar, archways and artistic interior design. We would minimally restore these two rooms as a single rentable 2000sqft event space, focusing on community organizing events, weddings, private parties, and artist community events for those living upstairs.

This would be an ambitious project and might take a while for us to work out the plans and secure funding opportunities. If you're interested in investing or helping us along with this process, please reach out at hello@cicadaalley.com.