Three Quick Things To Like About Fox Park

1. I opened up the latest version of St. Louis Magazine with the cover "101 Best Restaurants" issue to find the first page listing Lona's Lil Eats and Milque Toast Bar. I will add the Purple Martin to the mix with these two and say just how important a business and a place can be to help make a neighborhood livable.

Lona's activated a sleepy corner of the neighborhood in the best of ways. I live three doors down and can say it has likely been one of the best thing to happen to Fox Park in the five years I've lived here.  The smells, the crowds, the employees, the food, the outdoor seating...but most of all the good vibe and the kindness of the owners and employees. I mean, they let my kids walk over there after school and just hangout and drink soda's. So kind. And that's what St. Louis Magazine said too:

"Vibe: the embodiment of a feel-good neighborhood establishment." 

True. Add to that, the tiniest of spaces just across Jefferson, Milque Toast  Bar. This place is a gem and adds to a strip of businesses including a barber shop, Fritanga Nicaraguan restaurant, Peat Wollaeger's Gallery & PopShop and South Jefferson Mid Century Modern all adding original, walkable places in the 2200 block of South Jefferson, which is a tough street to take a chance on...it's like a highway and people drive that way due to the overly wide road. But walking across the street to the McKinley Heights neighborhood to visit these places just makes me happy.

2. There's reasons to be hopeful for our aging/abandoned building stock. There are a few brick beauties I feared would succumb to the elements and squatters; but they are seeing new life.

Here are a few:

 2800 block of Magnolia Avenue

 2800 block of Magnolia Avenue

 2800 block of Magnolia Avenue

2100 block of Oregon Avenue

There are even some recent examples of new construction that are far better than previous attempts:

2800 block of Magnolia Avenue

Dumpsters and building permits are on display on a few others that make me hopeful that there will be more investment in the neighborhood:

 2100 block of Oregon Avenue

2600 block of California Avenue

3. The largest of several community gardens in our neighborhood is at Russell and California. It's called "Fox Park Farm" and it's one of those spaces that you can't appreciate by just driving by. For the neighbors that garden here, the space is a serene, pastoral kind of place. You can kind of escape here. It's strange. But, I'm not alone in this thought, Gateway Greening recently wrote about this garden which is one of the oldest in St. Louis:

"It is a green oasis nestled in the urban landscape."

Thing is, the place looks better than it has in the five years I've lived here. Cheers to the current group of hard workers. And apparently the bounty is plentiful:

Feels good to watch this neighborhood evolve. Here's to more positivity and investment in this important part of our fair city.