Drive west on Clayton Road past the McKnight intersection this week and you'll see fresh window signage at 8853-Q Ladue Road, where Playa Bowls opened its doors this past Saturday, August 29. It's the acai and smoothie chain's first location anywhere in the St. Louis area. That's the version of this story most people will tell you. The more interesting version is what that storefront has been before Playa Bowls got there, and what's sitting a few doors down that hasn't changed at all.
The Same 1,200 Square Feet, Three Times Over
Before Playa Bowls, the space was JARS by Fabio Viviani, the celebrity chef's dessert-in-a-jar concept, which ran there for about 19 months before closing earlier this year. Before JARS, it was a MaggieMoo's. Three concepts, one storefront, all in a stretch of years short enough that a resident who moved in when it was still an ice cream shop hasn't lived there long enough to call themselves established.
The Playa Bowls arrival isn't a small thing on its own. The chain has grown to more than 400 locations across 30 states since Rob Giuliani and Abby Taylor started blending acai bowls out of a table blender at the Jersey Shore in 2014, and the local franchise deal came from Brittany and Jeff Ciaramita, a St. Louis couple with a five-unit development agreement targeting Clayton, Ladue, Central West End, Creve Coeur, Town and Country and Chesterfield. Jeff is a practicing cardiologist and a senior executive with Mercy. Landing the first unit in Ladue, ahead of five other suburbs on their list, says something about how this stretch of Clayton Road reads to people deciding where to put a lease.
But sit with the churn for a second. Even along one of the corridor's steadiest commercial blocks, a buzzy new-concept lease in a strip mall didn't make it two years before the sign changed again. That's not a knock on the location. It's a fact worth knowing if you've ever wondered why the corridor feels like it's always in the middle of becoming something else.
What Didn't Change While The Sign Did
Walk half a block from that storefront and the businesses that have been there long enough to remember what came before MaggieMoo's are still running exactly the way they always have.
Albarré Jewelry has occupied 9711 Clayton Road since Barry Sherman founded it in June 1976, which puts it within a few years of its fiftieth anniversary. Schnarr's Hardware has been serving the corridor for well past six decades. Sign of the Arrow, a nonprofit needlepoint shop, remains one of the few places in the metro area where you can still walk out with a hand-painted canvas. Ladue Pharmacy still runs its soda fountain. Ken Miesner's and Ladue Florist handle the flowers nobody remembers to order until the day of the party. Sportsman's Park, the neighborhood bar with the sports memorabilia on the walls, has been a fixture for about 50 years.
None of these businesses needed a rebrand to survive the same stretch of years that cycled a storefront through three concepts. That's the quieter story on Clayton Road this year: the corridor isn't defined by what's new, it's defined by how little the anchors have needed to change to stay useful.
The one genuine addition that isn't a replacement is the Butchery Market at 9212 Clayton Road, the expanded pickup counter next door to the longstanding restaurant at 9202 Clayton. It's stocked with prime meats, made-to-order sandwiches, ready-to-eat hot dishes and custom ice from Good Ice, built for the nights when nobody wants to cook and nobody wants a full sit-down dinner either. It's not a new business. It's an old one adding a door.
The Road Itself Is The Slower Story
If you've been stuck behind orange barrels on Clayton Road near Glen Creek this year, that's the box culvert replacement, and it's been a long time coming. The existing culvert under the road is more than a century old and has been flagged for significant structural deterioration, with the city's engineering firm, HR Green, managing design and construction phasing at an estimated cost near $830,000. On top of that timeline, the city posted a separate notice in late July that the Metropolitan Sewer District would begin its own utility work on Clayton Road starting the first week of August. Between the two, this has been a slower fix than anyone budgeted for. A culvert that's outlasted three generations of storefront tenants nearby isn't going to be rushed.
The other project moving quietly in the background is the South 40 Drive shared-use path extension. The city has submitted a Transportation Alternative Program application for federal funding to extend the path so it connects Deer Creek Preserve east to the Trails End subdivision and west to the Clayton and South 40 intersection. It's not glamorous, but for anyone who walks or bikes that stretch, it closes a gap that's been missing for years, and the municipal park grant tied to it is due this year.
| What's changing | Type of change | Where it stands |
|---|---|---|
| Playa Bowls at 8853-Q Ladue Road | New tenant, third concept in the same space | Opened Aug. 29 |
| Butchery Market at 9212 Clayton Road | Expansion of an existing business | Open now |
| Glen Creek culvert on Clayton Road | Infrastructure replacement, 100+ years overdue | Culvert work ongoing; separate MSD utility work began Aug. 3 |
| South 40 Drive shared-use path | New connector trail | Federal funding application submitted, grant decision pending |
Read across that table and the pattern is clear. The fastest-moving change on Clayton Road is retail, and it's the least permanent. The slowest-moving changes are underground and on foot, and they're the ones that will still matter after the next storefront turnover.
The Taco Spot That Doesn't Need A Sign
If you want a small, specific example of how this neighborhood layers rather than replaces, it's Ladue Taco, tucked into the alley at 9783 Clayton Road just behind Companion Café. It's open evenings only, so it doesn't compete with the café's daytime crowd for parking, and the menu runs simple: street tacos with a handful of fillings, including a breaded mahi-mahi worth ordering, plus margaritas sized from single serving to gallon. It didn't need a big storefront or a launch weekend. It found an alley, kept the hours narrow, and let word of mouth do the rest. That's the version of growth this corridor tends to reward.
Where The Corridor's Noise Actually Stops
None of this touches Tilles Park, and that's sort of the point. At 9551 Litzsinger Road, the St. Louis County-owned park sits a short distance off the Clayton Road strip and functions as the neighborhood's actual public square, independent of whatever's leasing or closing a few blocks over. It has a splash pad, two playgrounds, a fishing lake, a cross country course, tennis courts and picnic shelters, and its Winter Wonderland light display has run every holiday season since 1985. The park's WPA-era construction, dating to 1938, has made it eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. Whatever happens to the storefront at 8853-Q next, Tilles Park will still be the place where a Saturday afternoon in Ladue actually happens.
That's the shape of the neighborhood right now. The flashiest opening belongs to a chain that's had three different names at the same address in a handful of years. The businesses that have earned actual trust took decades to do it, and the infrastructure that will outlast all of it is still being dug up under Clayton Road as we speak. If you've lived here a while, none of that is a surprise. It's just useful to see it laid out in one place.
If you're keeping an eye on how this stretch of Ladue keeps evolving, or you're weighing what a home near this corridor is actually worth right now, Welcome Home with Holly is always glad to talk through it.
