A note from Andy + Amanda
Hi everyone,
We haven't shared much detail about the rebuild, and things are coming to a head. So we wanted to give you a fuller picture of where things stand at 3197-3199 S. Grand — because you've stuck with us through this and you deserve to know.
When the fire closed our doors on March 7, 2025, the support you gave us here was humbling — this community came together and helped us raise a little over $100,000 toward reopening through GoFundMe. That money covered three payrolls for our staff in the weeks right after the fire, and — combined with our own savings — went toward purchasing the building later that year and setting aside the 10% equity injection the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) originally required.
Since then, we've been working tirelessly to finance the rest of the renovation through an SBA 504 loan, structured through Southern Bank and the St. Louis Local Development Company (LDC) — clearing requirement after requirement: environmental testing, financial underwriting, loan committee approval at the bank in December, and approval from the LDC's board in January. At that point we expected to close in February.
Then the project hit a complication tied to the building's historic status. We needed two related approvals — a Section 106 historic review for the SBA loan, and separate Historic Tax Credit certification, both run through the same preservation offices. We believed our Historic Tax Credit paperwork would cover the Section 106 requirement too, but in March the SBA said it wasn't sufficient — only a conditional approval — so we filed a formal amendment and went through a second review, which didn't close until May 21. Separately, the SBA also told us that because we haven't been continuously operating since the fire, we don't meet its two-year continuous-operation threshold, so they intend to treat us as a "new business" — despite our having run this business successfully since 2008. That comes with a steeper down payment requirement: 15% of project costs instead of the 10% we planned, saved for, and already have in hand.
That extra 5% is a difference of about $120,000 we do not currently have.
We asked the SBA to make an exception, given that we've run this business for years and met every single requirement put in front of us, on time, at every stage. On July 10, we learned that request was denied.
So we're back to restructuring the deal to meet the new number, and we're not giving up. We're working with our bank and our loan officer on next steps, and we've also reached out to our elected representatives for help.
We wanted you to hear this directly from us rather than wonder why things have gone quiet. Thank you, again and always, for getting us this far. We'll keep you posted.
— Andy & Amanda
