NEWS

Mercury
By Thomas Crone
SPECIAL TO THE POST-DISPATCH
04/06/2006

A newcomer on the local club scene, Mercury opened just last weekend - a soft launch for friends and family of the management and staff. Though it wasn't a full-on debut, this is a very compact bar, so the new space felt full, with the room possessing a pretty nice vibe right from the outset.

Mercury is the latest project of entrepreneur Pablo Weiss, who's backed a string of them in the greater downtown area - from the late, lamented Hot Locust Cantina and Side Door Club to the current Kitchen K and Nectar. This time out, he was approached by HRI Properties, developers of one of the Cupples Station warehouses along the burgeoning Spruce corridor. A street-level space that's about as big as a "slightly oversized apartment," the new bar aims to take advantage of pedestrian buzz along the strip.

With only 1,600 square feet to play with, Weiss and his crew crafted an interesting, two-leveled room, with a separate outdoor patio area. The latter might be the most notable feature right now, inasmuch as Mercury is located on a walking path between the Savvis Center and the new Busch Stadium. It's likely that stadium traffic will help propel the outdoor biergarten business in Mercury's early months.

"That's not an unrecognized bit of geography," Weiss jokes.

Inside, the space is unique, with a sports lounge concept that's actually rather light on sports. Three large, plasma-screen television monitors line the walls, but the room isn't given over to athletic memorabilia and bric-a-brac. Instead, it has a contemporary feel and lots of nice touches.

To keep the sound from bleeding into the 100-plus apartments upstairs, Mercury has a cork floor and hanging sound dampeners. The second floor, which is painted a pleasing blend of bright colors, has a neat view of the passing streetscape.

The kitchen will focus on a limited but intriguing bar menu, developed over at Kitchen K and including such sports bar mainstays as hot wings, personal pizzas and nachos (the revived Hot Locust recipe, by the way) alongside some dishes that wouldn't be expected - such as an Asian salad with mandarin oranges, bosco sticks and toasted brisket sandwiches.

While there's been a gold rush of new taverns dotting the perimeter of Busch Stadium, none of them has downplayed the sports component. The casual-but-cool lounge feel should attract a few tourists, along with the glam folks who dot the barstools of any new room, particularly one with the pedigree of Mercury.

More than a decade ago, Weiss bet that the Locust and 20th Street nexus would be downtown's next "it" zone. He got there a little early, but the money being invested in this end of downtown suggests that, this time, his timing is right.