South City bar closes temporarily after storm damage

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (KMOV) - Near the corner of Gravois Avenue and Delor Street is a sign of some of the damage from overnight storms and strong winds in the metro.

“This was a pretty big surprise,” said Patrick Schuchard. “Just a beautiful sign, and we spent a lot of money and time having it restored, and it was the first to go.”

Schuchard is the owner of the newly reimagined Tim’s Chrome Bar. It has been a Bevo Mill neighborhood staple for more than four decades and just reopened in the last month.

“Oh my god, people love the place,” said Schuchard. “There have been probably, I’d say, 20 or 30 people that were coming here to go to Tim’s this afternoon and then on social media, it [was] like an outpouring of all of our customers, which makes us feel really good.”

While the 70′s style interior and artwork remained intact following this week’s storms, the exterior tells a much different story.

“There’s three layers of brick in these old buildings, and the first layer came off,” said Schuchard. “I’m pretty sure what they’re going to do is take the back two layers off and replace that with concrete block, and then put some of these bricks back on, because it’s a historic building. So, we’re going to want to make it look good.”

Yet, it’s the damaged and torn-off vintage neon sign with the bar’s namesake on it that hit Schuchard the hardest this morning.

“We probably spent 15 or 20,000 dollars, I think, restoring the sign, and we had to put new transformers and new glass and reinforce the whole thing,” he said, “and it’ll probably cost that much to rebuild it, but we’ll rebuild it.”

Schuchard says they expect engineers to submit a report to the city Thursday to begin the rebuilding process with the hope this south St. Louis staple will light up again in the next week.

“They’re going to get scaffolding up, and safety equipment around, and we’ll talk to the city on Monday and apply for the building permits,” he said.

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