Straub's Markets closed its store at 302 N. Kingshighway on Friday, Sept. 25. That ended a 78-year run at the corner of Kingshighway and Maryland Plaza. A month later, the Central West End's weekly grocery run has spread out. It now runs through a few full-service stores with their own hours, a monthly market on McPherson, and a bottle shop on the same block. The corner that anchored it all is waiting on a sale, and no buyer has been publicly confirmed.
A Corner That Outlasted the Supermarket Era
The CWE store was nearly as old as Straub's modern history. William A. Straub opened his first grocery in Webster Groves in 1901. He went door to door taking orders and delivered them later that day by horse and buggy. The Clayton store opened in 1948. About a month later, Straub's took over an existing grocery in the Central West End and kept it running until this September.
That store lasted through the growth of suburban supermarkets, national chains, big-box stores and grocery delivery. It closed in the same year the company turned 125. President and CEO Jack "Trip" Straub's statement to St. Louis Public Radio on the day the closing was announced was about time:
"For nearly eight decades, generations of customers have welcomed Straub's into their lives at this location. Saying goodbye to this store is not easy."
The goodbye happened fast. Straub's announced the closing on Tuesday, Sept. 8. Starting the next day, the store cut its hours to 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and held a closing sale: 10% off liquor, wine, beer and tobacco, and 20% off everything else while inventory lasted. The store closed for good 17 days after the announcement.
Some regulars were caught off guard. On the final day, Janice White-Brown told First Alert 4 she was "heartbroken." She had driven in from South County just to shop at this location, STL.News reported. Another shopper, Mary Chapman, said some of her friends relied on the store because they could walk to it. That walkable trip is what the neighborhood has to rebuild.
The Grocery Run Now Keeps Different Hours
The full-service stores that remain keep longer hours than Straub's did in its last weeks. They just aren't at Maryland Plaza. These are the hours listed on each store's own site:
| Store | Address | Daily hours |
|---|---|---|
| Whole Foods Market, Central West End | 4577 W. Pine Blvd. | 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. |
| Schnucks Lindell | 4171 Lindell Blvd. | 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. |
| Schnucks Downtown | 315 N. 9th St. | 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. |
Schnucks Lindell is open 16 hours a day, six more than Straub's ran during its closing weeks. Whole Foods on West Pine opens two hours later than the Lindell store and closes an hour earlier. In practice, the 6 a.m. stop before a hospital shift or a run in Forest Park now happens on Lindell. A 9:30 p.m. stop does too. Whole Foods covers the middle of the day. Schnucks Downtown is the farthest of the three. It closes at 8 p.m., the same hour as Straub's final schedule.
None of these stores is on the corner where Kingshighway meets the plaza, so the full grocery stop at the neighborhood's western entrance is gone.
McPherson Becomes the Last-Sunday Stop
The more personal kind of shopping is moving a few blocks into the neighborhood. Market on McPherson calls itself a monthly boutique farmers market. It runs 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the last Sunday of each month at 4740 McPherson Ave. Two dates are left in 2026, according to the CWE Scene calendar:
- Sunday, Nov. 29, the Sunday after Thanksgiving
- Sunday, Dec. 27, between Christmas and New Year's
Vino STL is on the same block of McPherson at No. 4701. It's a wine shop with a mix of domestic and international bottles to take home, as St. Louis Magazine describes it. Wine and beer were among the departments marked down in Straub's closing sale. On a last Sunday, the 4700 block of McPherson now covers two of the things the Kingshighway store used to: fresh food and a bottle for dinner.
The market's last-Sunday schedule makes it a monthly plan, not a weekly habit. The dates are worth putting on the calendar now. November's falls on Thanksgiving weekend.
Straub's Loyalists Still Have Clayton
For shoppers whose habits run through Straub's itself, the company still has three stores: Clayton, Webster Groves and Town & Country. Clayton is the one with the closest tie to the CWE. It opened about a month before the Kingshighway store in 1948, so the two ran side by side for their whole history. At least one familiar face moved there. Shopper Michael Abron told First Alert 4 he was relieved to hear that an employee he'd said goodbye to would keep working at the Clayton store, STL.News reported.
That trip takes a car, a bus or a MetroLink ride. Any of those is a different kind of errand from a walk to Maryland Plaza.
The Corner's Next Use Is Still Unconfirmed
What happens to the walkable part of this map depends on 302 N. Kingshighway. The Straub family confirmed in June that the property was for sale and said the store would stay open while they looked for a buyer. CBRE marketed the 22,489-square-foot building for $3.25 million and called the site a gateway to the Central West End. That figure is an asking price, not a sale price.
The marketing materials list a wide range of possible uses:
- Continued retail
- Multifamily housing
- Mixed-use development
- Medical offices
- Hospitality
- Senior living
Some of those would bring back daily errands at the corner. Others would turn it into a place people go to for work, a stay or a home. When it announced the closing, the company told STLPR only that it expects the future owners "to be a positive addition to the Central West End neighborhood." In its Sept. 28 report, STL.News said it had not independently confirmed a completed sale, the buyer's identity or a final redevelopment plan.
The building sits on a major north-south road near Forest Park, the Washington University Medical Campus and BJC HealthCare. Those neighbors give the corner a lot of options, and they're why its next use is hard to predict.
Maryland Plaza Fills Up in December
The plaza the old store faced will be busy this winter anyway. Here's the neighborhood calendar for the rest of the year:
- Friday, Nov. 13, 7 to 8:30 p.m. The Central West End Association's Forest Park hayride, meeting at Faulkner and Wells Drives.
- Saturday, Dec. 5. Holiday on the Plaza, billed as free family fun on Maryland Plaza.
- Dec. 5, 12 and 19, 1 to 5 p.m. Window Walk, a free afternoon with neighborhood storefronts and seasonal activities. Organizers say full 2026 details are still to come.
On Dec. 5, Holiday on the Plaza and the first Window Walk afternoon fall on the same Saturday, a short walk from the old Straub's corner.
If you live near Kingshighway and Maryland Plaza and are wondering what a change at 302 N. Kingshighway could mean for your street, The Warner Hall Group is following the corner closely and would be glad to talk it through. Request a private consultation.
