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Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Ceiling collapse at a Schnucks store, and other tales of DESCOism.

According to the St Peters Journal, last Friday, part of the ceiling of a Schnucks store in St. Peters collapsed while the store was open. Several customers were hit by falling debris, but it seems no one was seriously injured. Here is the story, its headline curiously omitting the name of the major local retailer whose store had the dangerous problem: Section of store's ceiling collapses

Let's see. There's:
1) This incident
2) The construction of a new Schnucks and Lowe's site at Loughborough Commons has been stopped because the vibrations it created are damaging nearby homes.
3) The construction on the Century Building site, which is being developed by DESCO (The real estate arm of Schnucks), has been stopped for several months because the piers they poured are faulty.
4) The long-abandoned Schnucks just north of Downtown is still owned by DESCO. They don't even bother to turn the lights on here at night, even though the parking lot is a very popular cut-through for motorists and pedestrians alike. This site cuts off Hadley street between Cass and Ofallon, taking out a vital part of the street grid (There are just a couple of routes between Downtown and the Near North Side.), so people naturally travel through it, but DESCO leaves the lights off despite the obvious risk to public safety.

All I can say is that at this rate, any time I have to go near a Schnucks, I should probably wear a thick helmet with a light on top of it. Yeesh.

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