City's smoking ban exemptions headed for expiration

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ST. LOUIS • Patrick Stanley hopes his business doesn’t go up in smoke.

The Charles P. Stanley Cigar Company and Lounge, which operates at the busy corner of Washington Avenue and North 11th Street, faces an uncertain future as the city’s smoking ban exemptions are set to expire on Jan. 1.

“This would put us out of business,” Stanley said. “We won’t be able to stay open. Our business model is built around smoking.”

The smoking ban went into force in 2011 with a set of five-year exemptions.

St. Louis County enacted a similar ban the same year.

Unless the city changes its law, those exemptions will be gone — turning the city completely smoke-free. Any extension appears unlikely.

Mary Ellen Ponder, the chief of staff to Mayor Francis Slay, said the “mayor does not support extending exemption sunsets.”

Still, with the day of reckoning coming due, Stanley hopes the city will extend the exemptions or at least carve out one specifically for his business.

“We’ve been around for 137 years,” Stanley said. “I hope we can continue.”

Stanley’s great-grandfather began selling cigars in downtown St. Louis in 1876. The business had a well-known customer base, which is said to have included President U.S. Grant. It eventually went out of business in 1935.

Stanley and family members resurrected the name in 2011, as the smoking ban went into place, and opened the cigar bar, which sells more than 1,000 varieties of cigars, right around the corner from where his great-grandfather got his start. It has become a popular destination in downtown’s loft district and has drawn a steady and diverse customer base from around the region, not to mention a number of out-of-town guests stopping by after visiting the city’s nearby convention center.

“Business is wonderful,” Stanley said. “We didn’t take a hit like a lot of Washington Avenue places did when Ballpark Village opened.”

Stanley said the uniqueness of the bar has helped it become a stable business in the city. But Stanley said the uncertainty over the smoking ban exemptions has prevented him from attending cigar conventions, buying more stock, and investing more in his space, which features large screen TVs, couches, and top-shelf liquor.

Alderman Jack Coatar, 7th Ward, said he is “exploring legislative options” for when the Board of Aldermen returns from summer break in September.

“I’d like to keep existing businesses in business,” Coatar said, whose ward includes Stanley’s downtown cigar bar.

But Coatar would need the signature of Slay.

The posh Missouri Athletic Club, a private social organization in downtown, openly flouted the law. It was fined in 2011 for continuing to allow smoking. The group was ineligible for an exemption.

The city eventually reached an agreement with the organization, dropped the fines, and allowed smoking in four areas of the club, saying it is a “unique entity.” The mayor’s office says it plans to review the club’s status.

It’s unclear if Stanley’s could pursue an option similar to the MAC’s.

Stanley’s situation is somewhat different than other bars or clubs, where smoking is tangential to business.

Bill Kapes, who owns Riley’s Pub in the city’s Tower Grove East neighborhood, said he rushed to get a smoking exemption license five years ago when the ban went into place. But now, he says, it’s not as necessary to his business.

Kapes said he will alter the back patio of Riley’s by building a wind block for smoking customers when his smoking license exemption expires.

“I think what we had worked,” Kapes said. “We would have lost a ton of business five years ago. But now, smokers know they have to go outside. They don’t feel entitled anymore.”