Joe Edwards’ latest endeavor, Magic Mini Golf, has taken more steps to fruition. The facility will contain an 18-hole mini golf course, a small Ferris Wheel, shuffleboard, other games, food, and drink. A $3.2M building permit was applied for on October 8th and plans submitted for review by the Preservation Review Board at its meeting October 22nd (Agenda).
A new two-story building will occupy the vacant lot at 6154 Delmar. It will attach to the former Olivet Missionary Baptist Church, purchased by Edwards in 2001, which will be rehabbed, and extend behind 6148-52 Delmar built in 2007, also owned by Edwards. There will be parking off the alley. The fence promoting a defunct African-American Cultural Center has fronted the lot since 2009. A gift from Emerson to the Missouri Historical Society announced in 2015 marked the end of that effort:
St. Louis Post-Dispatch – The new announcement, however, seems to mark an end to the effort to turn the old Olivet Missionary Baptist Church, on the east end of the Delmar Loop, into the long-discussed African-American Cultural Center.
The Cultural Resources Office is recommending “that the Preservation Board grant preliminary approval to the proposed design with the stipulation that building scale be reduced and front windows revised; and that final plans and exterior materials are reviewed and approved by CRO.”
If completed this will fill the penultimate missing tooth on the 6100 block of Delmar. The conspicuously empty lot at Delmar and Skinker endures. Time will tell when the empty buildings on the 6000 block of Delmar will be occupied, rehabbed, or redeveloped.
Before you ask, I don’t know when the Loop Trolley will start running.
Information about the church courtesy Greg Johnson- The 6166 Delmar building was built around 1924 for University Presbyterian Church, which in 1928 sold the building to B’rith Sholom. B’rith Sholom was an Orthodox synagogue founded in the near north side Jewish Ghetto in 1908 by Austrian-Hungarian Jews. They worshiped in the Delmar building from 1928 until 1960, when it merged with Knesseth Israel and moved to Richmond Heights. I don’t know its use from 1960-73. from 1973 to 2001 it was Olivet Missionary Baptist Church, which relocated to Florissant.
