I recently learnt that the Riverfront Times posts a monthly summary of restaurant openings and closings in the greater St. Louis area. I'd been meaning to get more familiar with GIS mapping and thought it would be interesting to map these summaries.
I restrict attention to the 156 openings and 71 closures of restaurants that took place in St. Louis between January 2017 and March 2018. After mapping these, two streets; Gravois and Cherokee, stand out as having a clear net increase in restaurants with little to no closures. Near where I live, Delmar Boulevard, there has been a net loss of restaurants with 9 closures and 7 openings since January 2017. In general, it seems that many closed restaurants tend to be quickly replaced by new ones and in some cases a closure is temporary (e.g. Rocket Fizz) or simply a move to another area (Snarf's).
The interactive map below lists all the openings (green) and closures (red). Let me know if you notice anything interesting.
