Commercial Locksmith in St. Louis, MO

Older commercial buildings and their doors

The city's history of its physical growth records that a fire in 1849 destroyed 15 riverfront blocks, and that the rebuilding stressed fireproofing: buildings generally four or five stories tall, with heavy brick walls and stone or cast-iron street fronts. The Washington Avenue wholesale district began to take shape in the late 1890s. Where a building of that kind now holds several tenants, its locks sort into layers:

• The street entrance, usually controlled by the building owner or manager.
• Each tenant space, controlled by the tenant, sometimes with a copy held by the owner.
• Back-of-house doors: stairs, service entries, loading doors and storage rooms.

Each layer is its own lock question, with its own key holders. Whatever the building's age, a door that drags or no longer latches on its own can leave a space unlocked overnight without anyone noticing.

Keys, tenants and staff turnover

Commercial keys travel. A departing employee, a contractor who kept a key or a previous tenant's cleaning crew can all leave copies outside your control. The usual responses, from simplest:

1. Rekeying the affected cylinders when a key goes missing or a tenant moves out.
2. A master key system, so staff carry one key that opens only their areas while a manager's key opens all of them.
3. Restricted keyways, whose blanks are controlled so that copies are harder to get.

Whatever the system, keep a written key log showing who holds which key and when each one came back.

What to include in a request

Give the building address or cross streets, the number of doors and who controls each (owner, tenant or both), whether the building is shared, and whether the lease says who may change locks. For a single key that walked out the door, lock rekeying may be all it takes. See commercial locksmith service and the St. Louis page.