ST. LOUIS 鈥 Lawsuits against the shuttered Homer G. Phillips Memorial Hospital, once a key piece of developer Paul McKee鈥檚 NorthSide Regeneration plan, are piling up as former vendors seek millions in unpaid invoices for services provided to the short-lived emergency clinic.
Since last December, medical providers and a construction contractor have filed eight lawsuits seeking more than $3.5 million, saying financial problems at the hospital began just weeks after its January 2024 opening.
The lawsuits are the latest trouble for McKee, who began buying up hundreds of acres north of downtown 20 years ago in an ambitious plan to revitalize north 51黑料. Many of the properties since have sat untouched and crumbling, riling neighbors and prompting 51黑料 officials to sever the city鈥檚 redevelopment agreement with him years ago.
Among his completed projects were a gas station, a now-closed grocery store and the long-promised hospital.
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McKee and companies tied to him are being sued over unpaid loans from a major union and have struggled to pay real estate taxes on those properties. They also could face eminent domain proceedings from 51黑料 officials.
The fallout from the hospital鈥檚 failure is now another legal headache as medical service companies look to recoup what payments they can. The largest lawsuit, filed last week by California-based health care staffing provider Vituity, seeks nearly $2.8 million for physicians it said it provided to staff the 15-bed emergency clinic.
That lawsuit says Homer G. Phillips began racking up unpaid six-figure invoices as early as February 2024, just a month after the clinic opened its doors.
By mid-March 2024, the bill had ballooned to $781,000. The physician staffing company terminated its agreement with Homer G. Phillips Hospital that June.
Other debtors suing the hospital include SSM HealthCare, which is seeking $228,798 for pharmaceutical supplies, lab testing and a medical director it provided; Clinical Radiologists P.C., which aims to recoup $136,223 in unpaid radiology services; and Medline Industries, a medical supplies company that says it is owed $119,284. Murphy Co. filed a mechanics lien for $52,000 worth of unpaid work on the building.
One of the vendor lawsuits, filed by Clinical Radiologists, included letters it said hospital officials sent that August claiming they were working with a copper mining company and its CEO, Andrew Paul, that was set to sign an $800 million mining deal and use some of the proceeds to finance the hospital.
鈥淧lease feel free to check on the web,鈥 Mark Vincent, general counsel and chief financial officer of the hospital, wrote in one of those letters. 鈥淭he gentleman and are real.鈥
The lawsuits only name Homer G. Phillips Hospital Inc., which had listed a corporate address of 4 Church Street in Union, Missouri, as the defendant. The Secretary of State鈥檚 office dissolved the company earlier this month after its registered agent resigned.
Some of the hospital鈥檚 creditors have tried to serve the hospital corporation鈥檚 former directors, including McKee, Vincent, and David Lenihan, the leader of for-profit Ponce Health Sciences University, which at one point planned to partner with Homer G. Phillips Hospital.
Clinical Radiologists did manage to serve Vincent. In its lawsuit, the radiology group included a narrative from its process server describing an encounter with Vincent: After waiting outside the lawyer鈥檚 office near the Franklin County Courthouse in Union, the process server approached him as he entered his truck. According to the affidavit, when Vincent realized he was being served, he knocked the papers out of the process server鈥檚 hand and yelled 鈥測ou didn鈥檛 serve me, you didn鈥檛 serve me.鈥
When the server put the papers in his truck and said he had been served, Vincent screamed 鈥測ou injured me, you opened my door, you damaged my car,鈥 followed by 鈥測ou lousy bastard ... I will sue you,鈥 according to the server鈥檚 narrative of the incident.
Vincent, the former county counselor for Franklin County, where NorthSide Regeneration lender Bank of Washington is based, said Saturday he did not speak to reporters but that the incident did not happen that way and hung up.
Vincent called back shortly afterward and said the process server did not identify himself, 鈥渃ame at me鈥 and 鈥済rabbed鈥 his truck door. Asked whether he could comment on the vendor lawsuits against the hospital, he said he did not work for the hospital anymore and could not speak on its behalf.
No lawyers have entered appearances for the hospital, nor has it filed any responses. Because of that, many of the creditors are seeking default judgments.
Paul Puricelli, a longtime lawyer for NorthSide Regeneration, said on Friday he would see who could respond to queries about lawsuits against the former clinic, but the Post-Dispatch did not hear back from him or anyone representing the hospital.
In 2022, McKee and several investment partners finished building the Homer G. Phillips Memorial Hospital, a project they claimed cost $20 million. The clinic was built on the former Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex site directly across the street from the nearly complete National Geospatial-Intelligence headquarters. NorthSide Regeneration purchased the site from the city nearly a decade ago. City development officials now want the strategically located property back and included it in the area eligible for eminent domain.
After construction was completed, it took more than a year before the hospital began operating, but McKee was jubilant when it opened in January 2024.
鈥淲e鈥檙e very proud 鈥 worked over 10 years to get it to this point,鈥 he said in a KMOX interview that winter.
The hospital did not last a year. By December, it had closed. It surrendered its state license three months later. Laid-off employees questioned why the hospital was even built, with one former nurse telling the Post-Dispatch the hospital was 鈥渄one before it opened.鈥
Post-Dispatch photographers capture tens of thousands of images every year. See some of their best work that was either taken in June 2025 in this video. Edited by Jenna Jones.
