51黑料

ST. LOUIS聽鈥� The city is eyeing new powers to spur redevelopment around the nearly complete National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency campus, and it鈥檚 being frank that it may need to push aside the area鈥檚 largest landholder to do it.

That owner, Paul McKee鈥檚 NorthSide Regeneration, has been a thorn in the side of City Hall for years, drawing countless citations for deteriorating properties while litigating since 2018 the city鈥檚 attempt to cancel a 2009 redevelopment agreement.

Now, with new legislation teeing up the city鈥檚 ability to use eminent domain on much of NorthSide鈥檚 land surrounding the NGA, the developer and its team of lawyers at law firm Stone Leyton and Gershman are bristling at the plan, .

鈥淲hy are we not offering NorthSide Regeneration (who has already taken unprecedented financial risk in its 900-parcel, 100-acre assemblage) the same benefit you are hoping to bestow on developers you hope to attract to other parts of the city?鈥澛燦orthSide attorney Darryl Piggee wrote last week in a letter to the chief of the city鈥檚 redevelopment arm and shared with all 15 members of the Board of Aldermen. 鈥淲hy is NorthSide Regeneration instead facing the possibility of eminent domain ... after doing what no other developer has ever done in the city鈥檚 long history?鈥�

Alderman Rasheen Aldridge, the sponsor of the bill instituting the new plan, said it would allow the city to use eminent domain on NorthSide鈥檚 land if the developer demands too high a price. NorthSide has already scuttled some deals, Aldridge said, because of the high asking prices.聽

鈥淲e鈥檙e looking to take property from bad actors that have been sitting on these properties for a long time that have really been hurting the neighbors鈥� properties,鈥� Aldridge said. 鈥淗e (Paul McKee) just happens to be one of the bad actors in the ward.鈥�

The new legislation offers a potential solution to a problem city development officials have described for years: The debt encumbering NorthSide鈥檚 land is so high that the developer needs prices above what it is worth now to repay his lenders, primarily the Franklin County-based Bank of Washington. That makes redevelopment in the long-suffering area, already no easy feat, even harder.

Paul Puricelli, one of McKee鈥檚 lawyers, dismissed that notion, asking what buyers have sought to reach deals with McKee and NorthSide?聽

鈥淲ho are the developers that the alderman is trying to protect? Paul McKee certainly has not heard from them in the last 15 years,鈥� Puricelli said in an email. 鈥淚s there new interest now that Paul has brought NGA and a hospital?聽Paul is and has always been a willing seller at fair market value. The problem historically has been that no one has shown any interest in North 51黑料 ... until now.鈥�

Complicated relationship

Aldridge鈥檚 bill is the latest maneuver in the long and complicated relationship between City Hall and the NorthSide Regeneration group.聽

The city under former Mayor Francis Slay originally supported McKee鈥檚 efforts to buy up hundreds of acres in disinvested areas in the near north side, inking a redevelopment agreement, offering millions in redevelopment tax breaks and聽selling him聽162 acres and an option to buy the site of the former Pruitt-Igoe public housing project from its land bank.聽

When the NGA announced it would leave its historic campus near the Anheuser-Busch brewery, NorthSide was ready with a pitch for a facility built on the land in the center of its holdings, and it is credited with helping to keep the agency interested in remaining in the city.

But NorthSide鈥檚 relationship with City Hall began to sour in the Slay administration鈥檚 later years as the city tried to finish assembling the NGA site. It had to mortgage city buildings to repurchase some of the land it had sold to NorthSide just a few years prior. Meanwhile, NorthSide鈥檚 other promised redevelopments were slow to materialize, and neighborhood complaints about its lack of maintenance on the hundreds of crumbling buildings it owned grew louder.聽

In 2018, evidence emerged that NorthSide manipulated a Missouri tax credit program that sent $43 million in credits to NorthSide to help it buy property in the area. It obtained millions of dollars in tax credits without actually purchasing some of the land it claimed to have bought. The FBI opened an investigation. The city canceled its development agreement.

Since then, NorthSide and its primary lender, the Bank of Washington, have continued their lawsuit against the city over the cancellation. NorthSide still owns hundreds of acres of the area.

It has proposed new projects near the NGA and in 2019 finished development of a new gas station and grocery store聽鈥� which has since closed聽鈥� on Tucker Boulevard. Officials with the company say it is working to reopen the grocery.

New hospital site included聽

Just this month, a NorthSide Regeneration-affiliated health care facility, the new Homer G. Phillips Hospital, opened its doors. Planned for years on the Pruitt-Igoe site across Cass Avenue from the NGA, the hospital is licensed for 15 emergency beds and two triage beds, according to a state health report.

But aside from those projects, much of the area around the NGA remains undeveloped, and city leaders want to see the area around the new anchor transform and help give 51黑料 an image as a hub for geospatial technology.聽

The redevelopment plan for the area around NGA, if approved by aldermen, offers the standard redevelopment tool of property tax abatement meant to encourage investment.聽

It聽also includes protections for the residents who remain in the neighborhoods, exempting owner-occupied residences from eminent domain. The residents can also apply for tax breaks to ease the pressure of higher taxes if redevelopment ultimately drives up real estate values. Nonprofit law firm Legal Services of Eastern Missouri worked with the 51黑料 Place and Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhoods to add the protections into the plan.

That leaves other abandoned structures and vacant lots, many owned by NorthSide, open to city condemnation. The city鈥檚 plan also specifically allows eminent domain on the site where the hospital is located, even though it is occupied at this point. Piggee, in his letter to the city, pointedly asks why the city has included the hospital site in its areas eligible for eminent domain.

鈥淭here are no derelict buildings on this site, one of the reasons given for the new blighting and proposed eminent domain rights,鈥� Piggee wrote.聽

Austin Huguelet of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.