Paul McKee has kept a low profile since his NorthSide project suffered a legal setback this summer. He wants 51ºÚÁÏans to know, however, that the project is anything but stalled.
In an upbeat, high-energy presentation to Post-Dispatch writers and editors on Thursday, McKee described the progress he has made on several fronts, from negotiating land deals with the Missouri Department of Transportation to landing a charter school and a plumbing-supply company for his $8 billion development.
He also dropped tantalizing hints about his conversations with various other potential tenants: national retailers, a 600-employee manufacturing plant, biotechnology firms and large Chinese companies.
"We just have kept charging ahead as if there's no lawsuit at all," McKee said.
Ah, but there is one, and his side is losing. 51ºÚÁÏ Circuit Judge Robert Dierker ruled in July that McKee's plans were too vague to justify $390 million of tax-increment financing. Steven Stone, an attorney and adviser to McKee, says McKee will appeal and hopes to settle the case.
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McKee acknowledges that the ruling has slowed NorthSide in some ways. He's close to an agreement with MoDOT to buy land near 22nd and Market streets, but the TIF was supposed to help pay for it. The lawsuit also may delay infrastructure projects throughout the two-square-mile NorthSide area, and McKee says it has put discussions of federal grants on hold.
What's worse are the perception problems. "In typical 51ºÚÁÏ style, it has put stink on NorthSide, and North 51ºÚÁÏ doesn't really need any more stink," McKee said, using his fingers to draw quotation marks around 'stink."
While his lawyers fight the lawsuit, McKee would rather talk about everything else that's happening with NorthSide. National Sales, a distributor of plumbing, heating and air-conditioning equipment, plans to move 75 jobs to a site at 16th and Delmar. KIPP, a charter school operator, will reopen the old Zion Lutheran School in 2012. McKee's own companies will operate a materials recycling center to process concrete, brick and other materials from demolished buildings.
In addition, he says he has financing to renovate the 140-year-old Clemens House on Cass Avenue into 49 senior living units. In all, McKee says, $149 million worth of projects are scheduled to be done by 2012, with or without a resolution to the legal fight.
That, however, is only the beginning. The NorthSide developer has doubled the amount of retail space that he had in his original plan, and conceptual drawings show at least five big-box stores in the area.
"The retail people are finding us, which is really a pleasant surprise," McKee said. "We don't have anything ready to market yet, and they are calling us."
Similarly, he said, strong interest from technology companies has caused him to double the space for high-tech labs, offices and manufacturing. He has reduced the amount of housing in the plan because of the housing market's slump. McKee says it will be two years before he starts on the housing portion of the project.
Even after such tweaks, McKee's vision for the site remains as sweeping as ever. "If you're ever going to see 51ºÚÁÏ be great again, it's going to take the NorthSide," he says. "The NorthSide is going to lead us."
It's good to hear that legal setbacks and a sluggish economy haven't dulled his enthusiasm. A more cautious developer might have waited until the hurdles were out of the way, but McKee has pushed ahead, unwilling to let 'stink" have the upper hand.
