North Side community group questions TIF project’s validity
 A deteriorating building on 2409 Cass Ave., near True Grace Baptist Church. According Saint Louis City records, the parcel is owned by Blairmont Associated Limited Co., a company affiliated with developer Paul McKee. Blairmont acquired the property in 2004. Photo from city records. |
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 On Mullanphy Street, sitting across from the deteriorating building shown above, are two maintained and occupied homes. In the NorthSide Regeneration company’s TIF application, 17 properties on the 2300 block of Mullanphy are listed for acquisition. |
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By Audrey Spalding
Show-Me Institute
Shirley Booker, who lives on the 2300 block of Benton in north Saint Louis, says she has been cutting developer Paul McKee’s grass for years.
“The vacant house next to me, owned by Mr. McKee, has been empty for five years,” she said. “We cut the grass and make it look like someone’s there.” Booker said she’s tried calling McKee’s office to get someone to cut down the trees and weeds in the back of the empty house, to no avail.
She was one of more than 60 people who showed up at True Grace Baptist Church on Sunday in the afternoon heat to listen to presentations detailing the rights and powers residents have when a developer slates their neighborhood for purchase.
McKee and his company, NorthSide Regeneration, LLC, have proposed purchasing and redeveloping three square miles of the city of Saint Louis’ north side. Most of the area lies north of Delmar Boulevard, between Grand and 11th Street. For this development, NorthSide Regeneration has asked the city for more than $400 million in tax increment financing (TIF).
Although no elected officials — including Alderwoman April Ford-Griffin, who represents a ward that contains a large amount of property included in the proposed redevelopment — attended the meeting, several community leaders and housing experts showed up to discuss issues and pass out educational information.
The organizing group, North Side Community Benefits Alliance (NSCBA), was able to secure a significant keynote speaker for the event: David Jackson, a member of both the Saint Louis Board of TIF commissioners and the Saint Louis Public School District’s Board of Education.
Jackson spoke at length about how the TIF process works, as well as the board of commissioners’ stance on the project. The board met Friday and heard McKee present the NorthSide Regeneration proposal.
“I’ve gotta be frank with you, the board of commissioners are in support of this project,” Jackson said.
However, he said, there wasn’t enough detailed information presented, and the company had not worked with the community enough.
“In our opinion, it is only missing one element, and that is community engagement,” Jackson said. He noted that NorthSide Regeneration had not spoken to or consulted with the school district.
A lack of community engagement is what initially prompted area residents to organize the NSCBA. As NSCBA President Sheila Rendon explained to attendees on Sunday, there is a feeling that North Side residents have been cut out of the redevelopment process. “The answer that was given to us was, this was politics,” she said. “So we couldn’t get in the way of politics or business.”
Romona Taylor Williams, NSCBA board member and the meeting’s facilitator, put it more bluntly. “I don’t think we can go into Clayton and those areas and say we’re redeveloping and put some boom boxes out,” she said. “Would the city have allowed the likes of Paul McKee to come into the central west end and the south side?”
Speaker Keith Marquard, NSCBA member and a certified public accountant, focused not on disenfranchisement, but on the nuts and bolts of NorthSide Regeneration’s TIF application (download here).
One of Marquard’s main criticisms was the way NorthSide Regeneration rationalized its need for TIF money. He said the company should have estimated its future profit by calculating return on equity, the additional amount that NorthSide Regeneration would make from the development than it initially put in.
Instead, he said, “they’re calculating profit on what they own and what they borrow.”
“I think they did that to make it look like they need the TIF to make it profitable,” Marquard said.
According to the company’s application, its profit would be 3.12 percent of total costs (or more than $251 million) without TIF money, but 8.21 percent (or nearly $410 million) with TIF help.
According to Marquard, if you add in the other forms of government money, such as historic property and brownfield tax credits, total assistance for the NorthSide project adds up to $738 million, which, he said, comes to about $5,000 per city household.
Speaker Mark Leinauer, a real estate attorney and NSCBA member, said that because NorthSide Regeneration is asking for city money, the community can ask for certain requirements. “This isn’t a private building,” he said. ”This is a subsidized building — heavily subsidized.”
Leinauer laid out a number of claims, including a guarantee of affordable housing, funds for resident job training, access to mass transit, and a ban on destruction of occupied housing, among other things.
“If you’re getting taxpayer money, then what you build should reflect taxpayer desires,” he said.
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that an adjacent property to the one pictured above at 2409 Cass was owned by Blairmont.