Some north side properties kept vacant for more than a decade
 A building put up for sale by the Saint Louis Development Corporation as a “featured” property, at 455-457 Walsh St. The LRA acquired the property from Anheuser Busch in 2008. The building is priced at $16,000. Photo from Saint Louis Image Library |
By Audrey Spalding
Show-Me Institute
In the city of Saint Louis, the largest property owner by far is a government agency that holds vacant and abandoned buildings and property. The agency holds more than 9,500 properties, at least 10 times as many as owned by the city government itself.
If knitted together, the 9,587 properties would come to a total of 1.7 square miles of vacant lots and buildings. But only half of those properties are up for sale, though at especially low prices. The rest are being held for some greater purpose — likely as a part of a future developer’s real estate project.
The city agency that holds this land is the Saint Louis Development Corporation’s (SLDC) real estate department. The department acquires properties through three different agencies, the Land Reutilization Authority (LRA), the Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority (LCRA), and the Planned Industrial Expansion Authority (PIEA). Each year, a total of about 225 properties are sold from the pool owned by LRA, LCRA, and PIEA.
The LRA in particular has been mentioned in the press and at recent north Saint Louis community meetings as an organization that often lets its properties go unmaintained. Another complaint made at past community meetings is that sometimes the LRA won’t sell property to area residents, preferring to hold the land for an ambitious developer.
At least 1,300 of those vacant lots and buildings held by the SLDC — not listed for sale — are part of a proposed $8 billion redevelopment project in north Saint Louis, put forward by developer Paul McKee and his redevelopment company, NorthSide Regeneration LLC. The project has come under a good amount of public scrutiny because the redevelopment company is asking the city of Saint Louis for $410 million in Tax Increment Finance funds (TIF), and because of the project’s large scale.
Some of the 1,300 properties listed for acquisition by the company have been held by the LRA for more than a decade. For example, a vacant lot at 2618 Sullivan Avenue, assessed at $1,500, has been held by the LRA since at least 1997, as far back as city property records are available.
A vacant lot at 1349 Leffingwell, assessed at $170, has also been held by the LRA since at least 1997. In fact, the vast majority of properties picked at random from a spreadsheet of to-be-acquired NorthSide properties listed as owned by the LRA had been held by that agency for at least the past 12 years.
According to a written statement from the SLDC in response to an interview request, “… if the properties are suitable for large-scale development, the agencies hold those properties for such major developments and do not sell them piecemeal to individuals.”
At a recent meeting of the North Side Community Benefits Alliance, a group that formed out of members’ concerns that the company will use eminent domain liberally, will remake the area with no regard to current residents’ needs, and has been letting properties it already owns go to waste, a man said he had tried to buy a LRA-owned lot near his home and had been refused.
The SLDC does take into consideration whether a prospective buyer has the means to improve the property, according to the agency’s statement. If the SLDC deems that person does not have the resources, it won’t sell the property to them.
“It is no favor to sell someone a vacant building that they will not be able to rehabilitate,” said the SLDC in its statement.