Neighborhood group files nuisance lawsuit against NorthSide over property

ST. LOUIS — The historic ABC Auto Sales building has been crumbling onto the sidewalk for years.

Unsecured entrances allow criminal activity and drug use near the busy intersection of Page and Grand boulevards. Its owner has been slapped with major code violations since at least 2014, when city officials condemned the structure. But beyond the exchange of letters and citations, the dangerous structure has continued to deteriorate, unaddressed by one of St. Louis’ most notorious landowners — Paul McKee’s NorthSide Regeneration.

Now, a recently formed neighborhood association wants a judge to wrest control of the building at 3509 Page Boulevard and give it to the group, arguing it is better positioned to secure the structure and keep it from further damaging nearby property values and quality of life.

The October lawsuit from the Covenant Blu Grand Center Neighborhood Association — represented by lawyers James Bax and Peter Hoffman from Legal Services of Eastern Missouri — asks a judge to order NorthSide and McKee to address the problems cited by the city or appoint a receiver to take control of the property.

“Defendant Northside is insolvent and too undercapitalized to maintain the Property or otherwise provide relief to Plaintiff,” the lawsuit says.

In a response filed in December, NorthSide and McKee deny the allegations in the suit and argue the neighborhood association lacks standing to sue under the state’s nuisance property laws.

Since the launch of its Neighborhood Vacancy Initiative several years ago, Legal Services of Eastern Missouri attorneys have filed a handful of lawsuits over nuisance properties on behalf of neighborhood groups.

But the lawsuit against McKee and his lenders marks the first time it has taken aim at the city’s highest-profile private owner of abandoned properties, most of which are in or along the edge of struggling north St. Louis.

NorthSide owns some 1,800 parcels across north St. Louis, most acquired in the 2000s for an ambitious redevelopment plan that never took off.

It bought the Page Boulevard property in 2009 and had the terra cotta-clad Art Deco building, built in 1927, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2012, allowing it to qualify for historic tax credits should development occur.

It never did, and the city citations began just two years later with a condemnation for collapsed walls and missing windows leaving the structure open to unauthorized entry, according to the lawsuit. Semi-annual citations and further code violations from the city followed, including as recently as August.

“These unlawful nuisance conditions at the vacant Property encourage, promote, and substantially contribute to criminal drug activity” and “diminish the value of property within the Covenant Blu Grand Center neighborhood,” the lawsuit says.

While the city frequently cited the ABC Auto property, it doesn’t seem to have spurred any action. The sidewalk remains blocked with fallen bricks and other debris just across the street from the St. Louis Housing Authority headquarters and a PNC Bank branch.

The city has used a provision allowing it to demolish condemned properties and bill the owner for the cost on at least one NorthSide property on 21st Street, and it now has appropriated $5 million to a fund for building stabilization and similar work. But the years of unanswered citations against NorthSide highlight how a city overwhelmed with vacant problem properties is often unable to force compliance.

The lawsuit from the new neighborhood association could provide the legal pressure to actually get NorthSide to act. The Covenant Blu Grand Center Neighborhood Association only formed in 2020, started by resident Audrey Ellermann. While nonprofits Grand Center Inc. and an associated special taxing district focus on the arts venues on the southern edge of the neighborhood, Ellermann has said the northern half of the neighborhood where she lives, north of Delmar, seems “forgotten.”

The new group appears to have NorthSide’s attention now. Bax, one of the Legal Services lawyers for the neighborhood association, said the two sides are talking so it would be inappropriate to comment beyond the lawsuit.

Legal Service’s lawsuit against NorthSide also names the company’s various creditors as defendants. That includes the main lender for many of its acquisitions, the Bank of Washington, as well as a more opaque limited liability company — Scarboro Services — that also has liens on much of NorthSide’s substantial property holdings.

The law firm of Stone, Leyton and Gershman has long represented both NorthSide and NorthSide’s lender, Bank of Washington. It also represents Scarboro Services and has signed on behalf of the company in real estate documents. An attorney for the firm has said its lawyers are not investors in the project but would not comment on its ownership.

Neither McKee nor Joseph Dulle, an attorney with Stone Leyton and Gershman who entered an appearance for NorthSide and its creditors, responded to a request for comment.