The Northside Community Benefits Alliance is a group of North St Louis neighbors who have organized in an effort to get a community benefits agreement between the city, the developer, and an independent non-profit organization. A community benefits agreement is just a contract that specifies what the developer and city can or will do with respect to the people who already live in a redevelopment area.
The reason why we organized was that from the very beginning of the developer’s property acquisition, it seemed that our elected officials were more interested in protecting the rights of the developer than our rights and property. Considering that we are the people they are supposed to represent, we did not look upon this kindly. At that point we decided that we needed to find another way to guarantee our economic security and property rights.
Anyone interested in becoming a member or assisting us in any way can contact us by sending an e-mail to info@northsidecba.org.
The development we banded together to change, is that proposed by Paul McKee, Jr. called the Northside Project. Mr. McKee is a St Louis developer who has put together various projects around the suburban St Louis area. He is also a former owner of Paric Construction, a St Louis based construction company now run by his son Paul McKee, III.
Paul McKee, Jr. is currently being sued in federal court over loans he personally guaranteed for part of his Hazelwood Logistics Center project. He seems to be unable or unwilling to pay off his $28 million loan balance so the bank that owns this loan, BankSouth, is suing him for the balance. He already walked away from another part of this project and gave it back to a different bank. That was a single warehouse and the other bank was ING.
Mr McKee was recently the subject of a St Louis Business Journal article detailing his stepping down from management of and walking away from ownership stakes in the Spa at Winghaven and the Winghaven Country Club. These ventures are pieces of his Winghaven development in St. Charles county. A development that also has not gone as originally planned financially despite massive state government subsidies to the tune of $40 million dollars granted to MasterCard International to move its headquarters from Maplewood to Winghaven.
Mr. McKee, along with his wife, sons, and what appears to be a family trust, are owners of Northside Regeneration, LLC. This is the development company they have organized to pursue their Northside Project. This project, as proposed, is an $8.1 billion project covering 2.5 square miles of part of downtown St Louis and the area immediately to the north of the entire downtown. Northside Regeneration, LLC is also partly owned (2.5%) by the Carr Square Tenant’s Association, the non-profit organization that manages the Carr Square Apartments. We wonder what magic made the McKee’s give 2.5% of their development project to a public housing tenant’s association.
More tomorrow.
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