Just ahead of St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones signing a bill into law that would allow the city to eminent domain some of developer Paul McKee’s long-neglected properties, a St. Charles County Republican has filed legislation protecting McKee’s lenders.
Mayor Tishaura Jones signed Board Bill 174 into law on March 5. This legislation would tee up the city’s use of eminent domain on McKee’s NorthSide properties around the new location for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency campus, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
But now state Senator Nick Schroer (R-Defiance) has filed legislation that would require any redevelopment agencies acquiring McKee’s properties via eminent domain to pay back his lenders.
Schroer, a founder of Missouri’s Freedom Caucus, is known for living in a basement, proudly burning stuff that looked like books but wasn’t, attempting to wrest control of the St. Louis police back to state governance and lusting over former President Donald Trump’s (fake) rippling pecs. Although after this, we can perhaps also add to the list attempting to bail out Paul McKee’s banker.
According to Schroer’s Senate Bill 1466, filed on February 27, any “action initiated by a land clearance for redevelopment authority to acquire any qualified property, as defined in the act, by eminent domain, such authority shall pay to the holder of the mortgage of the qualified property the amount by which the entire amount due and owing for principal and interest under the mortgage exceeds the final award adjudicated for the qualified property by a court.”
McKee’s NorthSide Regeneration project owns a score of decrepit buildings and vacant lots that have been sitting in the St. Louis Place, JeffVanderLou and Carr Square neighborhoods for years. Approximately 71 percent of the properties in this area declined in value over the last 12 years, according to the city’s legislation, RFT previously reported.
The new law signed by Jones approved a redevelopment plan and blight study for the areas most impacted by NorthSide Regeneration’s crumbling properties. The ordinance, which was overwhelmingly supported by residents in the area, does not allow eminent domain on any houses or businesses that are currently occupied unless the owners want to sell, and would provide 15 years of tax abatement for current residents.
NorthSide’s lender for most of those land purchases was Franklin County-based Bank of Washington. It’s unclear how much debt is outstanding now, but in 2015 the bank told the city that, together with McKee, it had invested “well in excess of $50 million to establish site control” of the NorthSide area, according to reporting bythe Post-Dispatch.
Bank of Washington is represented by the same lawyers as McKee and has been in litigation with the city since 2018 over the city’s decision to cancel NorthSide’s redevelopment agreement, according to the Post-Dispatch. Trial is set for September 30.
Schroer’s bill had a second hearing on March 7 and was referred to the Senate’s Committee on Commerce, Consumer Protection, Energy and the Environment.
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