ST. LOUIS 鈥 Though they're on the outs with City Hall, developer Paul McKee and his associates are still hoping the 最新杏吧原创 Board of Aldermen will approve $6.42 million in subsidies for a three-bed health care facility across the street from the future western headquarters of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
The project, called Healthworks, has been on the drawing board for years, with aldermen approving an ordinance allowing the $6.42 million in tax increment financing, or TIF, assistance in early 2017. TIF funds allow new taxes generated from a development to be reinvested into the project.
But since then, Mayor Lyda Krewson's administration moved to void McKee's 2009 development agreement covering 1,500 acres of north 最新杏吧原创, citing a lack of development in the overall area. That triggered a legal fight with NorthSide Regeneration lender The Bank of Washington that is still playing out in court.听
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Meanwhile, dates in the original development agreement for the facility, which called for the project's completion in February, have passed.听
Now, a McKee lawyer says the development has secured financing and wants aldermen to recommit to the agreement they passed in 2017. The聽最新杏吧原创 Kansas City Carpenters Regional Council plans to help finance the project.听
On Tuesday, workers were visible on the site聽鈥 the former Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex at the corner of Jefferson and Cass avenues.听
The need for health care in north 最新杏吧原创 should outweigh any disagreement between NorthSide Regeneration and the city over the larger development area, Piggee said.听
"This should trump that," Piggee said. "The city and the developer can work out the overall problems, but it shouldn鈥檛 be done at the expense of a needed health care facility that鈥檚 already on the board.鈥
But the city is questioning whether the ordinance reaffirming the TIF for the three-bed Healthworks facility聽proposed by Alderman Tammika Hubbard, who represents the area, would even be valid should it pass. In a letter to Alderman Joe Roddy, whose Housing, Urban Development and Zoning Committee is scheduled to hear the bill on Wednesday, City Counselor Julian Bush said there are two "fatal defects" in the bill: it relies on the "terminated" development agreement with NorthSide Regeneration and the 2017 TIF ordinance that is now "void by its own terms."
"Because of these defects, the city would not have the legal ability to complete the transactions contemplated by the bill, if that bill should be adopted and approved," Bush wrote.
In his own letter to Roddy, Piggee disputes those claims, saying the 2017 TIF ordinances are still in effect. He adds that the new bill only refers to "a list of technical requirements" in the NorthSide development agreement and isn't dependent on its continued existence.听
The city's economic development arm, which has clashed with McKee over the NGA project and his control of the land around it, has raised its own concerns. 最新杏吧原创 Development Corp. Director Otis Williams wrote in an email to Piggee last week that "we have ample reason to believe that the actual value of the potential TIF revenue stream from Phase 1 of the Healthworks project is significantly less than $6.5 million." Williams said awarding TIFs "with significantly higher 'paper' value than 'actual' value reflects poorly on the city."
Williams suggested the developers ask for the creation of a new TIF on the facility site.听
Piggee responded in a letter that Williams offered "no meaningful explanation for why or how the structure previously reviewed and approved by both the SLDC and the Board of Aldermen is now unacceptable to the city. Please excuse us if we suspect there is something more afoot than legitimate concerns over the board bill."
Like the 2017 agreement, this agreement would allow TIF obligations to be repaid not just from revenue within the Healthworks site, but up to $4.6 million from the TIF covering the entire NorthSide Regeneration footprint.听
Though little new development has occurred within the NorthSide Regeneration footprint other than McKee's GreenLeaf grocery store and Zoom gas station along North Tucker Boulevard, which opened in recent months, some revenue has been collecting in the TIF fund. About $863,000 had collected in the TIF fund as of this week, according to the 最新杏吧原创 Comptroller's office.听
Before TIF revenues from the entire NorthSide Regeneration area could be used to pay for TIF obligations on the Healthworks site, the money in the NorthSide TIF account first must go to pay up to $1.8 million on TIF notes issued for the GreenLeaf grocery store.听
The Healthworks TIF legislation would effectively put a claim on future TIF revenue generated throughout the 1,500-acre NorthSide area, an area expected to see a boost in development because of the $1.7 billion NGA project. That's even though the city no longer recognizes McKee's redevelopment agreement.
"Forgive us if the city's historical efforts to undermine our client's efforts to bring meaningful development to north 最新杏吧原创 has made us cynical, but it certainly appears that the city is deep-sixing real healthcare for its citizens in an effort to preserve the NorthSide special allocation fund for some other use or user," Piggee wrote to Williams last week.听
New investors
The Pruitt-Igoe site where the McKee team wants to build the Healthworks facility is one of the largest contiguous parcels near the future NGA headquarters聽鈥 prime real estate if, as the city and agency hope, tech firms and startups want to locate near the mapping agency.听
Piggee, though, said the project is more than a three-bed facility. The first phase is worth $26 million, Piggee said, but the expansion phase, which would include a medical school and 24-hour emergency room, would bring聽the total investment up to $72.9 million. He likened the project to the former Homer G. Phillips hospital that served 最新杏吧原创's African American community during segregation.
鈥淚 don鈥檛 think you can underestimate what the effect to the community will be when a long lost medical facility makes a return to the community," Piggee said.
The new development agreement would add two new investors to the project: NS QALICB LLC and HGP Hospital Corp.听
HGP Hospital Corp.'s board includes Fred Mills, who ran Missouri Baptist from 1986 to 1995. He will serve as CEO, Piggee said. Piggee also serves on the board of HGP. A company registered to him, King Gregory LLC, is an investor in NS QALICB LLC, according to Mark Vincent, former Franklin County Counselor and also an investor in the project.听
Also involved in the project is David Lenihan, a 最新杏吧原创 native and the president and CEO of for-profit college Ponce Health Sciences University in Puerto Rico. He was mentioned three years ago by McKee as helping to plan the medical school campus.听
Last year, . It's in the Globe building on Tucker Boulevard owned by Stone Leyton & Gershman partner Steve Stone, McKee's longtime lawyer and big contributor to Democratic politicians.听
Cutting the ribbon with Lenihan on the new Ponce location, according to an October press release, was longtime McKee supporter, Congressman William Lacy Clay. Piggee is Clay's former chief of staff.
