We've Moved

Ecology of Absence now resides at www.preservationresearch.com. Please change your links and feeds.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Now It's Only "Northside Regeneration"

Blairmont is no more.

At least, Blairmont Associates LC and several other McEagle-controlled holding companies no longer exist. On December 14, Northside Regeneration LLC -- the public face of McEagle's NorthSide project -- filed two Notice of Merger statements with the Secretary of State.

The first of these merges all of McEagle's holding companies into Northside Regeneration: Blairmont, N & G Ventures LC, Noble Development Company LLC, VHS Partners LLC, PATH Enterprise Company LLC, Allston Alliance LC, Sheridan Place LC, Dodier Investors LLC, MLK 3000 LLC, Larmer LC and Union Martin LLC.

The second merges into Northside Regeneration all of the shell limited liability entities used to guarantee deeds of trust to the holding companies. That list is online at the Secretary of State's website.

10 comments:

Chris said...

The wolf has taken off its sheepskin.

barbara_on_19th said...

McKee's lawyer also testified to this effect in Cole County yesterday. He said that Northside Regeneration owes $50M, is spending $10K a day on the interest, and the lenders are likely to foreclose unless they get the tax credits to pay off some part of the debt.

Anonymous said...

http://www.northsideregeneration.com/

Doug Duckworth said...

Blairmont: a dream that will never die.

If McKee goes into foreclosure maybe we'll see more fires?

Anonymous said...

The organization consolidations are purely a legal technicality. The wolf has been out of sheep's clothing for months.

$10,000 a day in interest doesn't mean the banks are ready to foreclose. Most big project loans have interest reserves built into the loan - and development budget.

If McKee is unable to close on his financing or secure the DALATC soon, *then*, to continue on a theme, the wolf may be at his door.

For now, I wouldn't count him out of anything.

Let's remember that most of St. Louis *want* McKee and Northside to succeed.

No matter what chatter you read on the internets.

Michael R. Allen said...

Barbara,

Don't you think that the foreclosure claim is a bluff?

Anonymous said...

It sounds more like a rumor than a claim. Who said it?

barbara_on_19th said...

Anon@10:34, I am not stating that McKee's lenders ARE going to foreclose, just that Purcelli was throwing big fairytale numbers around in court to give Callahan some cover to do what he wanted to do anyway... not make any political enemies the week before he becomes our new US Attorney here in STL. Yay for the independent judiciary!

The FDIC bankers in charge of the Corn Belt bank collapse clearly do *not* want to foreclose their $12M in loans on 400-odd vacant northside lots, since the lots aren't worth 500K all together on a sunny day (would you pay much over 1K for a vacant city lot in McKee's footprint?}. Those Corn Belt loans expired 10/31 and have not been updated at the Recorder of Deeds office... so the FDIC folks are just hanging on, wishing and hoping for their DALATC payoff.

These are SERIOUSLY high LTV loans with neg-am financing, maybe 50x the value of the properties. Just read the Corn Belt post mortem audit. The FDIC and Bank of Washington MO both are playing "extend and pretend", not foreclosing, taking sufficient fed TARP money to cover their McKee loans and waiting til their own little Missouri mini-TARP comes through in the form of DALATC.

McKee's lawyer implied in court that he has promised every dollar to these nervous creditors. He's not going to be using the credits to develop "Area A" on 22nd St downtown or revitalize Pruitt-Igoe or create jobs for northsiders, and certainly isn't about to rain any munificence down on my block, where my neighbors and I are STILL maintaining his properties out of our own pockets. Today. Last week. Next week. When will it stop? You say people want him to succeed... given the fairytale he's spun, sure. BUT IT IS UNFUNDED and based on causing maximum damage to near northside neighborhoods since 2005.

He's a bad neighbor, what more can I say? He could still fix this thing with some belated good neighbor actions, but I'm afraid his performance falls so far below community standards in N City that I'm not expecting a turnaround.

samizdat said...

Aaah, Barbara_on_19th, always a delight reading your posts. Like breathing fresh air after being locked in a confined space. The truth is invigorating. Personally, I would like the Northside scheme to succeed. However, as Barbara points out, the PR disaster that is Blairmont, et al, is a mighty big impediment to that success. Not to mention the less than transparent manner in which the whole post-Blairmont process has been carried out. This whole affair is illustrative of why we need a City-wide, open and transparent planning process, immune in word and practice to the usual dead Dem machine politics. The City keeps dragging around this machine like someone holding onto a "classic" beater they have no intention or will to restore ("Honey, it's a '74 Monte Carlo, it'll be a classic someday"). Just junk the bloody thing already, and get on with something new and workable. 'Course, considering the way charter reform went down, it'll be tough to convince the hoi-polloi that a new, open planning process will benefit them, rather than the corrupt pols (alderpeople and R200, I'm looking at YOU).

Keith Marquard said...

Even if McKee were going to go under after not getting the DALATC monies, the local and regional politicians would hand him some other bag of cash. He's a big wheel in the China Hub thing and they aren't about to let that thing go down simply because one of the key people involved seems to have really bad money problems. So if they have to bail him out of this self-created fiasco twice then I think they will.

Northside was the wrong project at the wrong time. McKee timed the RE business cycle so wrong it's almost funny. If it weren't for DALATC, Northside would already be synonymous with failure.