In a property transaction worthy of the board game Monopoly, according to an October 18 posting on stltoday.com, the City of St. Louis, who once sold the property now housing Archview Storage, for just $2 now needs to buy the property back, but for $2.3 million, for construction of a new Mississippi River bridge.
Roughly 2 years after engineers selected the ramp routes for a new bridge, city agency Land Reutilization Authority agreed in ‘03 to sell publicly owned land in that path to a developer for $2. This same agency rejected its own staff's recommendation in early ‘06 to dump the deal because of the bridge.
Now, Missouri’s Department of Transportation is paying $2.3 million to put the property back into the public's hands.
Mayor Francis Slay‘s office says that in hindsight it was a poor transaction, but the decision was made against a backdrop of uncertainty that the bridge would ever be built.
"The city called heads, and it came up tails," Jeff Rainford, the Mayor’s chief of staff said last week. "Obviously, looking back, if the city had the chance to do it all over again, we shouldn't have sold it. It's a no-brainer." He continued by saying Slay knew nothing of the property sale until the Post-Dispatch made inquiries about it.
Alderman Fred Wessels Jr., said it was a waste of public money. "It makes no sense. By selling to a developer while knowing that it's going to be needed for the bridge, they just invited a large settlement that MoDOT is required to pay," Wessels complained in an interview.
This much-beleaguered site, once used by a trucking company, fell in the LRA's hands in a tax sale. It attracted the interest of Archview Storage, an enterprise owned by several businessmen who include Randy Heil, who operates a tool-and-die shop nearby. Archview proposed 400 self-storage units of various sizes on the site, according to LRA records.
The LRA commissioners approved the $2 sale in December, 2003. There are 3 commissioners: Timothy Ogle, a retired firefighter appointed by Slay; Mark Wells, an accountant appointed by Comptroller Darlene Green; and Howard Hayes, an educator appointed by the school district.
Lawmakers in Missouri and Illinois haggled for years about the size and financing of a new bridge. Plans were revised, but the need for the property on Howard had long been a part of them.
Archview obtained city permits for $947,000 worth of work —$105,000 for demolition (which started in the fall of ’06), $10,000 for rubble removal and the rest for construction; grading and concrete work stretched into 2008.
The final bridge deal came in February ‘08, when then-governors Matt Blunt of Missouri and Rod Blagojevich of Illinois shook hands on a funding agreement.
MoDOT went straight to work on acquiring the property, budgeting $18 million for about 40 parcels and 3 businesses: one was Archview.
Records show that the rows of metal, single-story, self-storage structures were competed that July.
The state first offered $1.7 million in December 2008, but the owners turned it down. That triggered a formal condemnation process, in which three lawyers appointed by the St. Louis Circuit Court reviewed the property and set a fair price of $2.3 million, based in part on loss of business revenue.