ST. LOUIS • After the city revoked building permits last month for a three-bed urgent care hospital planned by developer Paul McKee, an attorney for the hospital said Monday the city has reissued building permits and the project is “full steam ahead.â€
The pledge from McKee’s development team followed that the St. Louis Building Commissioner’s office had revoked the construction permit for the urgent care complex because of inactivity.
In a news release Monday from a public relations firm that has been working for McKee’s NorthSide Regeneration, Mark S. Vincent, identified as a hospital representative, said he did not understand why the city had revoked the building permits “because plans for the project were always securely in place.†They hope to complete the medical facility in May 2020.
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“Our plans to build this important and much needed medical facility for the residents of north St. Louis City has never wavered,†Vincent, former county counselor of Franklin County, said in a statement. “Today, following the announcement that the building permits have been reinstated, we are full steam ahead on the project. We have foundation work underway on the site and have a powerful financial structure in place to back it up. We are moving forward despite all the hurdles that we have had to endure to make this facility a reality for the people of north St. Louis.â€
The statement Monday followed a news release sent Saturday in which Michael Kennedy Jr., chairman of general contractor KAI, said the site was not abandoned and that he planned to begin work on the project in June. Kennedy blamed the delay on the federal government shutdown that held up issuance of federal New Market Tax Credits.
NorthSide gave up a $5 million allocation of New Market Tax Credits for the hospital project in 2017 as part of a deal with the city to put $2.5 million of that allocation toward its GreenLeaf Market grocery store at Tucker Boulevard and 13th Street, which opened Monday. The rest went back to the city for use on other projects.
Krewson administration intervenes to make sure project gets approved.
It’s not clear where any New Market Tax Credits for the hospital would come from. City officials are at an impasse with McKee and unlikely to grant him more of the tax credits. Other private institutions, though, can receive federal allocations of the credits and can use them to help finance eligible projects.
City aldermen in 2017 approved up to $8 million in tax increment financing assistance for the hospital project.
Since he purchased the site of the former Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex from the city in 2016, McKee has planned to put the urgent care facility on the 34-acre property. He told the Post-Dispatch in 2016 that the site, just across Cass Avenue from the future home of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s western headquarters, would be “the crown jewel†of his ambitious plans for 1,500 acres of north St. Louis.
But the controversial developer, who still controls hundreds of properties near the new NGA campus, says he deserves credit for ‘remarkable results.’
Last summer, City Hall canceled his development agreement, prompting lawsuits from McKee’s NorthSide Regeneration and its lender, Bank of Washington of Washington, Mo. The litigation is pending. Meanwhile, McKee still owns more than 1,600 properties and 200 acres in the area around the NGA site.
What appeared to be the walls of some kind of structure were built on the Pruitt-Igoe site last year. They collapsed in December.
