ST. LOUIS – It’s a St. Louis apartment complex that’s been hit with dozens and dozens of violations, but there’s a major development unfolding and possibly a shift in ownership.
The deal is so fresh, the ink isn’t dry yet, but St. Louis County Police confirmed they met with the new owners.
“From what we’ve seen so far, the ownership is invested in solving those problems,” St. Louis County Police Officer Todd Bakula said.
Bakula is assigned to the department’s Community Outreach Unit and focuses on problematic properties.
“We’re fully invested in getting things resolved over there,” he said.
Numerous problems have been reported at Lucas Hunt Village Apartments over the years. In recent months, maintenance issues have led the chart of complaints, from no heat to no hot water.
St. Louis County Police Captain John Blake met with the new owner.
“It’s been going downhill in disrepair—lots of vacancies, a lot of squatters up there, a lot of crime. We go through there very often with extra patrols,” he said. “We just met with the new owners, and they have a plan to repair everything.”
The new owner has already hired a security team and the complex plans to renovate and convert an apartment into a new substation for county police.
“The beat officers will be using it as a place to do reports, go to the bathroom, eat lunch; it’s great to have visibility when the cars are parked there in the front,” Bakula said.
County police hope the new substation will be up and running by summer.
The FOX Files learned the deal went through within the last week or so, but it’s so new that property records revealing the new owner have not been published yet.
The previous owner was 956 miles away in Brooklyn, NY, an address that had ties to an LLC. FOX 2’s phone calls were never returned.
In October, the FOX Files found Theresa Denson’s kitchen flooded.
“I am not living, I’m existing at this point,” Denson had previously said.
The 80-year-old ended up coming and starting over in January.
“I left with no mattresses, I left with no bedding…no pillows,” she said in January.
Last month, the county ordered more than a dozen apartments to vacate because of code violations, with dozens and dozens of other violations found.
FOX 2 Investigator Elliott Davis recently uncovered that the St. Louis County Housing Authority stopped placing tenants at Lucas Hunt Village Apartments.
“We would not refer a client to go there again,” Executive Director Shannon Koenig said earlier this month.
Denson said without heat and hot water, people were getting mad and started to voice their concerns to the county.
“I think you arrived at the right time, and you helped create an arena—so that people started to say what?” Denson said last month. “That’s when they started collecting signatures about what was wrong in the apartments.”
The FOX Files is told that the new owner has been on the ground at Lucas Hunt Village most of the week but was not at the property when we stopped by Wednesday. We’re hoping to speak with the new owner about his plans, but haven’t heard back yet.
Comments are closed.