Preservation Square Revamp to Proceed
Date Posted: September 3, 2024
Posted In: News, Projects,
From St. Louis Post-Dispatch: McCormack Baron Salazar is finally starting the latest phase of a $111 million revamp of the 500-plus unit Preservation Square housing complex.
Among the hurdles the developer cleared to tee up the rehab of 91 units of mixed income housing near the intersection of 14th Street and Cass Avenue: a settlement late last year with the Carr Square Tenant Corporation, run by Rodney Hubbard Sr. of the politically influential Hubbard family.
McCormack Baron co-founder Richard Baron said Friday the firm was able to buy out Carr Square’s ownership stake in the property where the latest phase is poised to begin.
“We arrived at a settlement,” Baron said Friday. “We had never intended not to have them involved. The problem was simply there was overreach and, anyway, it got resolved. The lawyers worked it out. They disappeared, and we’re moving ahead.”
A lawyer who represented Carr Square referred questions to the housing corporation. Rodney Hubbard could not be reached for comment.
For St. Louis and its hopes of future federal grant awards, the project north of downtown is an important one, underwritten with a competitive $30 million Housing and Urban Development grant awarded back in 2016, when Francis Slay was still mayor. Matt Moak, former director of the city’s Community Development Administration, which administers the HUD grant, in 2020 called the project “too big to fail.”
The HUD money was supposed to have been used by the end of last year. HUD granted an extension because of the pandemic, and the developer now says it expects to spend the remainder of the grant this year.
Even before the pandemic, the project faced obstacles, mostly political.