ST. LOUIS — The developer that’s waited a year to learn whether it will get a public incentive for its new apartment development will keep continue waiting after a city board tabled the deal Tuesday.
The city’s Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority voted not to review the resolution during Tuesday’s meeting. The resolution would grant developer Lux Living property tax abatement for a 150-unit apartment development at 310 DeBaliviere Avenue. The resolution will be taken up at a later, undetermined date.
The tax break has been at the center of a yearlong dispute between Lux and the St. Louis Development Corp., which manages the LCRA. SLDC’s former executive director, Otis Williams, signaled last year that SLDC would not go forward with the tax abatement until Lux settled a dispute with developer Jeff Tegethoff, who is building a 285-unit apartment development across from Lux’s project on DeBaliviere Avenue.
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Former development chief Otis Williams had said a tax break wouldn't be approved as long as developer LuxLiving was blocking a competing development.
Lux’s lawyer, Clayton Alderman Ira Berkowitz, reincorporated a long-dormant property owners association in 2019 that claimed to hold review rights over the competing apartment development and declined to support the project.
Lux claimed Expo didn’t provide enough parking for the neighborhood. The project was billed as a “transit-oriented” development adjacent to a MetroLink station. Tegethoff’s firm then countersued, accusing Lux and Berkowitz of trying to “resurrect” the old property owners association after nearly 30 years of inactivity “for the apparent purpose of enforcing a long-dead architectural control provision to deny their approval” of Tegethoff’s project.
Earlier this year, Lux sued SLDC and Williams, accusing them of blocking the tax break by not taking the final vote.