A crew with Nelux Development dumps debris on Friday, April 30, 2021, at a St. Louis city-owned property in the 4700 block of Newberry Place in the Lewis Place neighborhood. Nelux has about 10 workers working to stabilize the two-story, two-family home. Photo by Christian Gooden, cgooden@post-dispatch.com
Jordan Crawford, left, and Darryl Jones Jr., crewmen with Paradigm Builders, dump an old mattress on Friday, April 30, 2021, from a dilapidated St. Louis city-owned property in the 1100 block of Walton Avenue in the Lewis Place neighborhood. Photo by Christian Gooden, cgooden@post-dispatch.com
Jordan Crawford a crewman with Paradigm Builders, takes a water break while removing debris on Friday, April 30, 2021, at a St. Louis city-owned property in the 1100 block of Walton Avenue in the Lewis Place neighborhood. Photo by Christian Gooden, cgooden@post-dispatch.com
Darryl Jones Jr., a crewman with Paradigm Builders, removes trash on Friday, April 30, 2021, from a dilapidated St. Louis city-owned property in the 1100 block of Walton Avenue in the Lewis Place neighborhood. Photo by Christian Gooden, cgooden@post-dispatch.com
A crewman with Nelux Development removes bags of demolition debris on Friday, April 30, 2021, at a St. Louis city-owned property in the 4700 block of Newberry Place in the Lewis Place neighborhood. Nelux has about 10 workers working to stabilize the two-story, two-family home. Photo by Christian Gooden, cgooden@post-dispatch.com
A crew with Nelux Development spreads chips from a large tree they removed on Friday, April 30, 2021, across the muddy yard at a St. Louis city-owned property in the 4700 block of Newberry Place in the Lewis Place neighborhood. Photo by Christian Gooden, cgooden@post-dispatch.com
Crumbling dormers of a dilapidated St. Louis city-owned property in the 1100 block of Walton Avenue show the need for work to stabilize the structure on Friday, April 30, 2021, in the Lewis Place neighborhood. Paradigm Builders is in the process of making it ready for renovation. Photo by Christian Gooden, cgooden@post-dispatch.com
ST. LOUIS — A construction dumpster parked behind the four-unit apartment building on Newberry Terrace was filled to the brim Friday with remnants of the structure’s collapsed floor.
Surrounding it, a construction crew of about 10 people was busy hauling out more debris that, a week ago, all but blocked the hallways of the 1906 brick structure in the city’s Lewis Place neighborhood. Workers had already cut down overgrown trees, tuckpointed and boarded over weak floors. Most importantly, they installed a new roof on the building so rain couldn’t cause any more damage.
When the crew from Nelux Development finishes in a few weeks, the hope is that someone will be in a better position to finish the rehab and buy the building from the St. Louis Land Reutilization Authority, the land bank that owns thousands of abandoned properties throughout the city. The big fixes, worth close to $50,000, will have already been completed.
There are about 10 such stabilization projects underway now, and a couple dozen more buildings in the construction bid pipeline under Prop NS, a city program that is finally humming to life four years after voters approved it. City officials hope rehabbers pick up where they left off, attracted by the investment already made to stabilize the structures.
“They’re not your typical LRA buildings,” said Sean Thomas, who leads the city’s Prop NS program that oversees the work.