TODAY'S PROBLEM

After the real estate market collapsed, construction projects ground to an abrupt halt across the region. It doesn't take long before these building sites - once signs of progress - become eyesores and dangerous hazards.

I've written a few columns on these stalled developments turned neighborhood nightmares, but none of those subdivision projects promised the glitz of Skyhouse, the 22-story condominium tower that was supposed to be built at the southwest corner of Washington Avenue and 14th Street.

In February 2007, a Chicago developer announced plans for the $67 million project. A few months later, the project qualified for tax increment financing, and two historic, albeit forlorn, buildings were ripped down to make room for the tower. Then the market crashed.

Demolition halted, leaving the site a mess of piled stones, exposed foundation and other debris. By April 2008, it was clear that the project was dead. Little has changed in the nine months since, except, perhaps, that litter is accumulating, along with old Christmas trees that have started piling up on the site.

A couple of downtown workers recently complained to On Your Side about the state of the property, but they aren't the first people to gripe about the site.

Rachel Kraus, a board member of the Downtown St. Louis Residents Association, believes the semidemolished ruins are a blight in the heart of the loft district, but that's not her main objection. She said she feared that someone - a curious trespasser or an underage vandal - was going to get injured in the wreckage. In October, when she was president of the residents group, the organization lodged a complaint about the property with the neighborhood's alderman, Kacie Starr Triplett.

Triplett said she was sympathetic with the financial challenges facing developers, but only up to a point. "I am confident that the downtown market will rebound," she said in an e-mail. "In the meantime, the City Building Division will work to get the owners to grade the lot and make the area safer for pedestrians."

The demolition permit for the project expired on Feb. 14, 2008. Even though the site hasn't been graded as required, the property owner hasn't been warned or cited for failing to complete the demo, said Sheila Livers, the demolition supervisor in the city building division.

Maybe the city is gun-shy because it doesn't know whom to ticket. After all, the property seems to have changed hands since the salad days of Skyhouse, and, not surprisingly, no one is bragging about owning it now.

Brad Waldrop, a St. Louis developer whose company was involved in the failed Skyhouse project, said the property now belonged to Chicago-based Dan Development Ltd. That seems to jibe with filings at the Missouri secretary of state's office, which state that Daniel Dvorkin of Dan Development owns the holding company that is identified in city tax records as the property's owner.

Dvorkin did not respond to a request for comment. Maybe the city building division should give him a call, too.

WHO'S RESPONSIBLE

Frank Oswald, deputy building commissioner: 314-622-3318, OswaldF@stlouiscity.com

CHECKING IT OUT

Tipster Mike Prosperi called On Your Side last week to complain that the new McKnight bridge over Highway 40 has a sidewalk on the wrong side. The bridge's sidewalk is on the west side of the bridge, but south of Highway 40, the sidewalk on McKnight is on the east side of the street. There is no sidewalk on either side of McKnight north of Highway 40.

The way Prosperi sees it, pedestrians headed north on McKnight will have to cross the street to continue on the bridge, and there's no place that's particularly safe to cross. At McKnight and York Drive, just south of Highway 40, southbound drivers on McKnight don't have to stop.

Prosperi, who lives in Richmond Heights and owns the Kirkwood Imo's Pizza, says he noticed the problem shortly after the Missouri Department of Transportation opened the McKnight bridge over Highway 40 last summer. "It's like they must have been looking at their plans upside down," he said, also pointing out that the old bridge, which was built about 1940, had a sidewalk on both sides.

Linda Wilson, MoDOT's spokeswoman for all things relating to the Highway 40 rebuild, concedes that the sidewalk design on McKnight isn't ideal. But, she said, the highway department's hands were tied. "We try to do what we can (for pedestrians), but we had a tight-built environment that we had to work with," she said.

Wilson said that, in order to have the bridge sidewalk connect with that long sidewalk just to the south of Highway 40, MoDOT would have had to tear down a stone tower that marks the entrance to the York Village subdivision. Alternatively, MoDOT could have built a sidewalk on the east side of the bridge, continued it right up to the tower, and then built a narrow path around the structure. But there's no way that path could have been wide enough to comply with sidewalk standards established under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.

Besides, said Wilson, there is a pedestrian path on both sides of McKnight south of the highway. On the east, it's a traditional sidewalk. On the west, it's a striped shoulder marked "pedestrian only." That shoulder is a little too close to speeding cars for some, but it does link up with the new sidewalk on the bridge.

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