by Michael R. Allen
There’s a new developer in Old North St. Louis. How do I know? Well, one of my neighbors sold three buildings located at 1420 and 1424 Hebert Street to this developer.
The name of the developer is Dodier Investors LLC.
Its address is 515 Olive Street, Suite 1608. Wait a minute — that’s the address of Eagle Realty Company, the agent for Blairmont Associates LC and the countless other fictitiously-registered companies, some which also listed a return mailing address at the offices of McEagle Development. These are the same people who hired an agent who tried to trick my legally-blind neighbor into selling a parcel she didn’t want to sell. I guess they finally found a new name and a new offer that she could not refuse, so the trick is now on the neighborhood.
Now that the only block in Old North that did not suffer demolition in the 20th century now has been infilitrated by the northside’s largest land scheme, everything is uneasy. Does the land scheme accomodate historic preservation and respect for an existing community? Or does it aim to superimpose upon the near northside a theoretical and lifeless vision of community based not on relationships between people but on a cyncial vision of development profit?
Answers to such questions are impossible to get when the people behind Dodier Investors LLC thwart communication and accountability.