by Michael R. Allen
I had no idea that the mailing address for the City of St. Louis was c/o Dodier Investors, 721 Olive Street, Suite 920. (See this parcel information page for the Assessor’s recording of the address for a section of the Illinois Terminal Railroad right-of-way on Tyler Street.)
Either the city is having such a tough revenue crunch that it had to move City Hall into the corner of a real estate office, or something else is going on.
UPDATE: The Assessor’s Office made a mistake in recording the transaction for the parcel. Here’s how it happened: On October 5, Ironhorse Resources transferred the parcel via quit-claim deed to Noble Development Company LLC, which sold the parcel on the same day to Dodier Investors LLC.
The parcel was carved from larger holdings of Ironhorse that were transferred on December 30, 2005, to the Metropolitan Park and Recreation District for the new trail that will utilize the old Illinois Terminal Railroad trestle. It seems hard to fathom that the future transfer to Noble Development was not in the works then.
The truth, then, is scarier than it seemed: the large parcel abutting a future trail is wholly owned by a private company with fictitious registration that is acquiring property at a rapid rate with little public scrutiny.