This gorgeous building should be leading the great revival of this block, not holding it back. 

If you go out, you know this stretch is packed people every weekend. 

This should be the feature of the block.

Instead, neglect on the part of owners and those that sold it to them (St. Louis City Sheriff Tax Sale) have lead to it now being inspected by the fire department and seriously considered for demolition. 

This is after nonstop complaints about this place being increasingly and systematically looted and destroyed over the past year. It is full of tinder. The place is a time bomb for a fire, but it should be saved. Before it burns. It is bad, but only because the city turns a blind eye (see: Railroad Exchange Building).

But, hey! Then LUX can come build a giant ugly complex named after a famous New York neighborhood or apartment building (Dakota, SOHO, Chelsea, etc) after it is scraped! Ma



I truly hope it can be saved. It is a unique example and crucial to the fabric of this reviving area. 

https://www.stlhistoryandarchitecture.c ... bcdp19ntvn

https://stlouispatina.com/revisiting-ca ... cy-street/



THERE ARE ALTERNATES

Even during its darkest days, Detroit saved, stabilized, and propped historic facades.

Most if not all of those buildings have now had new modern structures built behind those historic facades, maintaining neighborhood fabric and historical integrity while still moving forward. They are a key part of the renaissance. St. Louis needs to stop erasing. 

I'm pretty sure the owners were the ones that did most of the looting. Extremely frustrating seeing another beautiful building crawl towards its seemingly inevitable demise.

GoHarvOrGoHome wrote: ↑

Jan 24, 2023

I'm pretty sure the owners were the ones that did most of the looting. Extremely frustrating seeing another beautiful building crawl towards its seemingly inevitable demise.

What makes you so pretty sure? 

Are you pretty sure because you own a building there and have watched the local population of drug addicts, scrappers, and squatters go in and out of the building, starting fires, carting off goods, building a whole little campground around back, blowing a hole through the back, pulling more and more rotted antiques and furniture out to burn in the backyard for the past year?
 
The city says it is TWIN HIGGINS LLC in NASHVILLE. I'll have to ask Mr. Higgins about his business the next time I see his skeletal drug addled self looting his property. LOL.

It's just the same neighborhood vultures that loot and ultimately destroy all the empty buildings along this strip. It is not a mystery. It is the same crew, plus a rotating cast of other lost souls. All this is going on in plain sight as patrol just cruises by. The building was in pretty good shape until the city took it from the previous owner and sold it at tax sale.

This photo is almost exactly 3 years ago. Compare to above. The back is way worse. 

 

This whole thing was for sale a  few years ago. Not unreasonable, all considered, but even before the most recent round of damage it needed a lot of work. That said, it was kept secure and dry for a long time. And now, suddenly, it's not. Who should we blame for that? Homeless people who have always been here, or an out of town owner who presumably bought it about when it started going downhill so badly?

That said, if we let this one go where does it stop? This is easily one of the most prominent buildings on that strip. Particularly now that the furniture building is gone this is needed to hold anything like a historic district together here.

Economics aside the building is not a lost cause.  We have redeveloped much worse.  I'm not super familiar with the that part of the city.  Any idea what the units would rent for rehabbed ?  How many units and what is the mix?

It's not a terribly hot neighborhood, sadly. Even Dutch town rents are probably considerably higher. There's a game store that bought a bank across the street. Yeah, I have to believe it's salvageable. And lovely, old, and likely rather historic. But how do you make it work, particularly with the flooding issues to which the strip is prone? And what has to happen to stop demo?

From Ald. Schweitzer's Ward 1 newsletter

• There is a once-very-awesome-now-very-not-awesome building on the 71xx block of Broadway that is going through the process to be in the city's first cohort of private buildings stabilized with new building preservation funds. This gorgeous building has been neglected by its owners, and instead of letting it continue to get to the point that it needs to be demolished, if the city continues to get no response from the owners, it is going to stabilize the building and put the cost of doing so on that owner's tax bill, which they will either pay or the building will be put up for auction. This allows the city to save the building while also moving it through the tax sale process if the owner doesn't pay for the needed repairs. I hope to have news of work beginning on this building soon. 

^This! That is the mechanism that we've needed for so long it hurts. And that's a perfect building to serve as a test case.

^^I do not live in her ward but I'm very impressed with Ald. Schweitzer, both on this issue and others. 

I walked around it yesterday and it does not look good

^Huh! Any idea what they were doing? I drove through there a few days back and worried the usual worry.

Building permits for mixed-use have been issued for each of the three buildings/parcels of that collection. Total is over $300k.  Seems like they are owned by different but perhaps interconnected entities (two have Nashville area addresses.). Anyway, seems like things may be moving in the right direction due to city pressure.

That would be fantastic, if I was a betting man I would have said they would be gone within two years. I might still be leaning that way though tbh

^Thank you.

DEMO PERMITS ISSUED FOR ALL THREE PARCELS 11/14/25

Will be torn down all the way to the corner (despite the corner parcel being untouched by fire and having recent renovation work). Corner parcel only one with local and involved ownership. I guess they are too interconnected to save it. Damn shame.

So much neglect by the owners and the city. Then the wasteful and ridiculously corrupt stabilization program poured $185k into it - But only after a massive fire gutted it. I literally watched than money burn. Crazy.

People genuinely tried to save these buildings overr the past 15-20 years, but they are short listed now.

#67 on the St. Louis List of City Landmarks

Store Buildings
Store Buildings - City Landmark #67

Located at 7121-7129 S. Broadway, this row of store buildings are typical of their type in St. Louis from the 1860's. Two and a half stories in height, they have living quarters on their upper floors, which are decorated with wrought-iron balconies.
The Store Buildings became a City Landmark in 1976.

Does anyone have the owners contact information ?  I would consider attempting to purchase.  

They're in a couple of TN LLCs:
-7121

Owner Name:	TWIN HIGGINS LLC
Owner Address:	3415 WEST END AV UNIT 806 NASHVILLE, TN 37203

-7127

Owner Name:	DAVIS ALLEN GROUP OF
Owner Name (Secondary):	TENNESSEE LLC
Owner Address:	8011 BROOKS CHAPEL RD UNIT 2225 BRENTWOOD, TN 37024

Could be tough tracking down the owner this way. Andreal Hoosman of Haywood-Hoosman Realty was the last one to have 7121-7127 listed (expired a year ago). Maybe she can put you in contact?

The local owner of the corner property 7129 has an active sale listing for $150k with a different broker, so it seems like someone could potentially acquire the whole row.

How do Landmark buildings get neglected like this? Now they just do away with the issue and issued a permit? This is an actual crime

According to the Stl property lookup, the permits have only been applied for, not issued.

Also none of the owners has been paying their taxes

I don't see demo permits issued either.  

The 7121 parcel had a structural condemnation issued by the building dept on 11/3 after what looks like a partial collapse.  The pictures on geostl aren't promising but definitely worse has been rebuilt.  It doesn't look like the other 2 parcels have that November condemnation but they may have been impacted to some degree. 

johnnyqnola wrote: ↑

Dec 05, 2025

They're in a couple of TN LLCs:
-7121

Owner Name:	TWIN HIGGINS LLC
Owner Address:	3415 WEST END AV UNIT 806 NASHVILLE, TN 37203

-7127

Owner Name:	DAVIS ALLEN GROUP OF
Owner Name (Secondary):	TENNESSEE LLC
Owner Address:	8011 BROOKS CHAPEL RD UNIT 2225 BRENTWOOD, TN 37024

Could be tough tracking down the owner this way. Andreal Hoosman of Haywood-Hoosman Realty was the last one to have 7121-7127 listed (expired a year ago). Maybe she can put you in contact?

The local owner of the corner property 7129 has an active sale listing for $150k with a different broker, so it seems like someone could potentially acquire the whole row.

Thanks

Classic, it’s always owners who don’t pay taxes. Ludicrous