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ST. LOUIS — Alderman Jack Coatar has returned $15,000 in campaign donations from two of the city’s most controversial developers, citing concern about recent mayhem at a downtown apartment building they control.

Coatar reported the refunds to entities tied to developers and brothers Sid Chakraverty and Victor Alston in a regularly scheduled filing with the state this week.

Coatar, whose ward includes downtown, said he gave back the money after seeing a story in the Post-Dispatch last month linking Chakraverty and Alston to the Ely Walker loft building on Washington Avenue. The city had issued a nuisance notice to building managers, citing a failure to deal with “disturbances, shootings and other unruly behavior.� The refunds were dated the day the story ran in the paper.

“I returned their money and told them to clean up their act,� Coatar said Tuesday. Chakraverty and Alston did not respond to a request for comment.

Overall, Coatar’s filing showed a commanding fundraising advantage over Alderman Megan Green, his opponent in this fall’s race for aldermanic president. He pulled in $138,000 in the past two months while Green received $44,000, outspent her nearly 2-to-1, and has four times more cash-on-hand heading into next Tuesday’s non-binding primary contest.

Coatar needs the money. He is running his first citywide campaign and needs to advertise to make himself better known beyond his ward. Voters already know Green from her runs for aldermanic president in 2019 and state Senate in 2020.

Green has been trying to brand Coatar as a tool of unscrupulous developers, and the donations from Chakraverty and Alston bolstered her argument. Coatar’s decision to refund the money could help him blunt such attacks in the future.

But Chakraverty and Alston were under scrutiny long before August. The Riverfront Times was quoting tenants complaining about poor management and false advertising at a Central West End development back in 2016. The city raised concerns about the brothers misusing tax breaks in 2020. And the Post-Dispatch first linked the brothers to the Ely Walker building downtown in May, a month after a 16-year-old boy was shot and killed as he was letting people into the lofts for a party.

Green pounced on Coatar’s delay. “These issues aren’t new,� she said in a text. “It doesn’t seem he cared until the Post made it an issue right before the election.�

Coatar said he was aware of the earlier complaints from tenants. But he said he wasn’t aware of any problems with the brothers’ work in Soulard, and felt like the developers had worked well with the neighborhood. He said he must have missed the Post-Dispatch story about the Ely Walker building in May.

Neither Coatar nor Green received the largest donation over the past two months. That honor belonged to Mark Kummer, who exited the race in early August after a judge found he’d failed to meet the city’s residency requirements.

Kummer reported a nearly $60,000 in-kind donation from himself on Thursday. He said that represented what he paid for campaign expenses, including consulting and canvassing services, before he left the race.