ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

ST. LOUIS — A lawyer for St. Louis Collector of Revenue Greg Daly’s office said a repayment deal led to a pause in tax foreclosure proceedings Thursday against Paul McKee’s NorthSide Regeneration.

But after a judge agreed to set aside NorthSide’s cases, a lawyer for McKee told the Post-Dispatch that the deal was not final.

Under the proposed agreement, NorthSide would have until Dec. 15 to pay the roughly $830,000 it owes on nearly 1,000 properties that have three years of unpaid property taxes, said Jack Garvey, an attorney for Daly’s office.

If NorthSide doesn’t pay, its properties will still go to auction at one of next year’s tax sales, Garvey told the Post-Dispatch after a tax foreclosure court hearing Thursday. The hearing Thursday had been scheduled to set one of next year’s tax foreclosure sales.

But Joe Dulle, a lawyer for NorthSide, said the landowner’s negotiations with Garvey “have not produced a final agreement.� The parties hope to work out terms of a deal by September, Dulle said in an email.

The maneuvers are unusual in the obscure realm of St. Louis tax foreclosure law, which is designed to move abandoned properties into the hands of new owners or the city’s Land Reutilization Authority. But NorthSide is an unusual landowner in that it has so many properties and such a large delinquent tax bill.

Daly’s office has said the collector does not enter into payment plans with commercial property owners. But property owners do have up to the day of the sale to pay any outstanding tax balances.

The hearing Thursday was a procedural one before next year’s tax sales, where properties with unpaid taxes are auctioned off or, if no buyers step forward, put under the ownership of the city’s land bank. Other properties on Thursday were foreclosed and will be added to next year’s tax sales.

But unlike nearly all of the thousands of tax suit actions brought every year, NorthSide’s lawyers filed responses in the cases to contest whether the collector’s office had followed state law and the city code governing the process. They also argued that existing loans encumbering NorthSide property took priority over the unpaid taxes.

Their responses led the court to schedule a bench trial for Thursday. Rather than argue cases for hundreds of delinquent tax accounts on Thursday afternoon, Garvey said the collector’s office opted to negotiate an agreement to recoup the taxes. It won’t delay a tax sale of the properties if McKee’s NorthSide can’t pay, Garvey said.

NorthSide Regeneration is among the largest private landowners in the city, where it owns thousands of parcels covering hundreds of acres in North St. Louis. It has generated controversy over its vast land holdings. Neighbors complain it doesn’t maintain its properties and hurts surrounding real estate values. NorthSide counters it has been one of the few investors in that part of St. Louis, and its land assemblage helped the city to lure the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency to the area.

But NorthSide has held many of its properties for close to 20 years, and many of its promised developments haven’t materialized. The city has threatened eminent domain, and unpaid taxes have been mounting.

The Collector generally waits for three years of property taxes to go unpaid before filing a tax foreclosure lawsuit. It’s not uncommon for developers or large real estate owners to not pay for the first two years and wait until tax foreclosure nears to pay real estate taxes. Companies affiliated with McKee and NorthSide, for instance, recently paid off three years of taxes on some developed properties, including the Amoco gas station on Tucker Boulevard and the now-closed GreenLeaf grocery store across the street.

NorthSide has paid off its taxes before foreclosure proceedings commence in past years. This year, however, roughly 1,000 parcels held by NorthSide were part of the collector’s tax suit filed in April.