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ST. LOUIS — City officials, under fire for their handling of a beleaguered north St. Louis grant program, have released a ream of new documents in an attempt to ease concerns about their plans for $34 million in federal pandemic aid money.

The documents — 437 redacted applications for grants from hundreds of businesses and nonprofits each in line for as much as $2 million in cash — offer varying degrees of clarity on how winners plan to spend the money once they get it.

Some applications describe in detail what each applicant does, and a few even detail what they plan to do with the money.

But in other cases, the applications appear to skip those steps. The boxes for that information are blank, or the information was not released by city staff.

And some applications from organizations reviewed by the Post-Dispatch in recent weeks contain clear exaggerations. One business says it rents out space in a building on Martin Luther King Drive for retail and offices and is looking to open a soul food restaurant. But the building in question is an empty, boarded-up husk.

The documents released late Friday mark the latest twist for a program that’s supposed to be a big win for the city, a first step toward reversing years of disinvestment and neglect on the city’s north side. Mayor Tishaura O. Jones and other officials have talked about the cash as a way to restore vibrancy to forgotten corridors and offer opportunities to people left out for decades.

But political infighting over how best to distribute the money delayed the rollout, prompting complaints from business owners to the St. Louis Development Corp., the city agency overseeing the program. Now, SLDC’s decision to address those concerns by announcing grant winners before vetting them has opened up a can of worms.

Post-Dispatch reports in recent weeks have revealed that organizations in line for money include one based in Shrewsbury, two in vacant buildings and three with ties to the family of Alderwoman Shameem Clark Hubbard, who sponsored the grants bill at the Board of Aldermen and sits on SLDC’s board.

Other organizations reviewed by the Post-Dispatch only exist on paper, including one purporting to house homeless veterans that has no houses for them and a museum with no exhibits.

SLDC officials have emphasized that many of the grant awards are not final and promised to thoroughly vet all businesses before sending the money out. Jones, the mayor, has acknowledged “flaws� but insisted that the program has not been “compromised from a legal or compliance standpoint.�

But until 5 p.m. Friday, city officials had refused to release any grant applications that might shed light on what exactly they were reviewing and how they might have missed some glaring issues.

Friday’s release didn’t fully explain things, either.

Many applications provided at least some description of each business or nonprofit in line for money: 1451 Mullanphy Investment LLC offers office space to a number of small businesses on the near north side. Financier LLC is an entity working to turn a vacant building on the near North Side into a Negro Leagues baseball museum. Soll’s Market is a grocery on North Kingshighway.

But only a handful included the parts of applications where the entities laid out their plans along with estimated costs, such as the $74,096 invoice A Nurse’s Touch Residential Care provided for kitchen renovations, bathroom updates and new room partitions.

And applications for at least 40 organizations in line for expansion grants, which provide as much as $125,000 for existing businesses to maintain or expand their work, offered virtually no description of the entities’ plans for the money.

Additionally, several organizations made claims in their applications inconsistent with what their owners told the Post-Dispatch or what could be found at their physical locations.

Cliff’s 3rd Chance House said it needed support for a network of single-family homes, duplexes and four-family properties housing aging homeless veterans. But city land records make no mention of Cliff’s 3rd Chance. And its founder has since told the newspaper that she needs city money to buy the homes.

Team Academy said it was a school certified by the state running classes four days per week. What it didn’t say was that its Kossuth Avenue building isn’t used for classes, with a “PRIVATE PROPERTY KEEP OUT� sign in the window, and that key state paperwork was out of date.

And the St. Louis Mississippi River Museum claimed in its application to be a nonprofit history museum presenting “16 interactive exhibits with relics, narrative art, fossils, artifacts and quotes.�

But its address leads to a brick four-family structure in a neighborhood just north of the Central West End. No one answers the door, even during advertised business hours. And the building itself is surrounded by weeds and overgrowth.

City officials are expected to take questions about the applications early Monday morning.

They said they will seek final approval to send money to grant winners starting next month.