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ST. LOUIS — Seven months after a judge ordered Paul McKee’s NorthSide Regeneration to repair and secure a historic Page Boulevard auto dealership, the building remains in disrepair and open for people to wander in.

Despite last year’s legal victory for the neighborhood association and lawyers at Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, the lack of action on the structure highlights how a building owner can drag out court-mandated remediation. And it shows the continuing struggles of neighborhood advocates and city leaders to force one of the city’s largest owners of crumbling buildings, McKee’s NorthSide, to sell or secure the remaining structures on its roughly 900 parcels across roughly 100 acres in north ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½.

The December ruling from Judge Michael Stelzer marked the first time the courts stepped in to compel the city’s highest-profile private owner of vacant properties to stabilize one of its many deteriorating buildings.

As proceedings continued in the case, Judge Joseph Whyte on Feb. 15 ordered NorthSide to “abate all nuisance conditions on ABC Auto Building within 90 days.�

But there’s been little action since then. On July 24, several people loitered on the sidewalk on the north side of the ABC Auto Sales building. Four people appeared to be preparing to enter the building through an open door on its east side. On Tuesday, several people sat along the building’s sidewalk on Dr. Martin Luther King Drive.

The building at 3509 Page Boulevard sits across the street from the headquarters of the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Housing Authority and a shopping center that houses a grocery and children’s shoe store.

NorthSide did demolish a brick structure on the property in recent months. The ABC Auto building is on the National Register of Historic Places, protecting it from demolition.

The city reinspected the property and updated the ordinance violations against it, but NorthSide appealed those violations, lawyers for the neighborhood association said. A hearing before the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Board of Building Appeals is set for Thursday.

Peter Hoffman, one of the Legal Services attorneys who represented the Covenant Blu Grand Center Neighborhood Association in its lawsuit, said NorthSide is still under the court’s February order and he plans to go back to ask Judge Whyte to enforce it after the city’s ordinance violation appeal process is complete.

But the neighborhood and Legal Services were dealt a setback last month, when Whyte ruled against their motion for attorney fees.

In December, Stelzer, the former judge in the case, had said the neighborhood association was entitled to “reasonable attorney fees� in their case against NorthSide. Legal Services submitted a request for $110,540 for their work on the case first filed in October 2022.

NorthSide’s attorneys argued the neighborhood association wasn’t entitled to attorney fees because Legal Services had represented it free of charge. Whyte agreed that attorney fees were “inappropriate.�

“The court’s finding is not intended to diminish the significant work that Legal Services of Eastern Missouri does to ensure that people without means can prosecute these actions,� Whyte wrote in his June 27 ruling. “It is undisputed that plaintiff has not incurred any attorney fees in bringing and prosecuting this action. Accordingly, the court cannot award plaintiff attorney fees...“

James Bax, a Legal Services lawyer on the case, said the team is considering an appeal of the attorney fee ruling.

McKee and his lawyer, Joseph Dulle of Stone Leyton and Gershman, did not respond to an email asking when they would repair and secure the building per the judge’s February order.