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ST. LOUIS — City officials promised weeks ago that no organization would get cash from a new North Side grant program before being thoroughly vetted.

They said businesses and nonprofits with unpaid taxes, empty buildings or South Side addresses, for example, wouldn’t be paid.

But some with those very issues have already gotten checks.

The city has sent more than $2.4 million in grants to nearly 200 businesses and nonprofits. Some of that money went out in smaller, $2,500 grants to businesses that completed classes meant to help them improve management.

But the city sent the bulk of the money to 98 organizations in grants of $15,000 or more. Of those, nine of them, or about 10%, had overdue property taxes, some worth thousands of dollars, according to city records.

And when the Post-Dispatch visited a dozen or so of the larger grant winners, at least four appeared less than the enterprises they claimed to be. There’s a nonprofit with an office where neighbors say there isn’t one. There’s a convenience store that isn’t open during advertised hours. And there are two grantees that list North Side addresses but work in offices south of Delmar Boulevard.

In response to questions from the Post-Dispatch, the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Development Corp., the city agency overseeing the grants, claimed it had vetted each entity in question and offered explanations on why it paid each.

Still, the paid grantees are now the latest question marks for a high-profile initiative tasked with pumping $37 million in federal pandemic relief money into north city neighborhoods. The program was supposed to be a big step toward reversing years of disinvestment and neglect. Mayor Tishaura O. Jones has cast it as a critical part of her administration’s work to spark a North Side renaissance over the next several years.

SLDC announced the first round of grant winners at an event in late June.

SLDC officials at the time said they still needed to finish vetting applicants’ proposals before they could actually sign checks.

A good portion of the cash was slated for recognizable institutions. The Urban League of Metropolitan ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ was in line for $2 million; health clinic operator Affinia Healthcare won $1 million.

And while a few dozen smaller grants were final, SLDC chief Neal Richardson said they’d been fully vetted. “We’re confident in those businesses,� he said at the event that day.

Then last month, Post-Dispatch reporting raised questions about the grantees. One winner, in line for $50,000, had its offices in Shrewsbury. Two were based in vacant buildings. And three awards, worth nearly $1.3 million, were intended for entities with ties to the family of Alderwoman Shameem Clark Hubbard, who sponsored the grants bill and sits on the board of SLDC.

Comptroller Darlene Green, a Democrat, urged aldermen to correct mistakes in the program then called for a wholesale restart. The next day, U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Republican, raised the issue with the U.S. Treasury department, too.

SLDC repeatedly emphasized that the grant awards under fire were not final. And they said no one would get money who didn’t follow the rules.

“If any awardee is found not in compliance or unable to complete the project outlined in their application, they won’t be receiving these funds,� Jared Boyd, the mayor’s chief of staff, said in a September statement.

But as of mid-September, SLDC had already sent out $2.4 million — with at least $255,000 of that amount going to grant winners with questionable résumés.

Outside intervention is now required, said Alderwoman Sharon Tyus, one of the longest-serving representatives of the North Side.

“We ought to be having investigations,� she said.

‘Nothing operating up there’

Of the grants already paid out, $20,000 went to a nonprofit called Urban Pyramids, according to SLDC records online.

The entity filed incorporation papers with the state in September 2023, saying it was being formed “for the economic, physical and mental health of the community.�

A month later, it applied for a North Side grant. It listed Joe Rice, a board member, as its representative, and claimed an address on the second floor of a small commercial storefront on Union Boulevard, on the northwest side.

But in a series of visits to the building, the Post-Dispatch found the door to the second floor was always padlocked shut. Insulation and empty light bulb and smoke detector sockets were visible through the upstairs windows.

The two tenants in the building’s storefronts said there was nothing on the second floor.

“We saw it before we moved in,� said Marino Lemons, who with a business partner rents the space below, a beauty salon and tattoo parlor. “You can’t even live there.�

“Ain’t nothing operating up there,� said Sarah DeBrunner, who runs a home health care business next door.

City records show occupancy permits for beauty salons and a home health care office — but no Urban Pyramids.

Rice, the board member, did not respond to a series of messages from the Post-Dispatch.

SLDC, in its response to the Post-Dispatch, said Urban Pyramids is actually located in a home on Montclair Avenue. SLDC did not say why it moved.

But a woman who answered the door at the Montclair house Friday said she had never heard of Urban Pyramids or the people listed on its application. She said she recently moved to the home from Milwaukee.

Sometimes, she said, bill collectors come looking for whoever rented the place before her. But she doesn’t know who they are.

‘They sell chips and soda’

Another $20,000 went to the Boomerang Store, described in its application as an oasis in the area’s food desert.

The store’s mission, leaders wrote in their grant application, is to provide easy access to fresh fruits and vegetables to residents of the Greater Ville neighborhood, with convenient hours of 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday through Saturday. The location, according to its application, is the Moorish Science Temple on North Sarah Street.

But on six visits by the Post-Dispatch to the store, during business hours on different days, gates in front of its doors were locked. All that could be seen through a darkened window were the backs of chip bags.

Most neighbors interviewed said they weren’t aware of any food in the store, despite its purported founding in 2019.

“I would think I would have heard of it by now,� said Lyonel Smith, who works at Amber J’s Mini Mart, about 150 feet away.

Alphonso Harris, who said he’s lived in north ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ for decades, went over to take a closer look, then scoffed.

“For $20,000, they could at least be open to the public,� he said.

Another nearby business owner, who declined to give his name, said he’d seen the store open for members of the temple during service. “They sell chips and soda,� he said. He didn’t shop there, though.

Todd Irons-El, who is listed as the owner of the Boomerang Store and a onetime sheik at the temple, said he couldn’t talk when a Post-Dispatch reporter called because he was at a conference. He then hung up.

SLDC, in its response to the Post-Dispatch, said the Boomerang Store told officials there isn’t enough foot traffic to maintain the hours its leaders said they kept when they applied for money.

Instead, they said they try to open the store when the Moorish Science Temple that houses it is open.

An advertisement outside the temple lists the following hours: 7 p.m. Wednesdays for Koran class. 7:30 p.m. Fridays for service. And 2 p.m. for Sunday school.

Wrong locations

A Peaceful Home Healthcare, which SLDC says it has sent $20,000, listed an address on its grant application in a one-story office building on Mullanphy Street, half a mile north of downtown.

It incorporated there in 2018, according to documents filed with the state.

But a Post-Dispatch reporter found no sign of Peaceful Home at the site. There were offices for an appliance repair business, a landscaping business and other home health care businesses, but occupants said they were unfamiliar with the grant winner.

Kisha Jackson, the owner, told the Post-Dispatch she had moved. A Peaceful Home is now in a small office building on Lindell Boulevard, in the Central West End, along with some law offices, a medical office and a satellite of an area construction firm.

Jackson said she still had an address on Mullanphy around the time she applied for the grant in the summer of 2022.

But she said there were issues with the landlord there, and she moved to the Lindell office.

She acknowledged it wasn’t on the North Side, but said it is near a concentration of customers. And she said that when SLDC called about the grant, the new address wasn’t an issue.

She said she’s now putting the $20,000 from the city into payroll and building costs.

SLDC, in its response to the Post-Dispatch, said A Peaceful Home Healthcare was on the North Side when an inspector visited in October 2023.

Its north city landlord told the agency its lease only expired in September. SLDC has asked the health care company’s owner to prove she was still there in September.

City Cares CDS, which describes itself as another home health care business, also has an office on Lindell, south of Delmar.

The business, which has received $17,500 in grants, registered with the state at an address on Gilmore Avenue, a house on the city’s northwest side, in May 2023.

In its grant application, dated August 2023, the business listed the Gilmore address as the owner’s home.

Its primary business address, the application said, was down the street from Peaceful Home on Lindell.

A recent visit to the address, in a co-working space on the second floor of a bank building, found the business as promised: a small, glass-enclosed office with a sign reading “City Cares CDS LLC� listing office hours of 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday to Thursday.

The office was closed on a recent evening, but laptops, a printer, and desks were visible inside.

Norman L. Brown, who was listed as City Cares’ owner on the grant application, denied any deception when contacted by the Post-Dispatch. He said the business maintains the Lindell office for record-keeping but also operates out of the Gilmore address. He refused to answer further questions.

No one answered at the Gilmore house on a recent visit.

City Cares told SLDC that it still maintains a satellite office on the North Side, where its owner meets north city clients.

Taxes owed

Several businesses that received grants owed taxes, mostly between $500 and $3,400.

One of them, Favored LLC, has received a $15,000 grant. But it and an associated nonprofit owe nearly $19,000 in delinquent taxes from the past two years, the majority on a new facility on Amherst Place.

Cortaiga Collins, the owner of the day care business, said it wasn’t intentional.

The nonprofit, Favored Foundation for Strengthening Families, built the new facility with a certain understanding. Collins said the alderman for the area, then Jeffrey Boyd, had promised tax abatement for the project.

“Which apparently never happened,� Collins said.

Collins said she’s tried to get the area’s new representative, Clark Hubbard, to honor Boyd’s purported promise, but has been unsuccessful. Clark Hubbard said Collins had reached out, but had made no request for tax abatement.

Collins said she would use the grant money to stay afloat for now, and find a way to pay the taxes eventually.

“I will have no choice,� she said.

In response, SLDC said recipients of smaller grants weren’t required to be current on real estate bills.

SLDC itself, however, has said differently:

To get money, it requires applicants to affirm on at least one form that they owe “no outstanding taxes to the City of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½.â€�

Jacob Barker of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.