ST. LOUIS — One of downtown St. Louis' massive and mostly vacant buildings has sold for $5 million.
The Chemical Building, at 777 Olive St., was sold Dec. 22 to 777 Olive St. HTC LLC, an entity with a mailing address matching the headquarters of New Orleans-based architecture firm John T. Campo & Associates, also known as Campo Architects. The seller was an entity affiliated with Morgan Communities, an upstate New York-based commercial real estate firm.
The 17-story Chemical Building, at the corner of Olive and Eighth streets, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The building’s sole tenant for many years has been Kessler Mroz Jewelry Inc., located on the ground floor.
Representatives of John T. Campo & Associates did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and a broker tied to the sale declined to comment on the purchase. The New Orleans firm has redeveloped historic properties into hotels in Birmingham, Alabama, and served as the architect for projects in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louisville, Kentucky. In St. Louis, the firm is serving as architect for a project in Downtown West to redevelop the former Shell Building at at 1221 Locust St. into a hotel.
Morgan Communities purchased the Chemical Building for $4 million in 2017 from Waterfall Asset Management. The building previously sold for $3 million in 2015 while in foreclosure.
Morgan had once planned to redevelop the 125-year-old building as “micro” apartments in a project estimated to cost between $30 million and $35 million. But by 2019, the project was in danger of losing $17 million in historic preservation tax credits after executives from an affiliated company pleaded guilty to fraud in a New York federal court, according to previous Business Journal reporting.
Amy and Amrit Gill of Restoration St. Louis in 2019 signed a letter of intent to acquire the Chemical Building from Morgan Communities for $5 million as part of a $54 million extension of the Gills’ 140-room Hotel Saint Louis next door. The plan was to link the two buildings with a street-level pedestrian walkway and renovate the Chemical Building to include 84 more hotel rooms, plus 72 luxury apartments, a ballroom, restaurant and rooftop bar. The deal would have kept the historic credits tied to the project.
Click here for the full story.
