One of the biggest beneficiaries of a federally funded city program to stabilize derelict buildings is a company with close ties to one of the building inspectors tasked with supervising it.
Farst Construction has been paid $1,017,575 in American Rescue Plan Act dollars for its work in two programs run through the city’s Building Division: The Building Stabilization Program and the Privately-owned Property Stabilization Program. That makes the company one of the bigger recipients of the programs, which so far have collectively spent $5.27 million in ARPA funds.
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State records show that when Farst was incorporated two years ago, it was registered to an apartment in Maryland Heights well known to Building Inspection Supervisor Adebanjo “Banjo” Popoola: His ex wife Joy lives in the apartment, and she acknowledges that her ex has visited to pick up their adult son when he is back in town.
Joy Popoola, however, says she is not part of the company. “I don’t have anything to do with it. I don’t know what’s going on,” she says, adding that she knows the name “Farst” only because she receives junk mail and phone calls for the company, and she doesn’t know what to make of them.
The company’s registered agent, Feyiseye Osiki, appears to be a nurse practitioner living just outside Houston, Texas. She is Facebook friends with numerous Popoolas, including Adebanjo and his son Josh.
One year ago, well after Farst Construction had begun working for the city, it moved its agent’s address from Joy Popoola’s apartment to a home on Bayard Avenue in the city’s Fountain Park neighborhood. Reached by SLM earlier today, Banjo Popoola insisted that’s where the company is based. In addition to instantly recognizing Farst’s name, he knew the Bayard address off the top of his head.
However, the company’s principal office address being at his ex-wife’s apartment seemed to stump him. “I have no clue,” he says. “It could be a coincidence.” In a subsequent conversation, he added: “Maybe if she had changed her name, all of this wouldn’t have happened.”
One of two city inspectors assigned to the city’s programs designed to stabilize derelict buildings, Popoola acknowledges that he has encouraged people to pursue city work, suggesting at one point his ex-wife was among them: “Everywhere I go, if I meet you on the road, too, I’ll tell you too. If you’re into construction, you can join the city…we’re looking for contractors.”
A spokesman for the city said the Department of Public Safety would move swiftly to probe the matter based on SLM’s questions about Popoola’s connections to the company. “We take this very seriously and have immediately opened an investigation,” says Conner Kerrigan.
Farst Construction first became a subject of public interest in October, when SLM reported that Shaw resident Tony Pitale had purchased an old mechanic’s garage on Hodiamont Avenue, only to be slapped with a $109,000 repair bill from the city.
Pitale soon learned the building had previously been chosen for the city’s nascent Stable Communities program, in which the city hires contractors to fix up derelict buildings—and then sends the bill to their owners.
But Pitale had no idea that the building he purchased had previously been stabilized through the program, and was shocked by the city’s bill. The city had filed no lien, which allowed the previous owner to sell the fixed-up building without hindrance. (Due in part to Pitale’s experience, the city says it now files liens after it performs Stable Communities construction work.)
It was Farst Construction that did the work on the Hodiamont garage purchased by Pitale. And while the city insisted that Farst had done good work on the property, including adding a new roof, a quick visual inspection suggests some cause for concern. The contractor claimed to have fixed a staircase when the building has no staircase. Its bid also mentioned repairing a dormer window and clearing out debris (it has no dormer, and Pitale says he found plenty of debris on site).
Reached by email in October, Osiki defended the company’s work. “It was rough working there; we lost some equipment and tools to some addicts, and one of our workers was also robbed while cleaning the debris outside,” she wrote. “This project has been completed for almost or over a year. Please contact the Stable Community program if you’d like to know anything else. The program is helping the community, and we are glad to be able to participate. We are based and operating entirely in St. Louis.” (Records show Farst continued to receive payment from the city through this past May; Osiki didn’t respond to an email seeking comment today.)
Nancy Hawes, the attorney representing Pitale, previously told SLM that she believed Farst overcharged the city and couldn’t understand why the city’s building inspector had signed off on payment.
Reached today, she says the inspector supervising the program having ties to one of its major contractors is a huge problem. “The program is flawed at best,” she says. “At worst, it’s riddled with, and ripe for, fraud—because there’s no oversight.”
Hawes has continued to push the city to release Pitale from demands for payment for the work done by Farst. Among other things, she notes that he wouldn’t have paid $70,000 for a building without a roof—so it’s the previous owner who benefited from the work. More recently, Pitale’s claim against the title insurance was denied, with the title company citing the lack of lien from the city.
Adding insult to injury, the night before Thanksgiving, Pitale received a letter from the city announcing that the Hodiamont garage had been condemned. The letter gave him until Dec. 2 to file an appeal, which would cost $150 and, at that point, allowed just one working day to file thanks to the holiday and the weekend.
Hawes immediately got on the phone, making clear her client was not willing to spend $150 appealing condemnation of a building where the city had recently paid for $109,000 worth of work. As for Pitale, he says the whole thing left him speechless: “Is it malice, is it retribution, or just sheer incompetence?”
The city tells SLM it sent the condemnation notice in error and it has since been rescinded. But Pitale remains frustrated. He notes that his wife asked the mayor about the mechanic’s garage featured in SLM at a recent neighborhood meeting without identifying herself. The mayor told her the problem had been resolved, stressing that the city is now issuing liens promptly after doing stabilization work.
Says Pitale, “I would disagree that we are not, in fact, resolved or rectified, because I haven’t paid anything. I’m not going to pay anything.”
