For almost a year, neighbors in Gravois Park have been trying to wrest control of the shuttered St. Alexius Hospital away from an owner they believe has been letting the massive property rot. The Gravois Park Block Link Neighborhood Association’s lawsuit recently cleared a key hurdle, when a judge denied the property owner’s motion to have the suit dismissed.
The 400,000-square-foot property at South Jefferson and Miami Street has been the subject of litigation for almost a year. The neighborhood association filed its lawsuit last August, alleging that the property that once housed the oldest hospital west of the Mississippi was now in a state of ruin and a haven for crime.
Get a fresh take on the day’s top news
Subscribe to the St. Louis Daily newsletter for a smart, succinct guide to local news from award-winning journalists Sarah Fenske and Ryan Krull.
A Delaware LLC called SA Hospital-Jefferson has owned the property since January 2021. When the company shuttered operations there in July 2022, they left behind incubators, ultrasound machines, and computers—all of it unsecured and relatively easy to steal, the lawsuit says. “This attractive nuisance, full of valuable and macabre materials, quickly drew looters, vagrants, drug users, and squatters,” states the suit.
The Riverfront Times reported at the time that in one year alone, city police received 80 calls to the property. Video surveillance showed scrap thieves breaking in with trucks and hauling out myriad items. Last week, Fox 2 reported that the identification cards of former patients were strewn about the outside of the property.
A visit to the old hospital yesterday showed the buildings of its campus looking more unsecured than ever. There were too many broken and open windows to count. Doors at ground level were swung wide open. A copy machine lay on the ground, flat and broken, as if it had just been heaved out from several floors above.
The suit seeks to force SA Hospital Jefferson and property trustee Mark Ganjianpour to abate all nuisances and pay damages to the plaintiffs to compensate for the derelict hospital’s impact on their own properties.
Last September, the company filed a motion seeking to have the lawsuit dismissed. Judge Joseph Whyte shot that motion down earlier this summer, allowing the neighborhood association to seek records from the property owners through the discovery process.
The neighborhood association’s attorney, Laura Robb of WashU’s Interdisciplinary Environmental Clinic, said that requests for discovery went out late last month. Robb says she is seeking information about SA Hospital-Jefferson’s organizational structure and financial information, as well as detailed appraisals that have been done on the property.
She says the information will be critical in showing that SA Hospital indeed “owns and controls” the property housing the shuttered hospital and that Ganjianpour in fact holds a deed of trust to it. “In addition, the information will support claims that the property is not occupied by the owners and that the property is now and has been tax delinquent,” she says.
An attorney for the owners did not return a call seeking comment.
