Neighbors fed up with an empty, charred church at a prominent intersection in Soulard are taking the building’s owner to court, asking a judge declare the property a nuisance and hand control of it over to a third party.
The church sits at the intersection of Gravois and Allen, a stone’s throw from John D. McGurk’s, Pizzeoli Wood Fired Pizza, and other Soulard mainstays, making its sorry sight one of the first things that many neighborhood visitors see after getting off the highway. A 2023 fire left its roof partially collapsed and its windows either missing or boarded up.
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The Soulard Restoration Group is the neighborhood entity bringing the suit. “Too many residents have worked too hard investing in their homes and businesses here to turn a blind eye to this magnitude of neglect,” the group’s president Amanda Ramcharan said in a statement. “At this point it’s more than an eyesore, it’s unsafe. If the owner can’t care for the building, he needs to sell or donate it to someone who can.”
The neighborhood’s attorney is Peter Hoffman of Legal Services of Eastern Missouri. While these types of property cases are his bailiwick, this one stands out to him. “The difference here is that this is Soulard,” he says. “This is one of the city’s most well-known and beloved neighborhoods, and it’s a pretty healthy market. I think there are probably going to be some market-based solutions.”
He adds, “If the owner would just list it for sale.”
The lawsuit is essentially trying to force Dr. Gurpreet Padda’s Soulard Property Group, which purchased the church in 2010, to take some sort of action. In 2018, Padda, a pain management doctor, was named in numerous lawsuits filed by municipalities who accused him of running a pill mill in South City. Padda has also invested in property around the city and owns at least one other severely damaged church that has drawn the ire of its neighbors. In 2018, he purchased the Second Baptist Church off Kingshighway in the Central West End. It caught fire in October 2021. The neighborhood group there has called Padda’s ownership of the building “malfeasance.”
Neither Padda nor his attorney Spencer Desai responded to an email yesterday requesting comment.
The church in Soulard has racked up a slew of building code violations and been twice condemned by the city, according to the lawsuit filed Monday. Several fines assessed by the city have gone unpaid as of last month, the lawsuit states. The lawsuit says its condition is “injurious to the public health, safety, security, and welfare of the neighboring residents and businesses.”
The church was built in 1866 and much more recently became known informally as the Slovak Church. A press release from the Soulard Restoration Group notes that the building represents “the Bohemian history of the Soulard neighborhood.”
Soulard resident Maureen McMillan lives near the church, and previously told SLM she was upset to see it there damaged and un-used. She welcomed the lawsuit, saying, “I’m glad to see some movement toward saving the building from a habitually neglectful owner. It’s an important building on a prominent corner at the entrance to the neighborhood and it needs to be put in the hands of someone who can give it an appropriate use.”
Alex Powers has lived near the church for about 13 years. Getting his haircut at the Union Barbershop across the street yesterday, he noted that the building’s brick walls are still in good shape and suggested that it could be gutted and re-developed into mixed use residential and commerical—or, potentially, torn down.
No hearing has been set in the lawsuit as of this morning.
