FERGUSON — In 2019, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of Michael Brown’s death and the civil unrest that followed, a nonprofit led by a former top Mercy Health executive and the leaders of two construction firms that worked closely with the hospital system unveiled grand plans for West Florissant Avenue.
Flanked by elected officials and Olympic gold medalist Jackie Joyner-Kersee, the leaders of the new nonprofit, Health and Homes Ƶ, promised new housing, a grocery store, sidewalks and streetlights.
One of the first pieces would be a new, 11,000-square-foot “Mercy health care hub” on West Florissant Avenue, next to the Boys and Girls Club teen center under construction at the time. They even had a catchy brand name for the stretch of busy, uninviting road where the protests and violence of 2014 drew the world’s attention to Ƶ’ racial inequities.
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“A little more than a year ago, we announced the Health & Homes STL plans for the WestFlo District,” Donn Sorensen, then a top Mercy executive and chairman of the board and CEO of Health and Homes, said in a December 2020 Mercy announcement about the new clinic’s groundbreaking. “Today marks the chapter where Mercy responds to the call to promote health and wellness for Ferguson residents.”
The Mercy office — at 5,500 square feet, half the size Health and Homes first pitched — opened in July 2021 on land Health and Homes purchased in 2017 at 9180 West Florissant Avenue. The construction was undertaken by Pitt Development Group and Musick Construction, whose leaders, Doug Pitt and Don Musick, respectively, served on the board of the nonprofit.
After Mercy’s office opened, a few more doctors began working in the community. Health and Homes made some small grants to community organizations. Its board members even invested in commercial buildings across the street from the Mercy clinic.
Then nothing.
“Health and Homes went silent all of a sudden,” said LaTasha Brown, who was listed as a contact on Health and Homes’ website and received grants from the nonprofit for her own organization, the Southeast Ferguson Community Association. “The Health and Homes I know don’t exist anymore.”
A dispute between Mercy and Pitt Development Group, and the ensuing resignation of key leaders, seems to be behind Health and Homes’ lack of activity in recent years. The fight, now in court, has raised questions about whether Health and Homes will be able to meet the nonprofit’s commitments to Ferguson and north Ƶ County, including $1.5 million pledged to help revamp West Florissant Avenue and the broader promises of redevelopment and health services.
In December 2021, Sorensen left the tax-exempt, Catholic hospital system that had paid him $4.5 million in its fiscal year ending June 2021. He stepped down from Health and Homes’ board sometime before mid-2022.
A few months later, in March 2022, Pitt Development General Manager Brian Hayes, a board member and chief operating officer of Health and Homes, resigned from the nonprofit. In Hayes’ resignation letter, which Brown provided to the Post-Dispatch, Hayes said he was asked to resign from the board — a request that Hayes said came from the nonprofit’s legal counsel at the time, , a Lewis Rice attorney who has .
“In my duties as a Mercy contractor, I reported a situation to management that I felt was wrong,” Hayes wrote. “Many truths and rumors have swirled from me doing so and the great work of Health & Homes is at risk of collateral damage. Which would only hurt the people I have worked so hard to help. While I firmly stand by what I felt was right, I also want to make sure the path for Health & Homes is clear going forward. I do not regret my decision to come forward.”
The $8 million Health and Homes said it had raised back in 2019 never materialized. It doesn’t currently have the $2 million it told the U.S. Department of Transportation and Ƶ County it would provide for a $30 million project to add medians and landscaping to West Florissant Avenue. It was just setting up an office on West Florissant Avenue last week.
Health and Homes’ nonprofit filings as of June 30 show it took in only $20,000 last year and its assets mostly consist of the land where the Mercy clinic sits. Most of its donations in recent years went to paying off the mortgage on that real estate. It hadn’t even received a tax exemption certificate as a nonprofit and owed three years of taxes on the land — nearly $30,000 — which it paid May 17, days after the Post-Dispatch asked the county assessor and the nonprofit’s attorney about the taxes.
But the organization is working to resurrect itself as the 10th anniversary of the Ferguson unrest approaches. It points to a new leader, Raullo Eanes, and a $750,000 matching grant promised from the Boniface Foundation, which has close ties to Mercy Health and whose chair is Win Reed.
Asked whether Health and Homes was a casualty of the fallout between Pitt Development and Mercy Health, Musick, one of the remaining founders of the nonprofit, was resolute: “We’re not going to let that happen.”
‘A disturbing connection’
Before the hospital system cut ties with it two years ago, Pitt Development worked closely with Sorensen and built more than a dozen Mercy clinics over the last decade.
But in a lawsuit filed earlier this year, Pitt Development says that Mercy retaliated against it for reporting “potential bribery, extortion and sexual assault of women” involving Sorensen to Mercy executives in late 2021.
According to the lawsuit, Sorensen in late 2021 asked Pitt Development to pay $65,000 to architect Steve Warlick even though Warlick wasn’t working with Pitt Development. Pitt Development says Sorensen’s request to pay Warlick led it to discover “a disturbing connection between Sorensen and Warlick that related to business dealings, personal dealings and the sexual exploitation of women.”
Pitt Development claims that after it reported its findings to Mercy executives, Mercy opened an investigation into Sorensen, who left in December 2021. John Farnen, the head of development at Mercy, also left.
At least one woman reached a settlement with Mercy, according to a separate lawsuit Warlick filed against the woman for defamation. The Post-Dispatch is not identifying her because of the allegations of sexual exploitation. She has declined to comment.
Sorensen has not responded to requests for comment. Farnen has said he didn’t know about Pitt Development’s allegations. Mercy has said it doesn’t comment on pending litigation. Warlick has denied any wrongdoing and previously said in a statement he had found his own “disturbing connection between Pitt Development Group and Sorensen.”
‘Now we’re there’
After the disruptions of COVID-19 and the departures of Sorensen and Hayes, Musick and Eanes say they’re trying to stand Health and Homes back up as the 10-year anniversary of the 2014 civil unrest in Ferguson approaches. They want to provide the health services and redevelopment promised five years ago. The West Florissant Avenue project will be the first step. All the funding, including an $18 million federal grant awarded in late 2021, is finally lined up, and they’re actively raising money to cover the nonprofit’s share.
“Getting the grant took forever, getting the 501©(3) status for (Health and Homes) took forever,” Musick said. “Everything has taken way longer than we thought it ever could or would. But now we’re there.”
Eanes, who is listed as part of Musick’s Eager Road Associates LLC in his role as , said he started working to revive Health and Homes last summer. He declined to say whether he was employed directly by the nonprofit, which has never listed any employees in its IRS filings. But Eanes said Health and Homes “is a full-time job” and that it has held several health education workshops at the Boys and Girls Club on West Florissant Avenue since he came on.
The group and lists Eanes and Brown, the Southeast Ferguson Community Association founder, as contacts, and an office address of 9191 West Florissant Avenue, a commercial building across the street from the Mercy clinic. Brown, who works as a property manager for that building, said she was unaware she was listed as a contact.
“I have never worked for Health and Homes,” Brown said Tuesday.
And, she said, she said she rarely sees Eanes.
“In the last two months, I’ve seen Raullo all of three times,” Brown said.
Eanes said the group would take Brown’s name off the website. But he maintained he is working diligently on Health and Homes and that he is often out in the community meeting with leaders and residents.
“If you’re going to work with the community you have to be in the community,” Eanes said Tuesday from an office in the building, where Musick Construction trucks had delivered furniture just a couple hours prior.
Brown said she works closely with Hayes as a property manager for the strip mall and office building at 9191 West Florissant Avenue. The building is owned by an entity called Donnian LLC, which lists Hayes, Musick and Sorensen as members.
In an emailed response to questions, Hayes said Health and Homes was a philanthropic venture “with no money to be made by any of the developers or contractors.” And Donnian LLC, which purchased two commercial buildings at 9191 and 9231 West Florissant Avenue for $875,000 in June 2021, bought the land as part of Health and Homes “philanthropic efforts,” Hayes said.
The group had commissioned some early planning work for redevelopment along the road. The intent, Hayes wrote, was to establish “control over how it would be developed and to make sure the future development would fit into the long-term plan for the community.”
“That is still the intention but the property is not profitable and the community is still struggling,” Hayes said in the statement. “With the departure of Donn Sorensen from Mercy the relationships between Donnian LLC members, Health & Homes, STL and Mercy has disappeared. Thus, progress slowed down in (Southeast) Ferguson.”
Donnian LLC paid $110,000 Thursday to catch up on two years of property taxes owed on the building that Health and Homes shares with several small businesses who rent commercial and office space. The payment came days after
on taxes.
‘Halfway there’
Health and Homes, meanwhile, plans to donate the real estate it owns to Mercy Health, which owns the building but not the land where the Ferguson clinic sits. A spokeswoman for the health system said Mercy, which still has an employee on Health and Homes’ board, was “happy to accept the land donation from Health and Homes and eager to continue our work serving the Ferguson community.”
And, Musick said, Health and Homes is “good for the $1.5 million” promised to Ƶ County for the West Florissant Avenue project, slated to begin early next year. The financial commitment is not in any contract but included in a letter Hayes wrote to the Department of Transportation in July 2021, pledging $500,000 to maintain the road improvements and $1.5 million for the project itself.
After the roadwork, Health and Homes’ redevelopment work will follow, Musick said.
“We will actively be looking for not only a grocery store but for other development opportunities which we hope to generate based on the redo of the West Florissant corridor,” Musick said.
Eanes and Musick said they’re halfway to reaching the commitment to the county. They pointed to the $750,000 commitment from the Boniface Foundation, a $268 million foundation that had been tied to St. Anthony’s Medical Center before Mercy acquired the hospital and renamed it Mercy Hospital South. Boniface, which pays former St. Anthony’s CEO Kelly Wetzler $400,000 to lead the organization, gives the majority of its annual donations to projects and services at Mercy Hospital South.
Boniface’s chair, Reed, confirmed that the foundation agreed to a $750,000 “match donation” to Health and Homes. Reed, who was legal counsel for Health and Homes, also served on Mercy Hospital South’s board. Reed declined to say whether he still provided legal services to Health and Homes and he declined to comment on whether he had asked Hayes to resign from the nonprofit two years ago.
Eanes said more announcements are close and Health and Homes is back, gearing up “for the next step”: providing health programming in a community that needs it.
“We are by no means a nonexistent organization,” Eanes said. “It’s really climbing right now and I don’t want to lose that momentum.”
Originally published Sunday, June 2.