ST. LOUIS — Terrion Smith was letting people into the Ely Walker Lofts for a party on the night of March 12 when the 16-year-old was shot dead in the lobby of the Washington Avenue building.
Police said the shooting appeared to be targeted. The apartment had been rented out via a short-term rental website for a birthday party.
On the Monday after the shooting, March 14, ºüÀêÊÓƵ officials issued a public nuisance notice for unit 510 of the Ely Walker building, where the party had been held, citing “shooting, disturbances and other unruly behavior.†It scheduled a meeting March 31 with the owner: “Aconcagua One LLC, c/o Asprient Properties.â€
Aconcagua One, which owns nearly half of the condos in the Ely Walker building, lists as manager Victor Alston, the developer behind Lux Living and a prominent real estate investor. His brother and business partner, Sid Chakraverty, sits on Ely Walker’s condominium association board, which manages the property. At least two other Lux employees are on the board, giving them a majority on the five-member condo association.
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Alston and Chakraverty have faced criticism for Lux Living’s business practices, including tactics to stymie a competing development and tenant complaints about poor management at their properties.
But now the brothers’ downtown holdings, particularly Ely Walker Lofts, are drawing new scrutiny from city officials and downtown residents. Tenants and other property owners downtown have complained about parties — some, they say, rented through websites such as Airbnb — getting out of control and damaging property in the 174-unit building at 1520 Washington Avenue. A party at the building last May spilled out into the street and led to an infamous incident when partiers danced on a police patrol car.
Last week, ºüÀêÊÓƵ Public Safety Director Dan Isom said the city was investigating after a large rooftop party April 23 at Ely Walker lofts and planned to meet with the management team.
On Monday, Ben Breit, who heads “trust communications†for Airbnb, came to ºüÀêÊÓƵ and appeared with city and business officials with a pledge to better identify problem rental units. He announced the platform would expand restrictions on rentals during Memorial Day weekend, a measure it is rolling out nationwide. A similar block on guests without good reviews during Independence Day weekend last year affected some 500 people in ºüÀêÊÓƵ, Breit said.
ºüÀêÊÓƵ Assessor Michael Dauphin also appeared Monday to say his office is working with the mayor’s office and the city’s problem properties unit to identify properties used for short-term rentals and reclassify them as commercial real estate.
“We view them as running a commercial business and essentially, when you move them from residential to commercial classification, it doubles their tax bill,†Dauphin said Monday.
The downtown parties and incidents have also gotten the attention of the ºüÀêÊÓƵ Board of Aldermen, which is reviving ideas to regulate the industry or require licenses for Airbnb hosts.
“If they’re not licensed and given a permit to operate, there’s no hammer to take away their license or punish them when they’re bad actors or hosts,†said Alderman Tom Oldenburg.
‘It ain’t ours’
Though there are short-term rentals through Airbnb throughout the city, the city’s focus on improving quality of life downtown has for the moment focused the spotlight on the Ely Walker building and Alston and Chakraverty.
Ira Berkowitz, a lawyer for many of the brothers’ companies, denied that his clients do any short-term rentals at Ely Walker.
“There’s absolutely no short-term leasing,†Berkowitz said. “There’s no short-term Airbnbs or anything else through my client at Ely Walker. Zero.â€
“We will not tolerate short-term leasing at Ely Walker,†he said.
But a company called “TheSTAY†had a unit advertised this week on Airbnb at a location that appears to match the Ely Walker building’s address, according to the website’s map. Chakraverty is the registered agent for “TheStay LLC,†Missouri business filings say.
Told about , Berkowitz replied that “advertising is one thing. Do you have any evidence of any actual short-term leasing?â€
“If you find a posting on Airbnb it ain’t ours,†he said.
The property listing does not specifically say it is an Ely Walker unit, but Airbnb’s map shows it is located where the Ely Walker building is. TheSTAY also lists Airbnb units in other buildings owned by companies affiliated with Alston and Chakraverty.
Shown screenshots of the listing, Berkowitz said, “There is no indication on any of these attached listings that any of them are for Ely Walker.â€
And Airbnb’s Breit, in an email Thursday afternoon, said the listing is for “an entirely separate building — not 1520 Washington.†Breit described Airbnb’s location map “as approximate and could be anywhere within a 10-city block radius.â€
Asked if TheSTAY had listed Ely Walker units via Airbnb in the past, Breit said he didn’t know.
Chakraverty, reached by phone Wednesday, declined to comment.
As for the March shooting, Berkowitz said he didn’t know if the nuisance summons was related. But he did say that it was a regular tenant who had listed the unit on Airbnb, not Alston’s Aconcagua One LLC.
“This was a tenant of theirs that did it behind our back,†Berkowitz said. “We had no idea that this guy was doing it.â€
The bigger issue, he said, is the “proliferation of these guns. ... We should all be ashamed of ourselves for allowing this to happen.â€
Singling out Ely Walker “is not the answer†to downtown’s problems, Berkowitz said.
“Look at Washington Avenue altogether,†he said. “It’s not this building, it’s what’s happening in the city.â€
“You got kids running around shooting windows out.â€
Tenants fight back
In 2015, Aconcagua purchased 87 of the condos in the Ely Walker building, giving it just under 50% of the building’s units, according to a September lawsuit filed by several other condo owners in the building.
The other owners allege that Chakraverty and Alston’s Aconcagua “engineered the installation†of a majority of condo board members to control the building. Those board members, including the Lux employees, don’t directly own condos there but are “affiliated with, and are beholden†to Aconcagua and “serve its interests†rather than those of the Ely Walker condo owners, the lawsuit alleges. They vote in a “block-like manner†on all business before the association, the lawsuit alleges.
Aconcagua tries to maximize its rental cash flow by utilizing all of its units, “frequently on short-term bases,†the lawsuit says, which “is highly divergent from the interests of the independent†condo owners and violates condo rules. The lawsuit claims that after owners called out the short-term leases, Aconcagua changed its leases to a year but added a provision allowing signers to terminate the leases in 60 days, effectively keeping them short-term.
Aconcagua has denied the allegations in responses.
But conditions have grown worse recently, said Allie Byrd, a three-year tenant of Ely Walker who rents one of the units owned by a company affiliated with Alston and Chakraverty. She says she has been complaining about a leak in her bedroom ceiling for months. Her car, along with several others, had its windows bashed in after people at one of the recent parties vandalized cars in the building’s garage. Byrd said actual owners who live in the building need representation on the condo association in order to make changes.
“Per the bylaws, that’s not allowed in that building,†she said of the short-term rentals. “But they don’t control it very well.â€
It’s not just Ely Walker. Kevin Liese, owner of downtown bar Jack Patrick’s, said things have gotten worse at the next-door Bell Lofts building, at 918 Olive Street, since Alston’s company took over. Short-term rentals are frequent, judging by the people arriving and departing with luggage, he said. The Bell Lofts are advertised by TheSTAY on the Airbnb site.
On New Year’s Eve, partygoers crammed onto a balcony, one of them firing a gun in the air, toward the empty AT&T skyscraper. Several windows on the north side of the building are boarded up, visible from the street downtown. Liese doesn’t remember the boards before that New Year’s Eve.
“I saw the gunfire first hand,†he said. “It was not straight up in the air. There was no way it was clearing the tower.â€
Told of the incident, Berkowitz said the city has “a crime problem.â€
But he said “I do not see any direct connection between short-term leasing and crime.â€
“Tenants on one-year or five-year leases,†Berkowitz said, “can be just as destructive.â€
Dana Rieck and Mark Schlinkmann of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.