ST. LOUIS 鈥 A developer who owns dozens of vacant and condemned properties in St. Louis has been ordered to pay $135,000 to four neighbors who sued claiming his neglect of a Tower Grove East apartment building devalued their land.
St. Louis Circuit Judge Michael Stelzer issued an order Aug. 10 requiring the St. Louis Redevelopment Co., owned by Giro Katsimbrakis, to pay $135,000 to four neighbors who claimed the value of their homes suffered as a result of the developer鈥檚 failure to maintain a four-family apartment building in the 2900 block of Sidney Street. Stelzer鈥檚 order also requires Katsimbrakis鈥 company to bring the property up to code.
The judge鈥檚 ruling follows a bench trial last month. Property owners Erik Lintvedt, Stefannie Marcus, Heim@ LLC and APS Real Estate Services LLC filed suit last year for damages, claiming Katsimbrakis neglected the property he bought in 2013 and allowed it to deteriorate.
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The suit claimed he allowed the building, which has been vacant since 2011, to fall apart over the years, with missing windows, a caved-in roof, crumbling masonry and debris scattered throughout the front and back yards.
Katsimbrakis, a felon who spent 15 months in prison for bank fraud, was the subject of a 2015 Post-Dispatch investigation describing the California real estate investor鈥檚 practice of scooping up hundreds of foreclosed and bank-owned city properties following the nation鈥檚 housing crisis. Eventually, numerous complaints were filed about his vacant and condemned properties.