LINDSAY BRASWELL
The glass was blown out of the front doors after a shooting at Ely Walker Lofts last year.
When the shooting started at the Ely Walker Lofts in the Washington Avenue Loft District on the morning of March 25, Lindsay Braswell was alarmed but not shocked. It was the second shooting the building had seen that month.
The first was on March 10, in an apartment with frequent domestic disputes.
“All of the residents have heard them fighting,” Lindsay's husband Scott Braswell says.
In the March 10 shooting, the assailant allegedly "argued with, insulted and threatened the victim; threw and smashed household items in the apartment; and then fired a semiautomatic pistol at the victim while in a common hallway," according to a probable cause statement from St. Louis police.
What shocked the Braswells, though, was that the assailant's access to the building wasn't revoked and she was able to return hours later. They were also frustrated that the resident wasn't evicted before what they saw as a pattern of domestic violence turned into a shooting.
Then came the second shooting, involving a different unit, on March 25. Someone leaving the unit pulled out a gun, which went off near the building's elevators. No one was hurt.
The building "is just chaos," Lindsay says.
The Braswells have been living in the Ely Walker Lofts since 2007. Everything in the building was fine until 2015, they say, when STL CityWide bought it.
“About a year ago, a 16-year-old was murdered in the building the weekend of the St. Patrick’s Day parade," Lindsay says. "No one told us, and so I walked my dog downstairs into a crime scene. The windows were shot out; there was blood everywhere. I was traumatized. Imagine if a kid came across it.”
STL CityWide did not respond to two requests for comment through their lawyer, Ira Berkowitz.
The St. Louis-based leasing agency is run by brothers Victor Alston and Sid Chakraverty. The brothers previously used the name Asprient, and have engendered complaints under both their old and new names as well as Lux Living, their development arm. Most recently, residents at the Raphael in the city’s Central West End have detailed a litany of problems.
Scott Braswell says the problems started within six months of CityWide’s takeover.
At first it was repairs not being made. Then the parties started. Some apartment owners were renting out their units as short-term rentals on sites like Airbnb and VRBO. Young people and teens would use the apartment and the building’s rooftop to throw big parties. Last year's murder victim, Terrion Smith, had been letting people into the lofts for a party before he was shot, according to the St. Louis Post Dispatch.
As security concerns grew, CityWide hired a security guard. “He was a known sex offender,” Lindsay says — something residents in the building easily found out with a quick Casenet search.
That person left, something that has become a bit of a trend in Ely Walker. “We’ve had three property managers in the last eight months because CityWide is hard to work with and they quit,” Scott says. The Braswells now say they have no idea who to call if issues arise — not that calling someone previously had done much to fix problems.
In March, a leak began in the building’s lobby. After almost a week of it not being fixed, an inspector came out and said that he would send a summons to CityWide to get it fixed. The company came out and patched it up, but the leak has returned, Lindsay says. The fire panel is also on the fritz.
“The fire alarm goes off every single morning and someone resets it,” says Madelyn Munsell, a tenant who recently moved out. The Post-Dispatch reported about the fire alarm being broken last fall.
The Braswells own their unit, and Ely Walker Lofts has a condo association, which would normally be the forum for residents to discuss repairs, safety issues and staff. But CityWide owns 51 percent of the units in the building and never holds meetings for residents to air their concerns, tenants attest.
Tenants are also unhappy. Munsell, for instance, rented a unit from CityWide, but due to a threatened eviction, recently left. She is fighting the eviction in court.
LINDSAY BRASWELL
The Braswells were skeptical that a CityWide repair of a leak would take, and now it has returned.
At issue, Munsell says, was safety. In addition to having residents who have OD’d on fentanyl, there was the domestic violence situation, and Munsell was trying to raise awareness about the issue.
CityWide cited Munsell’s use of flyers as the reason for her eviction. “There is a rule in the lease that says we’re not allowed to post flyers,” Munsell explains. “However, I said that I would do so in the future, but I never have.”
CityWide also claims that Munsell’s husband was an unauthorized tenant because he wasn’t on the lease. Munsell says the two applied for the apartment together, paid the application fees together and that CityWide got her husband’s proof of income and social security number.
She is also disturbed by a lease update that went into effect in December 2022. “It specifically says you should not call either nonemergency or the emergency police lines for loud music and noise complaints, disputes with neighbors, vagrants, unwelcome visitors, missing mail and packages and maintenance issues,” Munsell says.
The tenants are hoping to hold CityWide accountable, but they don’t have much hope.
“This isn’t just Ely Walker,” Scott says. “I think all the other lofts they’ve owned have had complaints, too.”
This article has been updated.
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