Rev. Larry Rice's years-long battle with the city has made its way to the courts. Again.
Earlier this year, the St. Louis Board of Building Appeals unanimously voted to revoke a building permit that would have allowed Rice's New Life Evangelistic Center, or NLEC, to reopen its former Downtown West shelter as a church. The board ultimately agreed with claims levied by NLEC’s former neighbors — that Rice did not intend to run a church in the building, but rather to once again operate it as a shelter.
Rice vowed to fight the city's decision in court. Today, he followed through.
In a petition for administrative review, NLEC argued the city violated its religious rights by revoking a building permit the building commissioner had issued NLEC in November 2018. NLEC also lambasted the board's inquiry into the validity of NLEC's plans, saying the board relied on "unsubstantiated evidence, including inadmissible hearsay and other improper hearsay."
NLEC also argued the board improperly allowed and considered testimony that NLEC was misrepresenting the space's intended use.
“That testimony was speculative, lacked foundation and was based on inadmissible hearsay,” the petition reads.
In addition, testimony about NLEC's prior operations at 1411 Locust were "irrelevant,” the petition claims.
NLEC was headquartered at the corner of Locust and Fourteenth streets for more than 40 years up until 2017.
In 2015, the city revoked Rice’s 32-bed permit, which dated back to 1976, after neighbors complained about crime and chaos. The shelter kept operating until late 2017, when a string of drug overdoses led the city to issue a cease-and-desist that ultimately caused Rice to close NLEC’s doors.
Rice filed a federal suit against the city in 2015 on grounds of religious freedom. It was dismissed the same year. Property owners took Rice to court a year later over his shelter’s purported negative effects on public safety. The attorney who filed the suit, Elkin Kistner, also filed the appeal seeking to revoke NLEC’s building permit this year.
Earlier this year, Rice unveiled what seemed to be sweeping changes to the building that once housed the shelter. It would be a church complete with a food pantry, stores of free supplies and offices. It would be open strictly during the daytime and would provide some homeless services. It was definitely not a shelter, Rice and his son, Chris Rice, insisted.
The Rices’ assurances weren't enough for the former shelter’s neighbors. Matt O'Leary, a real estate developer and member of Citizens for a Greater Downtown St. Louis, previously told the RFT that NLEC was masquerading its shelter as a church to get around city codes.
NLEC's petition lists the city of St. Louis, the Board of Building Appeals and an LLC called 1401 Locust Street as defendants. NLEC is not asking for damages. Instead, the nonprofit asks that the court reverse the Board of Building Appeals' decision.
Last month, after the board released its decision, Rice told the RFT that NLEC had “gone through all the things the city wanted us to do” and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars repairing the building since it closed in 2017. Yet the “legal lynching” continues.
“We've been lied to consistently,” Rice said. “I think people are ultimately going to come to recognize the grave injustice that the homeless are presently experiencing in this area.”
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