Yesterday’s earthquake may have actually been the tremors felt after the collapse of one of the city’s biggest developers.

Steve Patterson of the Urban Review St. Louis blog was the first to report that employees of Pyramid Companies, owned by developer John Steffen, were given their final paychecks yesterday.

Employees were, I’m told, given final paychecks and told to cash them quickly.

Pyramid owns several high-profile properties downtown, including the Arcade Building on Olive Street, Dorsa Lofts on Washington Avenue, and the Jefferson Arms on Tucker Boulevard. But the Post-Dispatch reports today that Pyramid’s largest project (which through a controversial decision by city leaders also weighs on the City of St. Louis’ credit rating), the $400 million Mercantile Exchange, which includes the former St. Louis Centre mall, will move forward without Pyramid.

“We have taken over management of the partnership,” said Amos Harris, president of Brady Capital, local partners of Connecticut-based Spinnaker Real Estate Partners LLC.

Spinnaker was Steffen’s equity partner on St. Louis Centre and the former Dillard’s building, both key components of the larger six-block Mercantile Exchange project. Steffen was in charge of the daily decision-making.

Spinnaker recently increased its investment by 50 percent to roughly $16 million. As costs continued to increase, Harris said, “we took over.”

Steffen’s financial troubles have long been rumored in the city’s political circles. Steffen has been a regular contributor to key city officials, including Mayor Francis Slay, and is rumored to have financially backed two local newspapers, the St. Louis Argus and the now defunct Arch City Chronicle. But it was the Board of Estimate and Apportionment’s 2006 decision to have the city essentially co-sign Steffen’s $14.5 million loan application to finance his St. Louis Centre project that most invited the ire of bloggers and public policy watchers.

Comptroller Darlene Green, one of the three members of the Board of E&A, warned against the Steffen deal, but was outvoted by then-Aldermanic President Jim Shrewbury and Mayor Slay.

According to Post-Dispatch columnist Deb Petterson:

St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay and his wife, Kim, have their house on Oleatha Avenue near Ivanhoe Avenue in the Lindenwood Heights subdivision listed for sale at $419,900. The listing is with the mayor’s brother, Tom Slay, who is with Re/Max Results on Hampton Avenue. The house is a four-bedroom, 2½-bath Cape Cod. The Slays are moving to a new house in the Boulevard Heights neighborhood near Carondelet Park.

UPDATE: Jake Wagman at the Post-Dispatch has made an interesting observation:

The mayor is leaving the 23rd Ward - where his family has deep political roots - and heading into what is, for a lifelong Democrat, enemy territory.

Slay’s new home is in the 12th Ward, represented by Alderman Fred Heitert - the Board of Aldermen’s only Republican.

This is how Jet Magazine reported on March 22, 1993:

Freeman Bosley Jr., is poised to become St. Louis’ first Black mayor after winning 44 percent of the vote in a four-man Democratic primary.

Bosley, 38, who is currently the Clerk of the Circuit Courts, polled 8,000 votes more than his closest challenger, Aldermanic President Tom Villa, and faces little-known Republican John P. Gorman in the April 6 general election. No Republican has been elected to the mayor’s office in 44 years.

Bosley, who captured a surprising number of White votes, is seeking to replace embattled mayor Vincent Schoemehl, who is retiring after 12 years in office. If Bosley is triumphant April 6, he would be sworn in April 20.

15 years later, it’s time to get the bang back together again.

On Monday, April 21, friends, supporters, and former members of that historic Bosley Administration, will be gathering at the Norman C. Probstein Clubhouse in Forest Park to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Freeman Bosley, Jr.’s inauguration as mayor.

WHERE: Norman C. Probstein Clubhouse, 6141 Lagoon Drive, 63112

WHEN:  Monday, April 21, from 5:30 - 7:30 PM

“People from all sections of St. Louis, of all ethnic backgrounds and all persuasions supported me,” Bosley told Jet in 1993. “That’s what makes me feel good, more than anything.”

Voters, Bosley said, want to “see a new attitude, an attitude of freshness, an attitude of togetherness, an attitude like we’re in this together and together we can make a difference.”

Fifteen years later, there may still be reasons greater than a party to get band back together.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE BOSLEY ADMINISTRATION:

• Oversaw the battle against the Flood of 1993
• Helped to orchestrate the $70 million bailout of Trans World Airlines
• Help moved the Rams football team to St. Louis from California
• Expanded city services in north St. Louis neighborhoods that had long been underserved
• Two property tax increases were passed by the voters with funds helping to pay for neighborhood improvement projects, monies which all 28 wards still get today

Friday community leaders will come together to christen a garden in a city park.

St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay along with Alderman Jeffery Boyd, State Rep. Talib El Amin and St. Louis Rams Linebacker Will Witherspoon will kick-off National Gardening Month with students from the Hip-Hop Health Initiative.

Together they will take part in a groundbreaking ceremony and ribbon cutting in Barrett Brothers Park at Goodfellow and St. Louis Avenue at 11 a.m. Friday.

Students from Ford, Gundlach and Mitchell elementary schools in North St. Louis will take part.

The event is in conjunction with HopeBuild, a St. Louis organization working with underserved youth, promoting healthy lifestyles and the Urban Farmers of Detroit.

Hopebuild is part of the Urban Farmers program.

This latest urban garden will be part of four other “Garden of Hope” projects in the city where residents use green spaces to grow produce. Two of the gardens are in North St. Louis and two are in South St. Louis.

HopeBuild also runs the “Garden of Eden,” three-community based produce markets run by volunteers.

Slay and others will be on hand to speak about the “importance of community school gardens and their Holistic benefits.”

The Hip-Hop Health Initiative is part of a Mark Twain Resource Center program and is funded by the after-school program ARCHS.

As long-time St. Louis activist Percy Green took questions Friday at the World Community Center on his decades of activist experiences, he grinned politely at the prospect of answering one audience member’s question, in particular: his thoughts on the efforts to recall St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay.

“I thought you would never ask,” he laughed.

The occasion of Green’s lecture was a discussion on protesting and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, of which he was a leading voice here in St. Louis. The event was hosted by the Peace Economy Project. After speaking for more than an hour-and-a-half, the final question he took was about the recall effort.

Green used the question as a platform to jump from addressing the legwork for signature-gathering for the recall effort to giving his opinion on the fight between Slay and his African-American constituency.

“Most of us don’t see Chief (Sherman) George and the recall Slay effort as a fight against blacks and City Hall,” Green said. “Others feel like Slay has been a poor manager of the city. Lots of the resources the current administration has used — like the new stadium — we needed a new stadium like a hole in the head. It wasn’t a new stadium. It was a replacement stadium.”

Green said Slay has misused city funds to reward business interest that have not benefited the city as a whole. He cited as the debate over the new Busch Stadium as an example where he believed the taxpayers were manipulated by the “false crisis” of Cardinal management threatening to move the team. Green saw it as a bluff.

“All of that was a game. They weren’t going any place,” Green said. “You don’t want administrators who are going to be gouging taxpayers whether they’re black or not.”

Green also gave his perspective on the firing of embattled Fire Chief Sherman George. While much has been reported of the fight being over hiring practices and race issues, Green, who was also fired by Francis Slay in 2001 from his post as head of the city’s minority business-certification program, said George’s dismissal had everything to do with money.

Green said that as Fire Chief George oversaw the fire code enforcement of downtown buildings, his refusal to approve building which he felt were unsafe rubbed Slay and the mayor’s developer contributors the wrong way. Green charged that Slay wanted George out to ease the path for these business people.

Green called the new chief a “patsy” there to “rubber stamp everything” for Slay and the downtown developers.

“Many people haven’t thought about it,” Green said. “They haven’t seen the connection.”

St. Louis demonstrated a united front yesterday in the State Capitol as the political friends and foes spoke in unison in a call for local control of the city’s largest department, its police force.

Mayor Francis Slay, Aldermanic President Lewis Reed, and 11 city aldermen from north and south St. Louis appeared before the House committee which heard testimony regarding House Bill 2117. Even some local activists who are working to remove Slay from office called a truce for the day and even praised Slay for his testimony in support of the legislation.

Here’s video from the press conference before the hearing. Check back later for more videos throughout the day.

St. Louis Leaders Call for Local Control of Police from pubdef on Vimeo.

The long fight of the City of St. Louis to regain control of its police department after a century of state rule will take center stage today at a hearing in the state capitol. And for the first time, St. Louis highest ranking officials will all testify in favor of the bill.

Mayor Francis Slay, Aldermanic President Lewis Reed, Comptroller Darlene Green, and as many as 11 of the city’s 28 aldermen are expected to drive to Jefferson City this morning to speak at the 2:00 hearing on House Bill 2117.

The bill, sponsored by State Representative T.D. El-Amin (D-St. Louis), will be heard before the House Special Committee on Urban Issues, which is chaired by another St. Louis representative, Rodney Hubbard*, who is also a bill co-sponsor.

The hearing will begin at 2:00 in House Hearing Room 5. A hearing was scheduled for last week, but was cancelled due to the snow storm.

PubDef.net will have cameras at the event. Check back later for video.

* Editor’s Note: Hubbard is a client of A D French & Associates

From the group seeking the recall of St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay:

On Sunday, the Citizens to Recall Francis G. Slay held a dinner ceremony at the Gateway Classic Foundation to celebrate reaching their first milestone - obtaining over 10,000 signatures – in the campaign to have 43,000 signatures by the September deadline for placing the recall initiative on the ballot.

At the ceremony, over 100 certificates were passed out to the various volunteers, who have been going door-to-door canvassing wards for signatures every Saturday for the past four months, and who, despite the inclement weather, worked the polls gathering signatures during the Feb. 5th primary.

At Sunday’s ceremony, Zaki Baruti, the Chairman of the Recall Committee, stated to the packed room: “We are right now the largest all-volunteer army in St. Louis politics. In just the past four months we have gathered more signatures than were gathered over a year’s time for the audit of the city, and more than have ever been gathered for a recall in the city. We are truly making history.”

After receiving a special award for his efforts in organizing the recall campaign, Mr. Baruti set forth the groups’ next milestone: 20,000 signatures by April 4, 2008 – the forty-year anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

For more information, please contact Zaki Baruti at (314) 726-3442 or Rev. Douglas Parham at 852-2336.