Daily Dose of Blairmont 95

• 2733 Dodier Street (N & G Ventures LLC, May 2006, $60,000)
  
• 2731 Dodier Street (MLK 3000 LLC, October 2006 - vacant lot)
  
• 2729 Dodier Street (MLK 3000 LLC, October 2006 - vacant lot)
  
• 2725 Dodier Street (MLK 3000 LLC, October 2006, $78,000 - brick rustled)
  
• 2723 Dodier Street (Noble Development LLC, February 2006, $50,000 - demolished)
  
• 2721 Dodier Street (MLK 3000 LLC, September 2006, $72,000 - demolished)
  
• 2719 Dodier Street (Noble Development Co LLC, March 2006, $37,500 - demolished)
  
• 2715 Dodier Street (Noble Development Co LLC, March 2006, $6,000 - vacant lot)
  
• 2713 Dodier Street (privately owned)
  
• 2711 Dodier Street (VHS Partners LLC, January 2006, $35,000)
  
• 2709 Dodier Street (Noble Development Co LLC, February 2006, $60,000 - demolished)
  

Today's Daily Dose started out as an entry about one brick rustled property. But when I looked it up, I got a bit of a shock.

May 2008

Between tracking down the address of the houses I photograph, the city's records, and the aerial views at Live.com, I've gotten a pretty good system down to prevent accidentally listing an incorrect address as a Blairmont property. I was surprised, then, to look 2725 Dodier up at Geo St. Louis and see four houses all in a row, when there's clearly nothing around it but empty lots. I obviously had the wrong address written down. So I double checked, examined the photographs I took only seconds before and after these two, panned across the aerial view several times, flipped back and forth. In the end, I realized that there was no mistake... just an unfathomable amount of demolition.



And as you can see from the list above, they are all Paul McKee properties.

I encourage readers to click the aerial view linked below. It shows how recently there were buildings on these lots; the image is no more than three years old. Of the seven houses standing when Blairmont came through, 4 are completely gone, and a fifth one has been reduced to rubble by brick rustlers. It's simply too much to discount as coincidence.


2733 Dodier - May 2008


2713 Dodier (left, privately owned) and 2711 Dodier (right, VHS Partners) - May 2008

At the end of the block stands a house that's had quite a bit of expansion, and is still occupied. I'm sure the owners are grateful for all the "improvements" to their block; isn't 8 vacant lots much better than 3?


Price bounce: 2721 sold for $60,000 in July 2006, then again for $72,000 in September 2006. That's one heck of a finder's fee, innit?

Links:

• 2725 Dodier at the city's Geo St Louis database
  
• Aerial view from Maps.Live.com
  
• More on Blairmont:
  Built St. Louis || Ecology of Absence || What Can I Do?