ST. LOUIS 鈥 Residents who complained for months about a malfunctioning fire alarm in the 174-unit downtown Ely Walker loft building are again questioning their fire alarm system after smoke from a fire in a resident鈥檚 room failed to trigger it Thursday.
The small fire, which the St. 亚洲无码 Fire Department said had been put out by the time it arrived Thursday, refocused attention on Ely Walker just as city officials again threaten a formal public nuisance hearing for a building that has been tied to downtown mayhem, including the March shooting death of a 16-year-old in the building鈥檚 lobby.
The city last week posted a public nuisance notice calling for a Dec. 15 hearing over issues city officials cited in May. In a settlement with the Ely Walker board over those issues a day before a scheduled hearing Sept. 7, the condo board agreed to hire security and install new camera and locking systems.
People are also reading…
The building鈥檚 condominium board, which oversees maintenance and security, is controlled by Vic Alston and Sid Chakraverty, the brothers behind rental and development firms Asprient Properties, Lux Living and that have collected complaints for maintenance issues at properties around the city.
Madelyn Munsell, who rents a unit through STL CityWide, said she arrived home from the store late Thursday morning. When she got off the elevator on an upper floor, she smelled smoke and saw it wafting into the building鈥檚 large shared atrium from a lower floor. She said she spoke to the tenant where the fire occurred, and it was not just a cooking accident where an open window would be enough to air it out.
鈥淚t was a huge panic moment in the building,鈥 she said. The smoke 鈥渇illed up multiple units and the atrium.鈥
Tenants had complained for months this summer about a fire alarm system in the large building that did not appear to be working and an unresponsive condo board that refused to spend the money to fix it. City building inspectors, according to records obtained by the Post-Dispatch this summer, cited the board in July for an 鈥渋noperable or illegally shut down鈥 alarm system. The city spent months pushing Chakraverty and his cousin who is president of the condo board, Anshul Sathyan, to bring the fire system into working order.
Even after the settlement agreement in September, residents said it wasn鈥檛 clear the problems with the fire alarm had been remedied.
And it still wasn鈥檛 clear whether it had been fixed Thursday.
Munsell said a worker from the building maintenance hotline told her there wasn鈥檛 enough smoke to trigger the fire alarm. A spokesman for the fire department said he would have to check with the other fire department officials to determine if it appeared there was enough smoke to trigger the alarm.
Sathyan and Chakraverty did not respond to requests for comment Thursday, nor did an attorney for the board, Elia Ellis.
It鈥檚 unclear what exactly the Dec. 15 public nuisance hearing is for, though it appears to be related to the same issues that prompted the September settlement. Munsell said she recently showed a city inspector what she believed were violations of the settlement agreement, including unlocked stairwell doors and a Latch Access Control system that wasn鈥檛 installed on elevators within 45 days, as required by the order.
The consent order says that if the condo board fails to implement the required safety measures, the St. 亚洲无码 Department of Public Safety can 鈥渋mmediately reconvene for a hearing that could result in the appointment of a receiver.鈥
A spokesman for the public safety department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.