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click to enlarge MONICA OBRADOVIC The Coronado Place and Towers houses mostly Saint Louis University students and sits just a few feet away from campus.

There is no other way to describe it. The hallway smells like ass.

Cortney Harper feels the need to provide a quick warning as she departs the elevator on the third floor of her apartment building.

“It doesn’t usually smell this bad,” she tells a reporter. “I don’t know what that smell is today.”

A wall of odor hits immediately after the elevator’s doors squeal open. It smells as if someone dumped a week’s worth of trash in the hallway and left it there to stew. Yet there’s nothing other than a few random items and dust bunnies in the hallway. Asked about a large dirt-stained splotch on the floor, Harper responds nonchalantly, “That? That’s been there since July.”

The splotch is the least of Harper’s problems. She lives in Lindell West, one of three buildings that make up the Coronado Place and Towers, which sit less than 50 feet from Saint Louis University in Grand Center on the literal edge of Midtown.

From the outside, the Coronado looks immaculate. Architectural details speak to the buildings’ Jazz Age origins. The ground floors facing Lindell Boulevard are a pink terrazzo with green trim. Warm-colored wainscoting coats the lobby walls. Cream-colored terracotta frames darker brick on the facade of one building. On the outer walls of the Coronado, a former hotel, ornamental faces built into the walls smile at residents as they walk by. Or maybe they’re laughing.

Residents feel like they’re victims of a bait-and-switch. Despite marketing that promised great amenities, they don’t even have the basics. They say they have gone weeks, and even entire seasons, without air conditioning during St. Louis’ brutal summers. Others have endured winters without more than a single space heater to keep them warm.

People have been trapped in elevators. Disabled or elderly residents have been left with no option to leave their floors or get back to them as elevators frequently break and repairs lag. Several residents, including some who have lived in the buildings for years, have no means to receive their mail.

In the most extreme cases, residents face the threat of physical danger. One man died and another was injured in a shooting in front of the Coronado after a drug deal went wrong last month. A little more than a week later, a suspect believed to be an employee of the Coronado was charged with sexually assaulting a female Saint Louis University student inside the building.

Residents say their concerns are ignored or met with empty promises. Many have put up with the situation for years and endured terrible — and potentially unlawful — living conditions due to the buildings’ close proximity to work and school. But some residents are at a breaking point, and they want out.
click to enlarge MONICA OBRADOVIC Cortney Harper has lived in the Coronado Place and Towers for two years.

The dim hallway in the Lindell West building is far from inviting, but Harper’s apartment is. The 33-year-old’s two pitbull mixes, Jade and Tonks, are eager to play and lick Harper’s hands as she walks through the door. Light floods in through south-facing windows, art hangs on the walls and Harper’s intricate LEGO figurines sit on the shelves.

On paper, everything about the Coronado Place and Towers seemed right when Harper moved here in July 2021. The model apartment she toured looked pristine. The buildings also had no breed restrictions for dogs, which Harper says is difficult to find for her pitbull mixes.

But there were certain aspects of Coronado living that the tour did not show, things Harper only learned by actually living in one of the apartments.

The hot water shuts off for days at a time. She says she once went without heat for six weeks during a cold front when temperatures dropped into negative degrees. “Only when I threatened to sue did someone repair it,” Harper says. At one point, Harper says the building’s management company had to replace her stove due to a gas leak. When a maintenance man arrived, Harper recalls, he told her not to call the fire department, and disconnected her smoke alarm.

“I didn’t have a smoke alarm for two to three weeks after that because he said he didn’t have one to replace it,'” Harper says.

It took three weeks for someone to come look at her stove and another three weeks for management to replace it.

Then there are the elevators. Lindell West has two. One frequently breaks. The other has been shuttered for more than a year. In its final days, the elevator shook violently when its doors opened to let riders off.

“I mentioned it to management multiple times, and they didn’t do anything about it,” Harper says. “Then people got stuck in the elevator on the 14th floor.”

That was about a year and half ago. The elevator hasn’t operated since.

Earlier this month, Harper scrolled through the online system that the managers of Coronado Place and Towers use for maintenance requests. On that day, Harper had six requests awaiting repair. Most pertained to her lack of hot water.

One was a request for someone to fix her AC, which she said had not worked throughout her entire building for a couple of days, as it often doesn’t — despite central air being one of several amenities advertised for the buildings. Window units are plainly visible from Lindell for those tenants who were lucky enough to receive a response from maintenance.

When Harper first moved in, she says her requests usually got a response within a couple of days. “Now you’re lucky if you hear something within two or three weeks,” she says.

Amanda Ray says she waited much longer — almost a year — for someone to install heating and air conditioning in her apartment.

Ray, the mother of a then-eight-year-old boy, was a resident of the Coronado Place and Towers for nearly two years and had no heat or air conditioning up until nine months of her tenancy.

She moved into an apartment in November of 2020 that she was surprised to learn had no heat or air. She had a few space heaters, she says, and she worked nights, so her son often stayed with her mother.

“I was very patient with them until August,” Ray says. “Me and my son were sleeping in the living room under a fan.”

Management installed a window unit later that month. When October brought the cold, a heater/cooler system was installed in a closet. But the unit was faulty, Ray says, and when she came home after a night shift, she heard a “whoosh” sound. Suddenly water flowed out of the locked closet that contained the heater/cooler. It was like water turned on full blast in a bathtub.

Ray didn’t have a key for the closet, and eventually the water reached past her ankles. Ray says she called the building’s maintenance staff, who according to the Coronado Place and Towers website are supposed to be available 24 hours a day. Ray says she called the maintenance number for emergencies, but the staffer who answered couldn’t reach the right person to handle the problem. Nobody arrived until somebody else called the fire department, and they finally turned off Ray’s water.

“It was a scary, traumatizing experience,” Ray says. Her son, Abassi Wilkins, is an artist, and now, at just 10 years old, has his own apparel business. All of his art was destroyed in the flood. Ray says she salvaged whatever other belongings she could.

“I didn’t sleep for a week,” she says.

Ray was moved into a different apartment in a different building in the same complex, Lindell West, at her request. She was “going through a lot” at the time while trying to earn a degree in psychology while fighting for full custody of her son.

“I needed to stay stable,” Ray says.

She toughed it out until the next year, when Ray says she and other residents were forced to move out as the building managers did not renew their leases. She left a lot of things behind as she was “locked out” with little notice. She lost her furniture, which had been donated by a local nonprofit after the flood.

“They’re going to get a new influx of residents each school year, so they’re not looking for people to stay,” Ray says.

Still, Ray says others had it worse than her. One of her neighbors in a wheelchair was out of luck whenever the elevator was out of service. “There were days I would have to sit outside with him because the elevator didn’t work,” Ray says.

A year after leaving the Coronado Place and Towers, Ray says she and her son are in a much better place. They now live near the city’s Grove district, and her son’s art was recently featured in a local gallery and magazine.

As for Harper, a stock broker for Charles Schwab, she passed her two-year anniversary at Lindell West this summer. If it wasn’t for her dogs, she probably would have moved a long time ago. Still, she’s had enough. She’s saving for a house and planning on breaking her lease.

“I’m basically putting everything I can aside so I can put a down payment on a house next year,” Harper says.
click to enlarge MONICA OBRADOVIC Amanda Ray says her former apartment was flooded by a faulty air/heating unit installed by building management.

Free internet, a rooftop pool, a game lounge, underground parking, access to a movie theater and bowling alley. All that could be yours for the low cost of $1,045 per month.

Only the “free internet” doesn’t work; the “rooftop pool” is unavailable, and is actually above a three-story parking garage that sits in the shadow of the towers; the so-called lounge is inconsistently accessible and has just two cues for its pool table, one of which is broken; both the bowling alley and movie theater are closed; and the underground parking is something you have to pay slightly extra for, even though its entry door doesn’t work.

One of the most maddening things for people leasing at the Coronado complex is the vast gulf between marketing’s lofty promises and the shoddy reality.

“ENTERTAINMENT AT YOUR FINGERTIPS,” reads a caption on Coronado Place and Towers’ website. The site lists entertainment options including a movie theater, bowling alley and “shopping” (what that could include is unclear, as the closest business is a Crazy Bowls & Wraps about a five-minute walk down Lindell).

The “bowling” invokes the shuttered Moolah Lanes, which residents say has been closed for the past year — the building owners sued Moolah Lanes for more than $200,000 in back rent last year. As for the movie theater, the Moolah Theatre and Lounge closed permanently three years ago.

A targeted Facebook ad for the Coronado Place and Towers still shows the rooftop pool. According to Meta’s “ad library,” the ad started running on February 13 of this year, despite the pool being closed for at least the past year and a half, residents say.

The pool did not meet regulations set by ordinance and failed its most recent inspection, the city’s health department confirms. Yet as recently as April 13, the Coronado Place and Towers’ TikTok account posted a video that boasted the “rooftop pool” as one of the buildings’ amenities.

The Missouri Attorney General offers protections for consumers, saying residents deserve a marketplace “free of fraud, deception, misrepresentations [and] false promises.” Yet it’s not clear how proactively the office seeks to enforce those standards. A spokesperson for Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey did not return calls seeking comment.

Residents often blame Cardinal Group Management for the state of the Coronado complex. A property management company based in Denver, Cardinal Group manages 120 properties in the U.S., including Coronado Place and Towers, and owns another 22, according to its online portfolio.

Some of the same issues cited by Coronado residents have occurred at other Cardinal Group properties. Two years ago, residents of a Colorado apartment complex filed a class action lawsuit against Cardinal Group, alleging faulty elevators, lack of air conditioning, malfunctioning door locks, bug infestations and more, the Colorado Sun reported. Cardinal Group no longer manages the building.

According to a former Cardinal Group employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Cardinal Group is an “absolute mess.” The ex-employee says they were pressured to rent out rooms to lease the building to 100 percent capacity, even though only about 60 percent of apartments were in “living condition,” lacking a range of basics from heating and cooling to ovens and refrigerators. Some had “growth” in bathrooms or flood damage.

“I remember one was full of dog shit because the old manager used it when she was too lazy to actually take her dogs outside,” the former employee says.

When the ex-employee refused to lease beyond the units they felt were habitable, they say they were written up. Their job was later threatened when they got sick and couldn’t come into work.

“They threatened to fire me if I didn’t come in while I had a 100-degree-plus fever,” the ex-employee says. “When I did come back, they had leased well beyond 90 percent. So, presumably, over 30 percent of the residents moved into unready units.”

But despite the dysfunction the former employee observed, they believe Cardinal Group is ultimately not the central thread. The owners of the building in Colorado also own the Coronado complex in St. Louis, and problems, such as rat infestations, plague buildings the company owns across the country.

Lindell Loft LLC owns the Coronado, Lindell East and West, and the Moolah Garage, as well as the building a few doors down that previously housed the Moolah Bowling Alley. It’s almost an entire block. The LLC itself is owned by a massive real estate company based in Singapore: Mapletree Investments.

As of March 2023, according to its website, Mapletree owns and manages $54.6 billion in office, retail, industrial, data center, residential and student accommodation properties. Its U.S. properties are numerous, and in addition to the Coronado Place and Towers, Mapletree also owns a second student housing complex in Columbia, Missouri, called “TODD,” a warehouse in Maryland Heights and a 260,000-square-foot facility in Bridgeton.

According to the anonymous former employee, Cardinal Group would request funding for repairs or improvements from Mapletree that were often denied.

“They have a lot of red tape to cross in the approval system and always seem to be changing the requirements,” the ex-employee says. “It makes it almost impossible to secure funding.”

The elevators, for example, are “well past security standards,” the ex-employee adds. “Mapletree has been putting that off because the price tag is well into the hundreds of thousands.”

Cardinal Group and Lindell Loft LLC have been the defendants in at least six lawsuits filed in St. Louis by tenants or neighbors over the past five years. In one suit, one woman claimed the companies were negligent in surveilling the parking lot, saying she was “violently attacked” in a robbery that led to the loss of her wallet, phone and car. Given several other crimes reported around that time in 2019, the suit says, her attack was “foreseeable.”

Another former tenant claimed Cardinal Group and Lindell Loft failed to place an HVAC system in her unit. In January of this year, when her electricity stopped working, she could no longer use the space heater provided to her. “My unit is not safe or habitable,” she wrote.

One man, in a 2022 suit against Coronado Place and Towers, alleged among many claims that broken water pipes flooded his apartment.
click to enlarge MONICA OBRADOVIC The Coronado building was once a ritzy hotel.

Canadians Thomas Marsh and Sandra Gissi moved into Coronado Place and Towers in 2021 so Marsh could obtain a doctorate from Washington University. They quickly found their one-bedroom apartment was “uninhabitable,” according to the lawsuit they filed against Lindell Loft and Cardinal Group. There was a hole in the ceiling and a black substance that looked like mold in their closet.

A two-bedroom unit they were given was an “upgrade,” even though there was used soap and hair in the showers, a broken tap in the kitchen sink and garbage everywhere, including a toenail in the bed. The couple eventually signed a lease for that unit, but the building’s management later tried to “force” a roommate upon them, saying they were going to rent out their second bedroom to another tenant, the suit alleges.

Marsh and Gissi reached a confidential settlement earlier this year. Their lawyer, Al Johnson of Covenant Legal Services, could not speak to the dollar amount, but said their case illustrates common problems with many out-of-state landlords.

“They come in here, buy up a bunch of property, and they don’t put money into it,” Johnson says. “They consistently place profits over people, and when tenants complain, they are quick to try to evict them.”

Perhaps most glaringly, another suit filed by a former Coronado tenant claims her apartment did not have a valid certificate of inspection from the City of St. Louis. Under city code, landlords cannot collect rent without first securing a certificate of inspection each time a unit’s occupancy changes. The city had cited numerous code violations during two different inspections, according to the suit, including lack of heat. Air conditioning is not required by city code; however, heat is.

St. Louis Building Commissioner Frank Oswald notes that inspections at the Coronado Place and Towers generally occur in July or August and says there is “no way to verify the heating system is functioning.” It’s also the responsibility of landlords to ensure units are inspected before they’re occupied — not the city. So unless a tenant demands a certificate of inspection, a landlord may not feel obligated to request an inspection.

St. Louis Board of Aldermen President Megan Green says the board plans to soon address multiple issues surrounding housing in the city, including lack of inspections in rental units.

“We know that a number of problematic landlords will include utilities in rent. It’s the changeover in utilities that triggers the city to do an occupancy inspection,” Green tells the RFT. (Coronado Place and Towers does include utilities in rent, according to its website.) “We’re working on closing that loophole and requiring inspections so landlords can’t get around that.”

City renters are instructed to contact the Citizens’ Service Bureau if they feel they’re being subjected to substandard conditions. An inspector will check for code violations after a complaint is filed, and if they’re not fixed within 30 days, the city can issue fees for violations. In extreme cases, the city could condemn the unit, according to Oswald.

But it’s not clear how many renters know about that resource. And overall, Oswald says the volume of complaints the Building Division receives has decreased in recent years. He attributes that to St. Louis’ inspection requirements.

“The really bad property landlords would rather be in jurisdictions that don’t look at their property so closely,” Oswald says.

Asked about living conditions at the apartments, Cardinal Group provided a short statement.

“The safety and security of our residents is a top priority for Cardinal Group,” the statement reads. “We focus on making our communities great places to live. We take the concerns of our residents seriously and manage the building with care and professionalism. We remain committed to the safety and security of our residents.”

Mapletree, in response to an email asking about allegations of bad management and a long list of residents’ complaints, mostly addressed the sexual assault that occurred at the Coronado in August.

The company’s statement reads in full: “With regards to the alleged sexual assault that occurred on Tuesday, 22 August at Coronado Place and Towers, we understand that the suspect has turned himself in to the police on 23 August. As the incident is under investigation by the local police, we are unable to comment. The safety of our residents is of utmost importance and we are cooperating with the police in their investigation. We have also received feedback that the property’s HVAC system is facing issues and are working with the property manager to rectify these as soon as possible.”

According to the most recent update from police, the suspect in the assault cooperated with their investigation. Investigators plan to present the case to the circuit attorney’s office for charges.
MONICA OBRADOVIC A rusty gardening tool sits in front of the Coronado

After a tour of the Coronado Place and Towers, Martin Flores thought he’d found a good place for his son to live during his junior year at Saint Louis University.

“When they take you on the tour, they go through the leasing office, which is nice and clean, and they take you up a certain path upstairs to a model apartment, which is nice and clean,” Flores says.

Several current or past residents who spoke to the RFT say tours took place in the Coronado building, which is largely agreed to be the most well-kept of the complex’s three buildings. It’s where a large laundry room, study space and gym are located. On the ground floor, a catering company manages a resplendent ballroom used for corporate events, weddings and galas.

“It’s a bait-and-switch,” Flores says. “They fooled a lot of people, including me.”

The apartment assigned to Flores’ son was far from clean when they arrived for moving day. The floor was partially sanded, the air conditioning didn’t work and certain surfaces were dusty. The apartment was also furnished, which Flores did not request.

Then he started to hear more from other residents, most Saint Louis University students. People showed him photos of what looked like mold in bathrooms and under kitchen sinks. One girl told him her kitchen sink was backing up black water.

Flores was supposed to take two days off of work to help his son move. It turned into a seven-day struggle to find his son somewhere to live. Ultimately, Flores says Cardinal Group canceled his lease and granted him a refund.

Yet despite all those woes, for some residents, the Coronado’s proximity to Saint Louis University remains too convenient to pass up.

Saint Louis University has 10 on-campus halls for students, in which most freshmen and sophomores are required to live, according to SLU’s Residence Hall Association. Upperclassmen tend to live at the Coronado Place and Towers because of its relative affordability.

“Coronado is known for being the cheapest option in the SLU area,” Residence Hall Association Co-Presidents Maria DelGiudice and Sarah Parikh say in a joint email to the RFT.

Location is part of what has kept Gage Sisson at the Coronado Place and Towers since 2021. He says conditions have gradually declined in that time. He still doesn’t have his mail key and has to track mail couriers if he wants to receive his mail. The internet went out for weeks last spring during Saint Louis University’s finals. He had to buy two window units for himself to mitigate last summer’s heat. Before that, the coolest his AC could get his apartment was 87 degrees. He has to get out of his car and manually trip the underground garage’s exit sensor so he can surpass the broken entrance door.

Despite all that, he and his girlfriend, Gracie LaBlance, recently decided to renew their lease. LaBlance, a Saint Louis University student, doesn’t have a car and needs to walk to school and work at the City Foundry. The couple also has a puppy that their building is accepting of.

“Our approach is to keep our head down,” Sisson says. “To not fill out maintenance requests. I can use YouTube and figure things out myself.”

LaBlance says residents are left feeling helpless as staff seem to frequently turn over and calls for help go unanswered. But if you can count on anything at the Coronado Place and Towers, it’s that every year, new students coming to town will need a place to live.

“It feels like they prey on the fact that there’s a revolving door of students who will rent here because of its proximity to the campus,” LaBlance says.

Scheduling a tour of the complex in the weeks after SLU’s move-in date seemed surprisingly easy at first. You can book a time on the Coronado’s website and immediately receive a confirmation email. Soon after, a friendly email from “Hunter” explains that a colleague will meet you at your scheduled time.

No one does, and the number in Hunter’s email doesn’t work, either.

The staffer at the leasing office is apologetic. Hunter, she says, is an AI bot who has done this “like four times.” The staffer says the office is still getting caught up with move-in day on August 18, which was nearly three weeks earlier, and is not offering tours.

Heading out, a reporter asks a man who couldn’t be older than 22 whether he likes living here. He stops on his walk, heading in the direction of Saint Louis University while wearing a wrinkled white undershirt with slip-on sandals and socks. He smirks, looks ahead, and shakes his head as a firm “no.”

He’s been living here for three months, he says. He still doesn’t have his mail key.

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