Belleville can’t find the owner of another derelict building. This time someone died in it.

The city of Belleville was already planning to demolish a derelict building when a homeless man was found dead in the garage last month.

Officials had worked for a year to secure the property on North Illinois Street and get permission from a St. Clair County judge to tear it down, according to Scott Tyler, the city’s director of health, housing and building. The owner failed to respond to legal notices, resulting in a default judgment.

On Jan. 24, the city requested bids for demolition work. That was five days after police found the frozen body of Trent Tuttle, 41, in the garage, which had been gutted by fire on Jan. 9.

“(Demolition plans were) all in play before the fire,” Tyler said. “It was just a coincidence that it happened around the same time.”

County parcel records date the two-story brick structure at 520 N. Illinois St., just north of Belleville Farmers Market, back to 1877. It has been used for both residential and commercial purposes.

In recent years, the building went down the same path as dozens of others that have been bought by anonymous, out-of-state investment companies, allowed to deteriorate and eventually abandoned, making way for squatters to move in and fill them with trash, drug paraphernalia and human waste.

The city spends hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to demolish condemned buildings, prioritizing those with safety issues.

“(These investment companies are) destroying whole neighborhoods by buying homes at county tax auctions,” Tyler said. “They don’t do anything with them, except let them fall apart.”

The phenomenon has caused not only headaches for neighbors and city officials but also heartache for residents working to preserve Belleville’s 200-year-plus history. Many of the destroyed and deteriorating structures are considered architecturally significant.

Once a vacuum cleaner store

Bob Brunkow, historian for Belleville Historical Society, describes 520 N. Illinois St. as a “brick townhouse” with cornice dentils reminiscent of details on German American folk houses.

Brunkow believes it was built between the 1870s and 1890s by German immigrant Johann Mueller, a cooper who manufactured barrels, and his wife, Elizabeth, or their daughter and son-in-law, Elizabeth and Henry Jungbluth. He hasn’t been able to find early deeds or mortgages.

“The house gave shelter to four generations of an extended family,” Brunkow said, noting they also took in lodgers at times.

In 1941, the family sold the building, which continued to serve as a residence. From 1969 to 1991, the lower level housed a Kirby vacuum cleaner store with living quarters upstairs.

“Occupancy of the building (since 2005) seems spotty,” Brunkow said.

County records show the property was sold for $32,000 in 2005 and $47,500 in 2011, although the latter included three other parcels. In both cases, owners were publicly named individuals.

Dave Buttig, who lives next door with his wife, Kathy Buttig, said a father and son planned to open a business in the building at one point, but that fell through.

Owner Randel Keller stopped paying property taxes in 2017, according to Whitney Strohmeyer, president of Joseph E. Meyer & Associates, St. Clair County’s trustee and delinquent-tax agent. Three years later, the county foreclosed and listed the property for sale at auction.

“We checked with the city, but they didn’t want to buy the building and condemn it at that point because (housing officials determined) it was still in fairly good shape,” Strohmeyer said.

Sold at auction for $5,950

St. Clair County sold the North Illinois Street property in 2020 for $5,950, the highest of five bids, to Topstone Inv CAH 1, a limited-liability company organized in Missouri with a post office box in Blue Springs, a Kansas City suburb. LLCs in that state don’t have to reveal names of their principals.

Topstone paid property taxes for the years 2021 and 2022, Strohmeyer said. Tax bills for 2023 haven’t yet been sent.

Squatters took over the building and garage about a year and a half ago, according to neighbors. The yard became an eyesore with trash and debris, tall grass and overgrown trees.

Dave Buttig, 71, said he and his wife worried that someone might break into their house or start a fire that could spread.

“It’s so close,” he said.

The property’s deteriorating condition also negated the pride the couple took in their own historic home and landscaping. They occasionally called police, who would come out to investigate, but even if squatters were chased away, they returned in a day or two, Buttig said.

The situation also made life uncomfortable for neighbor Lanita Lyles, 44, her husband and three children.

“It’s one thing for the property to be vacant,” Lyles said. “There are vacant properties everywhere. But this kind of thing brings down the community.

“This is a very quiet community. Everybody really keeps to themselves. It’s safe and secure. But ever since we started seeing people over there, I’ve never let my children play in the back yard without me being there.”

Lyles said she and her husband noticed an increased city presence last fall and that made them feel better.

Tuttle’s family knew he sometimes stayed at 520 N. Illinois St., and it was their tip that prompted police to return to the scene of a Jan. 9 fire and find his body on Jan. 19. Fire Chief Stephanie Mills said he was “between two walls” on the unstable upper level of the garage.

County Coroner Calvin Dye Sr. declined to comment on whether Tuttle was burned or if he died of smoke inhalation.

“We’re waiting on the autopsy results,” Dye said.

Failed search for absentee owner

In the past year, Belleville officials have sent code-violation notices and other legal correspondence to Topstone but received no replies, according to Tyler. In May, they filed their petition in St. Clair County court.

As required by state law, Topstone has a “registered agent” in Illinois. It’s a branch of the national company Registered Agents Inc. with an office in the Chicago area. RAI representative Erica Martin confirmed that the identify of the LLC’s principal or principals is private.

“If you want to send a communication (to the owners), you can send it to our Illinois office and we’ll upload it and notify them,” she said.

Tyler estimates that he has gone to the North Illinois Street building a dozen times to try and secure it. Iron bars on windows and doors largely kept people from entering the first floor, he said, but people repeatedly broke into the second floor, removing boards over entrances.

After the court case ended in November, the housing department sawed off the exterior staircase to a second-floor balcony.

“That has worked pretty well,” Tyler said.

The North Illinois Street property isn’t a one-off for Topstone Inv CAH 1 and affiliated companies, which include Topstone Investment, Topstone Inv STL 1 and Topstone Bayflip CAH 1.

As of 2022, the most recent year for online parcel searches, the four limited-liability companies owned 143 properties in the county, including nine in Belleville and the rest in East St. Louis and Cahokia.

In 2022, Belleville School District 118 bought a boarded-up home at 1326 E. Main St. from Topstone Inv CAH 1 for $2,500 and demolished it. The two-story frame home was built in 1907, according to parcel records.

“It took awhile for us to get ahold of the owner, and we worked with the city on it,” said Assistant Superintendent John Hart. “(The home) looked horrible next to our school.”

The district plans to convert the vacant lot into additional parking for Douglas Elementary School and Belleville Head Start.

$400,000 for demolitions last year

The remaining seven Belleville properties that Topstone Inv CAH 1 and its affiliates owned in 2022 include homes and vacant lots at 315 N. 39th St. and 221 N. Sixth St. and homes at 507 N. Jackson St., 217 N. Jackson St. and 2106 E. Main St.

Only one is occupied. The rest are boarded up or condemned. The city has started the court process to get permission to demolish two of the homes, according to City Clerk Jenny Meyer.

“They’re not very good property owners,” Tyler said.

The Illinois secretary of state’s office maintains an online list of business entities that operate in Illinois. It includes a physical address for Topstone Inv CAH 1 at a Blue Springs strip mall and gives the name but no contact information for Andrew Chiu, designated as “manager.”

Last year, Meyer said the city was spending $9,000 to $20,000 each on demolitions of derelict structures. Tyler predicts the cost will be much higher for 520 N. Illinois St. and an apartment building on South Third Street that’s part of the same bid package. Bids are due Feb. 15.

The city spent about $400,000 on demolitions last year, Tyler said. Officials recently approved a contract to tear down 13 more structures this spring at a cost of nearly $230,000.

“We file liens on the properties for those costs, and if nobody pays that, like the bank or the owners, then we foreclose on the liens, maybe six months later,” Meyer said. “That’s how we’ve acquired a lot of our vacant lots.”

When told that the North Illinois Street building would be demolished this year, neighbors expressed relief.

Dave Buttig said he and his wife’s “bizarre” experiences associated with the property culminated on Jan. 19, when they were at home watching TV and looked out the window to see authorities carrying a body out of the garage, which had burned 10 days earlier.

“I want to have empathy and compassion for (homeless people),” Dave Buttig said. “But ... It’s just all so hard to figure out.”