Tenants, City Call Foul On Ex-NBAer; Deteriorating Conditions Force Residents To Flee Buildings Owned By Star B-Baller Named In Slew Of "Slum Suits"

In Chicago, Illinois, the Chicago Tribune reports:

• The Prairie Avenue apartment building -- described by the city as a slum nuisance -- sits a short drive from where Antoine Walker once dominated basketball games, a prodigy at Mount Carmel High School on his way to escaping South Side poverty to become a fabulously wealthy NBA star.

• At one point, bricks fell off the building's facade, a hazard that went unfixed for months, city records show. Before that, a broken sewer pipe filled the basement with feces, toilet paper and other debris, creating an odor that forced families to move their children out. The angry tenants don't know Walker, 33, who reportedly earned $110 million during a 13-year pro career that included winning an NBA championship ring. But the 6-foot-9 former all-star -- known for a partying lifestyle that stretches from the golf course to the velvet-rope club -- plays a big role in their lives. His company owns the building.

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• Real estate investment companies that list Walker as an investor or principal -- Walker Ventures LLC and AW Realty LLC -- are the target of more than a dozen lawsuits alleging poor management of numerous properties, unpaid debts and damages caused by shoddy repair work.(1) In one case last month, the city won $950,000 in court-ordered fines against Walker Ventures. [...] Known as affable and media friendly, Walker has been elusive when it comes to many of the property accusations. The tenants haven't seen him, and lawyers have been unable to find him to serve papers.

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• Walker has left day-to-day operations of Walker Ventures to one of the company's two other members, Frederick G. Billings, 44, who Walker said had been a friend for 18 years. Billings, who has owned construction and tax consultant companies, is out on bond after being arrested in March on charges of running a mortgage scam in Chicago that netted him more than $700,000 in illegal loans, court records show.(2)

For more, see City targets ex-NBA star for 'slum' housing (Walker 'humbly apologizes' for 'failings of my company').

(1) According to the story:

• On Cornell Avenue, a 13-unit building developed a mold problem so bad that a 7-month-old boy repeatedly woke up coughing, a tenant lawsuit says. The toxic fumes and a lack of heat drove all the tenants to abandon the building, which the city declared "a hulking public nuisance" before Walker Ventures eventually lost it in a bank foreclosure.
• On Minerva Avenue, another Walker Ventures building suffers from spotty electricity and a mouse and roach infestation that resulted in its failing several inspections tied to federal rent subsidies, government records show. Shoddy conditions and a problem with squatters drove most tenants away, and this month a team of city inspectors and police found several code violations, city officials said.
• In Country Club Hills, raw sewage leaked from bad pipes inside a condominium owned by Walker's AW Realty and managed by his mother, Diane Walker, according to a Cook County lawsuit that described how the leak destroyed the unit below.
• Steven McKenzie, an assistant city corporation counsel, said that a number of foreclosed and now-abandoned properties have grown into neighborhood nuisances. One of the examples he cited was the Cornell Avenue building, which leaked natural gas in the vestibule as squatters were smoking upstairs, a fire hazard documented in court records.

(2) Walker reportedly said that he was unaware of Billings' other legal problems. "I wouldn't have put my reputation on the line had I known about them," Walker said. Walker said he became aware of his companies' problems only when court summonses from Chicago began arriving on his doorstep in late 2008 in Miami, where he currently lives. He said he was "saddened" by the allegations. "I was misguided into trusting other people and put my money and faith into other people's abilities," he said. Walker Ventures tenants, some of whom remembered watching Walker's buzzer-beating shots on TV, have mostly interacted with Billings about their living conditions, the story states.