Marian Czyzewski was out looking for his dog, Ranger, on St. Patrick’s Day. Mere hours after Marian brought Ranger home from the shelter, the dog had gotten loose. The retired K-9 police officer trekked up and down his dead-end street of Corona Court in Webster Groves—and ultimately was able to track down the escaped dog, thanks in no small part to his neighbors.
Marian and his wife, Nancy, have lived in a one-story ranch home on Corona Court for decades. Nancy grew up in the house, one of only a few in the area with a covered carport, which Nancy says her father added in the 1980s. Many neighbors tell the same story of now living in the house where they grew up. Adjacent to Shady Grove Creek and a wooded area that buffers it from busy Brentwood Boulevard, it’s a community where people pitch in when you need a simple favor, like looking for your dog at dusk.
“I just think it’s a nice community, and the houses are nicely spaced apart. Not everyone wants—or can afford—these huge houses,” Nancy says, adding that other nearby suburbs, like Kirkwood, are too crowded with shopping centers by comparison.
But the Czyzewskis are among the residents who are concerned about a shift in the fabric of their community. Their concerns are less about the usual suspects—new neighbors, too many rental units, or a different crowd—but with a wealthy man who has steadily acquired properties in Webster Groves.
Attorney James Onder—brother of U.S. representative Bob Onder (R-St. Charles) and a prominent personal injury attorney, who boasts a $72 million win against Johnson & Johnson in 2016 over its talcum powder—has slowly amassed a major footing in Webster Groves. He has snapped up eight properties on Corona Court. Residents worry that a place where people used to be able to find their first home is now being overtaken by a wealthy lawyer.
It hasn’t helped that Onder’s plans for the neighborhood have been more or less a mystery to residents.
“I think that would be nice to know what his intentions are,” Marian Czyzewski says of Onder. ”I think that would make us … appreciate what he’s going to do in the future, if it’s going to help the community, or if it’s just going to cause people that were here [to be displaced].”
Onder tells SLM he’s been accumulating properties in Webster Groves for 35 years. Records show 54 properties owned by Onder Properties LLC throughout St. Louis County, the great majority of which appear to be in Webster. He owns the building that houses OnderLaw on Lockwood Avenue and the historic Ozark Theatre, which sits just across the street. (He dropped plans to renovate it last year, citing a lack of local interest by the theater community.) Elsewhere, he has plans for the former Emerson campus and owns the 10-story CIBC Place office building in Brentwood.
Corona Court has some of Webster’s more modest homes. Here, younger families can establish themselves and put down roots in a community known for good schools, without paying major sums for a home.
Neighbors have been left speculating as to why nearly one-third of their street is owned by a lawyer who’s best known for the litany of advertisements bearing his name with proclamations like “Onder Wins.” “I see his billboards everywhere I go,” one neighbor says. Many have heard rumors about plans to buy up the entire street to build new apartments or bigger homes. They also say there’s a marked difference in the appearance of their homes and the Onder-owned ones.
Onder, however, insists that he takes care of his properties, saying, “My general standard for rental property, including all of these in Webster, is: I will not rent a property that I would not move in myself.” He demolishes homes that are beyond repair and says he keeps his habitable properties for rent at below market rate, noting that the alternative of letting a vacant house fall into disrepair while he waits for redevelopment is far costlier.
For that, he says, he is doing his part to keep Webster affordable.
“Our rents are pretty darn low,” he says. “The rents are a fraction of what it would cost to buy the house. So, I mean, if anything, I think what I have furthers the concept of affordable housing.”
SLM obtained dozens of correspondences between the City of Webster Groves and Onder Properties, including some of his properties’ tenants. Most of the notices from the city are “courtesy infraction notices” which ask a property owner to remedy something. Onder says most of the notices either came through routine inspections, or because tenants committed various infractions, prompting the city to notify his firm. Such notices include ones for the failure to obtain an occupancy permit (Onder says his leases require the tenant to go to the city to obtain those), the grass getting too high, putting trash bins out too far, and other things relating to cleanliness that he says are tenants’ responsibilities.
Onder adds that he is not aware of any resident complaints, adding, “I have a lot of tenants there; the tenants are all extremely happy.”
One property immediately at the entrance of Corona—owned by Onder and seemingly unoccupied—has a roof that appears to sag, a boarded-up basement window, and a decaying wooden deck and old gutters. Onder says this one is in bad shape, and he plans to demolish it. Property records suggest he’s owned the home since 2019.
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