Tuscaloosa Sues to Shutter The Walk Apartments Near UA Campus Over Unpaid Taxes

The City of Tuscaloosa is asking a judge to shut down The Walk, a student apartment complex near the University of Alabama campus over unpaid taxes.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday morning, the city claims the out-of-town owners of the Walk have failed to pay more than $102,000 in business license taxes, which follows the complex spending the summer in the news over mold issues.

The Walk is a four-story complex at 899 12th Street, behind Julia Tutwiler Hall and a short walk from Sorority Row and Bryant-Denny Stadium. It leases by the bed and markets itself as the closest off-campus student housing complex to the Capstone.

The city filed a complaint in Tuscaloosa County Circuit Court against The Walk ST, LLC, The Walk, DST, and BankPlus, a Mississippi banking corporation that holds a mortgage on the property. It asks the court to enjoin the complex from operating until its licensing debts are settled.

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According to the complaint, the property's owners paid their license taxes and held a valid business license from the time they bought the property in 2022 through the first quarter of 2025, but they have paid nothing since.

The city says The Walk filed tax returns for the second, third and fourth quarters of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026 without paying the business license taxes that those returns showed it owed. Owners there have not filed a return at all for the second quarter of 2026, according to the city's lawsuit.

Based on the returns The Walk filed, the city calculates that they owe $102,325, a figure which does not include anything from the second quarter of 2026, or any interest, penalties, fees or costs. The complaint says the city's revenue director sent The Walk notice of its licensing failure and got no response.

In its Tuesday lawsuit, the city asks the court to bar The Walk from doing any business in Tuscaloosa until it pays the back taxes and demands a full accounting of what is owed. The city also asks the court to attach a lien to the property at 899 12th Street and order it foreclosed to satisfy the debt.

The filing lands after a summer of mounting problems at the complex. The Thread reported in July that a city inspector had declared six units at The Walk uninhabitable because of mold, weeks before the fall semester started. The city said at the time that no unit deemed uninhabitable could be occupied until it had been professionally remediated and an independent third-party air quality test was submitted.

That number reportedly kept climbing - WBRC reported in mid-August that the count had reached 22 units and said at least one parent had broken her lease and that others were trying to do the same.

The complaint was verified by Trent Smelley, the city's director of revenue code enforcement, and the city is represented by outside counsel Wilson F. Green, who joins city attorneys Scott Holmes and Chad L. Hobbs.

The defendants have not yet responded in court, and the allegations in the complaint are unproven.

For more exclusive coverage of community news in West Alabama, stay connected to the Tuscaloosa Thread.