The Bove brothers, the oft-criticized local landlords also known for their pasta sauce business, have expanded their rental empire despite their poor record of code compliance. Meanwhile, plans to fix up their most prominent property — the blighted former family restaurant in downtown Burlington — remain stalled. Last month, companies owned by Rick and Mark Bove took ownership of two upscale apartment buildings in the Thayer Commons complex along North Avenue in Burlington's New North End, city land records show. The deal follows a similar one earlier this year for 42 apartments off Shelburne Road, known as the Bacon Street Lofts, according to South Burlington land records. All three apartment buildings were constructed in the early 2010s by developer Eric Farrell, who also managed the properties. Farrell sold the trio of buildings to the Boves for just over $27 million, he said. The deals add nearly 130 units to the Boves' portfolio, which was already one of the larger for-profit rental holdings in the state. In 2021, Seven Days and Vermont Public tallied more than 400 units under the Boves' ownership throughout Chittenden County and also in St. Albans and Hartford. That joint news report identified persistent code violations at Bove apartment buildings, many of which received public subsidies for low-income residents. A housing inspector with the Vermont Housing Finance Agency, a funding entity, wrote to the Boves in 2019 that the state of their properties indicated a "total disregard of Vermont's Rental Housing Codes, and the health and safety of Residents." The public subsidies kept flowing. [content-5] The Boves pledged to make improvements in response to the news outlets' reporting, but they stoked outrage when they displaced dozens of low-income and refugee families from a run-down complex in Winooski so they could redevelop it and raise rents. The Boves received approval in March for their plan to construct 69 new apartments and condos at the site, but "there have not been any updates on this project since," Winooski's director of city planning, Ravi Venkataraman, said in an email. The Winooski project is one of several new housing developments the Boves have put forward in recent years, though their proposals have yet to produce any new units. The brothers unveiled plans in 2022 to construct 42 units of market-rate housing on Northfield Street in Montpelier, then purchased the parcel in 2023, according to the Montpelier Bridge. They have not…