Tag Archives: distressed

45 Unit Distressed Industrial Condo Project Sells

hallrdAn industrial real estate new condominium development project consisting of  176,000 square feet of space sold this month to a local real estate developer.  The site is located in the City of Downey, Los Angeles County.  All cash closing!  Class A construction and never occupied.   The sale price was in the mid to high fifty dollar range per square foot of building area for this asset in foreclosure.

Large Industrial Property Owner In Distress

The largest private landowner in downtown Los Angeles said it may have to file for bankruptcy protection, the latest sign of how the credit crunch has frozen a multibillion-dollar revitalization of the city’s downtown.

Large Industrial Warehouse at Alameda St & 7th St in Downtown Los Angeles.  One of the first properties purchased by Richard Meruelo.  Former Rykoff Food Distribution Warehouse.Real-estate firm Meruelo Maddux Properties Inc. said Thursday that it was working to reach agreements with four lenders after the developer stopped making interest payments on 26 loans valued at $266 million. Three of those loans are due, and the company hasn’t been able to extend them.  “The debt capital markets have totally shut down,” Andrew Murray, the company’s chief financial officer, said in an interview.

It is the latest shoe to drop for Los Angeles’s downtown district, which has been the focus of a decade-long renewal project designed to convert old warehouses and office buildings into lofts, high-rise residential towers and an entertainment and retail district.

Meruelo Maddux, which owns land but has done little development, has reached 50% occupancy on its first luxury rental building, Union Lofts, which opened in mid-2008.   Some of the prominent industrial real estate properties owned by Meruelo Maddux include:  The Overland Terminal on Olympic/Alameda; Sci-ARC on 3rd; Seventh Street Produce Market on 7th; Salvation Army Building at 801 E 7th Street; Rykoff Building now occupied by American Apparel at 7th/Alameda; and the Chaffee Warehouse at Olympic and Alameda.

Meruelo is trying to sell its buildings to pay down debt and to persuade its lenders to restructure loans, but said that if those options fail, a bankruptcy filing could be a “strategic alternative.”

Full article printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A3