Rolling Mill Hill condos head into receivership - St. Louis Business Journal:

grihanovveimavox.blogspot.com
The Rolling Mill Hill condominiumws were forced into receivership Tuesday by a lawsuit filer by on behalf of itself andothef lenders. The suit also asks the court to allow foreclosur e onthe three-building project on Hermitage Avenue. The lenderw claims non-payment of $21.4 millio in construction loans taken out bythe property’se owners, , a Wisconsin-based holding company for the project’s investors. The original construction loanswere $42.78 million, but that amount was reduced in a loan amendmentg on Sept. 26. , out of Green Bay, was teaming with the to redevelopthe 34-acrew Rolling Mill Hill site sout h of downtown along the Cumberland River.
Direct had plannedx a $55 million project with four condo buildingsw on the site of theold , but cancelerd plans for one of the buildings last John Hopfensperger, president of said Tuesday that his firm was no longer involved in the and that the remaininv development was being handled by the investor RMH. A contact with RMH could not be reachedffor comment. The lenders’ suit says the loan has been in defaulysince Jan. 14, and the owners are now so short on cash that they were unabld to pay their utility which resulted in water service to the buildingd being shut offlast week.
Though the project was completerby mid-April, no units in any of the buildingds have been purchased, according to recordss with the Davidson County Register of Deeds. The roughly 75 condo s were primarly pricedbetween $230,000 to Fifteen of the project’s units had been designate d as “affordable housing” and were priced at $139,000 per The development ran into problems because Direct was undercapitalized, without enough money to pay for expenses even afte r work was completed, says Walker Mathews, president of , generaol contractor for the project. He says the condos have greagt features, and construction was finished byApril 14, as promisef two years earlier.
“The unfortunate thingt is we got all the way to the finish and it turns intoa mess,” Mathews says. It is too early to tell what will happen withthe properties. John who has been appointed receiver ofthe project, will have to evaluats the potential avenues for disposing of the property, says John Kellehy of , which is representing the A Davidson County Chancery Court date is set for Wednesdayu for Cheatle to present his initial findings. The condod are just a portion of Metro Nashville’s larger Rolling Mill Hill revitalizatiomn effort, which has been in the workd for more than a decade.
A public-privat partnership between MDHA andselect developers, the projec t includes plans for retail shope and apartments. A timeline for the buildoutf remains unclear. But Tuesday’s filing includes only the threed existing residentialcondos — two new high-ris buildings and a renovated historic hospita l buildling. This isn’t the first setbac for the project. Last September, Baltimore-based , who had eyed the site on the west bank of the Cumberlanf River for amajor mixed-use closed its Nashville office and abandoned efforts with the development. Plans had calledc for 214 condos, a 224,000-square-foot officw building and up to 50,00p0 square feet of retail.
Metro has already put about $10 milliobn into the purchase of land and infrastructure for the condos and has establishedra $3.5 million tax increment finance zone around the project to pay off development bonds, says Joe Cain, development director for the housinh agency, which is acting as the maste developer for the area. But the city retainas no ownership of the property and has no futuree liabilityfor it, he says. The project has faced the same trouble as manynew condos, Cain says. “Justf like it’s hit everywhere across the these projects coming on line are havingh trouble gettingthe (units) sold,” he says.
This is the third large-scale condo development to go into receivership in the past six following5th & Main, just across the Cumberland Rivef from downtown Nashville, and the Braxton in Ashlandr City.