With many local experts bracing for a commercial real estate tumble, the fates of some big deals,both under-construction projects and recent sales,are up in the air.
Here’s a sampling of some of the area’s most-watched developments.
Fountain Valley City Center and Fountain Valley Plaza
Mexico’s Cabi Developers LLC, part of GICSA, bought the two Fountain Valley office buildings, which total about 410,000 square feet, in mid-2007 from Los Angeles-based Arden Realty Inc.
They were the only two OC properties changing hands in a $1.6 billion, 4.6 million-square-foot portfolio sale, which included 33 offices largely in Los Angeles.
That deal, made at the top of the market, appears to be in trouble after Cabi failed to make its first mandatory amortization payment of $105 million in October.
Newport Beach-based real estate investor KBS REIT, which owns an interest in two of Cabi’s mezzanine loans for the deal, disclosed the missed payment in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
KBS REIT is now believed to be in a position to direct any workout negotiations, as is Hines Interests LP, which also bought about $100 million of that deal’s mezzanine debt in a venture with the California Public Employees Retirement System, according to trade publication Commercial Real Estate Direct.
Marblehead Coastal, San Clemente
Close to 20 projects around California being developed by Irvine’s SunCal Cos. are in bankruptcy reorganization, following a slew of filings made by the master developer this month. Those projects have loans of more than $2.5 billion tied to them, according to court records.
Count San Clemente’s Marblehead Coastal project, a stalled development set to include pricey homes and an outlet center. An involuntary bankruptcy petition was filed by Suncal for the 248-acre property last week.
According to filings made in Santa Ana’s bankruptcy court, another five unnamed SunCal projects are tied to loans from the now bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holding Inc., but Lehman did not consent to voluntary bankruptcy petitions for them.
South Coast Home Furnishings Centre
Costa Mesa’s South Coast Home Furnish-ings Centre, which opened about two years ago, is hoping to have a new owner by year’s end, assuming a receivership sale is completed.
A private investor operating as South Coast Home Furnishings Center LLC defaulted on an $84 million loan from LaSalle Bank, now part of Bank of America Corp., in August, making the shopping center OC’s first big commercial project to be foreclosed on amid the recent commercial downturn.
In late 2007, the investor paid more than $100 million for the center, a collection of furniture showrooms and stores that opened just as the housing market began slumping. A receivership sale of the property is under way, with an asking price of about $65 million.
,Mark Mueller
