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February 9, 2010 |
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| November 28, 2007 |
By: Polyana da Costa |
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B Capital has come to the rescue of South Florida real estate investor Morris “Skip” Stoltz II on a Boca Raton condo conversion that got caught up in the housing recession.
PB Capital, part of Germany’s Deutsche Postbank, bought overdue loans from two lenders Nov. 20 and filed a $107 million foreclosure suit against Stoltz’s Mizner Court on Nov. 21.
Both sides went to Palm Beach Circuit Court on Tuesday asking for permission to transfer the 30-acre property to PB Capital by year-end in one of the South Florida’s largest foreclosures of the residential downturn.
Circuit Judge Jeffrey Colbath set a foreclosure sale for Dec. 17.
PB Capital attorney Lawrence Rochefort of Akerman Senterfitt in West Palm Beach said: “Your honor, this is going to be an easy one. We have it all worked it out for a sale.”
He had no comment outside court.
“In a market like this a lot of times holding the mortgage is more valuable than holding the real estate,” said David Dabby, president of Coral Gables-based real estate research firm Dabby Group.
“With the agreement, the developer gets his chance to get out, the previous lenders probably took a loss to get out and PB becomes the new owner,” he said.
Mizner Court attorney Fred Cohen of Cohen Norris Scherer Weinberger & Wolmer in North Palm Beach had no comment either during or after the hearing.
Stoltz of the Stoltz Cos. in Boca Raton bought the apartment complex with 47 two-story buildings for $104 million for conversion to condominiums in October 2005.
He changed the name of the 450-unit property from Coral Harbor Apartments to Mizner Court at Broken Sound and planned $8 million worth of renovations and improvements.
Column Financial Credit Suisse First Boston issued an $89 million first mortgage, and GE Commercial Real Estate was a mezzanine lender and equity partner with $15 million.
PB Capital bought both loans last week and quickly followed with the foreclosure filing.
Stoltz got into real estate in 1976, joining the financially troubled developer Rodino-Ladd as general counsel and steering it through a turnaround, according to his company’s Web site.
Stoltz and his brother brought their family-owned commercial real estate operations to South Florida in 1986 with two Boca Raton office purchases.
He was part of the $43 million purchase of the former IBM campus in Boca Raton, which sold for $154 million.
He also was a one-third partner in the $32 million sale in 2003 of parking lots that would become the site of the Metropolitan Miami project in downtown Miami.
The Mizner Court foreclosure comes the same month as another big but amicable foreclosure.
The unfinished portion of the Downtown Dadeland mixed-use project in Kendall has been transferred to lender Goldman Sachs Commercial Mortgage.
Goldman Sachs has gotten into the business of buying distressed properties and took over the Downtown Dadeland loans in May 2006.
Developers Jackson Ward and Stefan Johansson decided not to fight Goldman Sachs’ foreclosure suit filed Nov. 2 on the Miami-Dade County project’s $224 million construction loan.
At least two other major South Florida projects have run into financial trouble with lenders this year.
In July, Wells Fargo Bank sued Boca Raton developer BelAire at Boca, claiming the troubled condo conversion was in default on a $91 million loan.
Miami-based Ocean Bank filed a $50 million foreclosure suit last summer against the condo converter of Villa Mare Beach & Yacht Club in Boca Raton.
Polyana da Costa can be reached at pdacosta@alm.com or at (561) 820-2065
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