Friday, August 21, 2009

Greenvest Rumblings II

I have just learned that I need to be at the Courthouse steps on Tuesday morning.
Greenvest is in default on their properties, as well in arrears in nearly $100,000 in County property taxes.

"A leading area developer, Leonard S. “Hobie” Mitchel, said he will attend the auction but doesn’t intend to bid because, he understands, the bank is seeking 70 cents on the dollar for the property, which would yield about $91 million, and “it ain’t worth that much.”-- From the original piece

"Court records show that Greenvest secured a loan for $125 million to purchase the 4,123 acres in December 2005. In March 2008, the loan was increased to just over $130 million."

No doubt. When concerned citizens railed against the $20 MIL "sweetheart deal" for 99 of those acres....we actually understood that it was overpriced.

And another thought comes to mind... why did we bother dropping their assessment value, anyway. Obviously, the short term thinking of Ahmad Abdul-Baki wasn't going to be around to pay even the lesser amounts of taxes for long. He started the same game in the 1980's in Texas...and after the boom, he went into bancruptcy then. Advance to 2009, and it looks like that's one of his options again.

Does anyone ever take a positive lesson from a failure anymore?
I'm attending the auction. Stay tuned.

Update: iStar, who Greenvest was on the hook for $130 MIL, was on hand and secured the property for $69 MIL, seriously short of the .70 on the dollar mark.
Randy Rouse, who had a previous school site in contention, had the sharpest quip of the day... He offered that if he were younger, he'd have given his bidding a bit more serious thought... but that at 95, he added “I don’t buy green bananas.”
I like the guy's sense of humor.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

hello, I really enjoyed your blogpost...a very informative read...do us all a favor and keep up the good work!

sincerely,
Dan Park

The Bulletproof Monk said...

Dan, appreciate the compliment, and I haven't taken my foot off the gas yet.
Stay tuned. If there is more on this story, I'll get it.
As it occurs right now, I'm on top of the latest stuff in other topics.
Appreciate your visits.