WASHINGTON, DC-After going to auction last week, the note on the Shops at Georgetown Park has reportedly sold for $61 million to Angelo, Gordon & Co., according to local writer Carol Joynt, who broke the news Friday afternoon. The Washington Business Journal confirmed the sale with several sources.
None of the principals in the transaction--from Jones Lang LaSalle, which handled the auction, to Western Development, which defaulted on the $70-million loan, to EastBanc, which had wanted to buy the retail center--are commenting on the deal.
The transaction has a storied past. Last week, it quietly went to auction after having been postponed twice. Western Development defaulted on the $70 million loan earlier this year. The lender, Capmark Finance, filed for bankruptcy last October. It reportedly tried to sell its stake in the property twice, and then contacted JLL to auction it off.
Meanwhile, Anthony Lanier, president of EastBanc, who alleges he was illegally excluded from a deal to buy the retail center by his former partner, Herb Miller of Western Development, teamed with JBG to bid on the mall, according to a story in the Washington Post earlier this month. Lanier and Miller have been locked in litigation for the better part of a decade, hamstringing Western Development in its attempts to lease up the property.
Where the property will go from here remains to be seen. Angelo has a number of options available to it from a repositioning/leasing effort to other zoning possibilities, such as residential development.
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Erika Morphy
Erika Morphy has been writing about commercial real estate at GlobeSt.com for more than ten years, covering the capital markets, the Mid-Atlantic region and national topics. She's a nerd so favorite examples of the former include accounting standards, Basel III and what Congress is brewing.
