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June 12, 2009
Forest City in the News
Arizona Daily Star, Gladden Farms buys up debt
The master-planned community Gladden Farms has avoided foreclosure on roughly 625 acres of undeveloped land, buying up its debt from lender GMAC Financial Services at a negotiated price.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Dean Wingert, senior vice president of Ohio-based Forest City Enterprises, its developer, said Gladden Farms paid off its debt at a discount of slightly more than 50 percent, enabling it to commit to finishing the community despite a massive housing downturn.
"We basically paid them less than 50 cents on a dollar than what we owed them," Wingert said. "The foreclosure proceedings have all been canceled, and we have re-committed and re-evidenced our long-term interest in the property."
NoLandGrab: Is there a pattern emerging here? Forest City is seeking to pay the MTA only $20 million of the $100 million it promised to pay at closing for the Vanderbilt rail yard.
San Francisco Business Times, Oakland, Concord Smart Places To Grow
The Greenbelt Alliance, a Bay Area advocate of open spaces and vibrant communities, released a research report called "Room to Grow" in which it outlines specific areas including Oakland and Concord that are ripe for infill development.
Infill development refers to building new structures in places that have already been built out. The idea of making cities more dense has gained significant traction as people look for ways to commute less and have more amenities near home.
...One example is Oakland's Uptown neighborhood where major residential developments like Forest City's Uptown apartments, Signature Properties' Broadway Grand and Essex Property Trust's The Grand have added hundreds of new units and spurred dozens of new restaurants and bars in areas that used to empty parking lots and boarded up buildings.
NLG: Holy contextually appropriate development, Batman! We're pretty sure that if Forest City had proposed an infill project like that in Prospect Heights, it would be occupied by now. But they went for overkill, not infill.
Maryland Community Newspapers Online, Vying for bio
Forest City's Biopark business is doing better than its basketball portfolio, marginally.
"There is some competition between us," said Scott Levitan, senior vice president and development director for the Science + Technology Park at Johns Hopkins, developed by the Forest City-New East Baltimore Partnership. The first of five planned buildings in that biopark near medical giant Johns Hopkins opened about a year ago, and the 280,000-square-foot, $100 million facility is 50 percent occupied, with an additional 20 percent committed to leases, he said.
NLG: The Science + Technology Park at Johns Hopkins was the beneficiary of eminent domain takings.
Posted by eric at June 12, 2009 11:58 AM