The receiver of the assets of the defunct company Location Ventures wants approval to sell a building site in Miami Beach for $17.5 million.
Bankruptcy trustee Bernice Lee filed a motion Tuesday with U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga to approve the sale of the 0.7-acre facility at 1234 and 1260 Washington Avenue. The buyer is Pakman Miami Beach, a Fort Lauderdale-based company run by Prakash Patel, Andrew Beachler and Richard Haestier, according to court documents. Lee declined to comment.
Altonaga is presiding over an ongoing civil case against developer Location Ventures, its subsidiaries and the Coral Gable-based company’s former founder, Rishi Kapoor. In a federal court complaint filed in late December, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission alleges that Kapoor defrauded more than 50 investors of $93 million in his real estate projects, most of which have stalled or failed in the past two years.
Kapoor had planned to convert two commercial buildings on the Miami Beach lots into Urbin Miami Beach, a low-rise, 69-unit residential community. In June of last year, the city of Miami Beach halted construction at the site due to unpermitted work. By then, half a dozen companies involved in the project had filed liens for a total of $1.2 million in allegedly unpaid labor and services.
Kapoor resigned from Location Ventures in July last year after his firm collapsed following a wave of lawsuits and the launch of civil investigations by the SEC and criminal investigations by other federal and local agencies into Kapoor’s dealings with Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who was paid $10,000 a month as a private consultant to Location Ventures’ subsidiary Urbin.
In April, Lee received court approval to hire auctioneer Lamar Fisher and his eponymous firm to sell a commercial building at 1234 Washington Avenue and a vacant lot at 1260 Washington Avenue. However, according to Lee’s most recent filing, the firm received no viable offers despite 142 inquiries from interested buyers in 22 states.
Pakman Miami Beach is willing to buy the properties “as is” for $17.5 million, as long as the purchase is not treated as a stalking horse offer and a better offer is possible, Lee’s filing states. The buyer would also assume title to 1234 and 1260 Washington without any liens.
The majority of the proceeds will be used to pay off the debt of a lender, 1234 Washington Acquisition, a subsidiary of Coral Gables-based Spectrum Mortgage Group, which is facing a foreclosure suit against the Location Ventures affiliates that own the properties.
The lender has agreed to accept $14.3 million of the $19.3 million Location Ventures allegedly owes and will stop foreclosure proceedings, the filing says. The bankruptcy trustee would use the remaining sale proceeds to pay $570,000 in delinquent property taxes, $15,000 in delinquent utility bills, $125,000 in closing costs and a $25,000 fee to Fisher.
