Unfinished Fort Lauderdale Beach Hotel faces Foreclosure
February 6, 2018
(Rendering Las Olas Resort)
Bancorp Bank has filed a lawsuit seeking to foreclose on a troubled, unfinished Fort Lauderdale hotel resort, charging the developers have defaulted on $37 million in loans.
That 12-story complex has topped out, but is not complete and construction has stalled.
Bancorp provided 550 Seabreeze Development LLC a $50 million mortgage in 2013 with the hotel properties as collateral. Included in the loan was the property at 515 Seabreeze, which was meant for a later expansion of the hotel.
The suit alleges that the entities failed to finish the resort by its planned March 2017 completion date, failed to make its December 2017 loan payment, and made unapproved changes to its project budget in violation of the loan agreement.
The LLCs also broke the loan agreement, the suit alleges, when they terminated a lease deal with the Senor Frog’s chain of restaurants. They also booted property manager Aston Hotels and Resorts Florida LLC without finding a replacement within an agreed two-week window, according to the suit.
The 550 Seabreeze Development LLC purchased the property in 2003, a deed shows. The developers at one point sought EB-5 investors, a government program that allows foreign investors who contribute $500,000 or more to a development to obtain American citizenship. Las Olas Ocean Resort raised at least $30 million from 60 EB-5 investors through December 2015. The resort website still promotes EB-5 financing.
The resort hotel would have featured 136 rooms and a 276-vehicle parking facility, according to a May 2015 documents, and would be branded under the Preferred Hotel franchise. It called for a cafe and an “Ocean Club,” according to the document.
The project had suffered from numerous delays throughout its construction, including have to wait nine months for a Broward County approval of architectural and engineering plans. Another six-month delay was in order to comply new Federal Emergency Management Agency flood plain requirements.
A parcel neighboring the hotel site, 525 South Fort Lauderdale Beach Boulevard, is also connected to the LLC .
Source and info The Real Deal South Florida