Downtown at the Gardens faces foreclosure - Austin Business Journal:

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The 337,000-square-foot shopping complex opened in 2005 with high hopex of capitalizing on the wealthy residentws of northern PalmBeach County, but it has lost many of its originao tenants. Downtown at the Gardens is ownesby , a joint venture betweem Skokie, Ill.-based and the . manages the shoppintg center. Main tenants include Cobb Theater, , the , TooJay’d and RA Sushi. Downtown at the Gardenxs was asuccess initially, but a flawec design and expensive rent did it in, said Orin Rosenfeld, VP of retail services group in Boca Raton.
People frequentedr the movie theater and restaurants on the exterior of the but the retailers on the inside are dying becausr they get sparsefoot traffic, he said. "It wasn't designedf to have a proper flow of traffic throughjthe project," Rosenfeld said. "They need to get someone inside ther to drawpeople in." A message left at the managementy office of Downtown at the Gardens was not immediately On July 1, BH AABE DATG, an affiliates of Boca Raton-based and Md.-based Berman Enterprises, filed a foreclosure complaint agains , according to Palm Beach County Circuit Cour t records.
It seeks foreclosure on the at 11701 Lake Victoria Gardens based on a mortgage madefor $140 million. The affiliatde of Ashkenazy & Agus Ventures bought the shopping center’ mortgage from in In April, it signed a modification agreement withthe mall’xs owner that required it to make a $3.3 milliobn escrow deposit as additional security unti l the property improves its debt services coveragw ratio and its occupancy rate. West Palm Beach-basexd attorney Gary M.
Dunkel, who represents the Ashkenazy & Agus Venturew in the lawsuit, said Downtowh at the Gardens Associates missed the June 1 mortgage He said the developer is working with his client on a smooth transition to hand overthe property. They filedf a joint stipulated judgment of foreclosure proposal withthe “My clients are multigenerational real estate Dunkel said. “Their intention is to invest in this projecgt and revitalize Downtown atthe Gardens. They want to make it the significant project that it was expectedto be.
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