Return to Lender: Week of August 15, 2024

Deutsche Bank has taken over the 535,000-square-foot office property at 300 S. Wacker Dr. in Chicago, reported Trepp. The bank in 2017 provided $133 million of financing against it to facilitate Golub & Co. and Alcion Ventures’ $155-million purchase. Golub and Alcion were close to selling the property in 2022 when Agave Holdings, the company behind tequila brand Jose Cuervo, had agreed to purchase it in a deal that would have valued the building at $96 million. But the deal fell apart.

St. Paul, MN’s Lowry Apartments is scheduled for a foreclosure auction Aug. 22, and the property owner has allegedly defaulted on a $16.9-million mortgage, reported the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal. The property’s owner, St. Paul-based Madison Equities, took out a mortgage from Colliers Funding LLC in 2016. According to a lawsuit filed Aug. 5, the mortgage was reassigned to Lowry Apartments LLC, the plaintiff in the lawsuit.

LNR Partners has filed to foreclose on the $55-million loan against the 61,375-square-foot office property at 57 E. 11th St. in Manhattan’s Union Square area, Trepp reported. The company filed to foreclose in New York County Supreme Court. The loan initially had gone delinquent last November, when its sole tenant, WeWork Inc., rejected its lease through bankruptcy. But the property’s owner, Winter Properties, had made a number of debt-service payments since then, most recently in April. The property was appraised at $17.8 million in March, down from $92 million in January 2019.

Housewares chain LL Flooring Holdings, Inc. has entered into an agreement with Hilco Merchant Resources, LLC, to assist the company in its recently initiated store closing sales at 94 of its locations. LL Flooring and certain of its subsidiaries have commenced voluntary Chapter 11 reorganization proceedings in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, with the goal of finding a buyer. Another 300 stores are slated to remain open.

The Dallas Business Journal reported that infill housing developer StoryBuilt has been embroiled in a receivership for a year, and there could still be a long road left to travel. Los Angeles-based Stapleton Group last year was appointed to serve as receiver by the U.S. District Court of Travis County to fix the developer’s finances, and StoryBuilt voluntarily entered into the receivership. Attempts to sell off StoryBuilt’s development pipeline started last October. According to the receiver’s latest report, the bulk of that pipeline still needs to be sold and the receivership could last for years.

A single-asset, single-borrower $335-million loan backed by 1500 Broadway transferred to special servicing ahead of its October 2024 maturity. Net cash flow at the Manhattan office property was last reported at roughly 25% lower than the original underwriting and occupancy was reported at 75% as of March 2024. Nonetheless, Morningstar Credit cited servicer…