An upscale, 53-unit office condo complex on Pier Avenue is faced with a foreclosure sale July 22. The 53-unit development on the corner of Pier and Manhattan avenues, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, is in default of its loan by $16.1 million, according to the lender.
Bryn Stroyke of Vintage Properties Company Inc., a partner in the office complex, declined to discuss the foreclosure notice in detail, saying “there is litigation” in the matter. He referred questions to Nick Schaar of Schaar Homes and Buildings, who was unavailable for comment before press time.
The offices, which stand terraced up the hillside on a commanding Pier Avenue corner, opened in May 2009 with a sun-splashed ribbon cutting ceremony. But just four weeks later the 200 Pier Avenue partnership filed a petition for reorganization bankruptcy protection.
The partners said at the time that the bankruptcy filing became necessary when they could not renegotiate the terms of their loan.
City Council members in 2006 hailed new office development near downtown – including the 200 Pier Avenue project – as a way to bring daytime business to stores and restaurants, and to help balance an already busy nightlife. Since then the 200 Pier complex faced a change of ownership, and plans stalled for an upscale 30-unit office complex where the old Hermosa Donuts and Classic Burger buildings used to stand on Hermosa Avenue. ER
I told everyone that this business-condo project wasn’t feasible, but nope, greed got the best of some. Mr. Fulcher should do us all a favor and research and print the names of the investors (I’m willing to bet it’s some of our elitist local Realtors and Politicians) in this ill-conceived real estate fiasco. Why do that you say? Because inevitably taxpayers will be on the $$ hook for the damage done by this “Confederacy of Greed”! Just more blight and empty store fronts being added to what is beginning to look like a ghost-town in our once quaint downtown Hermosa Beach.