Did you know that the mortgage holder of the Regions Center in downtown Little Rock recently took ownership of the 30-story office building?
Little Rock-400 West Capitol Trust of New York, led by Taconic Capital Advisors Ltd., made a credit bid of $31 million in January for the 547,000-SF building at 400 W. Capitol Ave., according to bankruptcy filings.
The move allows a secured creditor in a bankruptcy case to recover the property much like a foreclosure sale.
Originally known as the First Commercial Building, the project was owned by more than two dozen LLCs using names including NNN 400 Capitol Center. Percentage of ownership ranged from 0.9% to 9.25%.
If you recall, the 32 Capitol Center LLCs borrowed $32 million from Bank of America to buy the building in 2006. The loan was sold into a mortgage pool overseen by LaSalle Bank of Chicago. In 2008, Wells Fargo Bank replaced LaSalle as trustee of the Registered Holders of COMM 2006-C8 Commercial Mortgage Pass-Through Certificates.
In 2017, the loan was sold to Little Rock-400 West Capitol Trust, a year after the owners of the Regions Center filed for bankruptcy protection. The reorganization was converted to a Chapter 7 liquidation in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.
Last year, the bankruptcy trustee, attorney Don A. Beskrone of Wilmington, began taking steps to sell the property.
Beskrone hired Jones Lang LaSalle Americas Inc., a real estate broker headquartered in Chicago, to market and sell the building.
JLL contacted more than 5,000 parties who had mentioned to Beskrone an interest in buying the property, according to a January bankruptcy filing.
JLL had 40 parties sign confidentiality agreements. It received five written bids and a few verbal ones, the filing said.
But the bid from the Little Rock-400 West Capitol Trust was the best, the filing said.
Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey approved the transaction Feb. 11.
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