A special loan servicer is seeking to foreclose on a Platinum Mile office property whose owner defaulted on a $28.8 million mortgage after losing the building”™s anchor tenant last year to another Platinum Mile landlord.
The former tenant, Westchester County”™s largest law firm, filed a separate lawsuit against the Harrison building owner one day after the foreclosure filing in state Supreme Court in White Plains.
Dryland Gannett 3 L.L.C. paid $35.3 million in 2006 for 3 Gannett Drive, a class B building renamed 3 Westchester Park Drive late last year as part of an office park repositioning by the owner. The buyer, an entity of Heritage Realty Services L.L.C. in Manhattan, secured a $28.8 million mortgage with Royal Bank of Scotland Group”™s Greenwich Capital Financial Products Inc., the former name of RBS Financial Products Inc. in Fairfield County.
The loan later was assigned to LaSalle Bank and Bank of America as trustees for investors in commercial mortgage-backed securities before U.S. Bank in January turned it over to LNR Partners L.L.C., a special servicer based in Miami Beach.
LNR in court papers in filed late February claimed the Platinum Mile owner owed approximately $27.1 million in principal when defaulting on the loan early last month. The foreclosure action also names investor George Economou, a loan guarantor, as defendant.
Heritage Realty last summer lost the property”™s major occupant when Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker L.L.P., the county”™s largest law practice, relocated from its 142,000-square-foot space at 3 Gannett Drive to 1133 Westchester Ave., a class A office building across Interstate 287 in White Plains that is owned by RPW Group Inc.
One day after the Feb. 24 foreclosure filing in state Supreme Court, Wilson Elser filed its own lawsuit against its former landlord. The firm did not respond to requests for information on the suit. Wilson Elser”™s legal complaint has not yet been electronically recorded in the county clerk”™s office.
Landlord George T. Constantin, president and CEO of Heritage Realty Services, last August said he expected to spend nearly $13 million to renovate 3 Gannett and two other office buildings in the 386,000-square-foot Gannett Office Park, renamed Westchester Park Center last December. Westfair Communications, parent company of the Business Journal, is a tenant at 3 Westchester Park Drive.
Asked about the foreclosure and the Wilson Elser lawsuit, Constantin in an email replied, “It is standard policy and procedure not to comment on subjects like this.”
Constantin reportedly told a daily news publication that Heritage Realty is in the process of restructuring the loan, as it did in 2012 for 2 and 4 Westchester Park Drive. Dryland Gannett in 2005 paid $42 million for those properties, according to county clerk records.
The office park owner last November began a court petition proceeding for a property assessment review by the town of Harrison.
