A new Yonkers sports facility filed for bankruptcy protection last month in a strategic move to buy the building that houses the gym. Then things happened.
Indoor Sports Group Corp., founded in 2018, leases the building at 632-636 S. Broadway, near the Bronx border. Andres F. Diaz, the owner-president, wanted to buy the building, but he needed more time to secure financing.
On March 3, Indoor Sports, operating as USC Gymnastics & Baseball Training Facility, petitioned bankruptcy court in White Plains for Chapter 11 reorganization.
The timing seemed propitious. The national economy was roaring. The company”™s assets exceeded liabilities by $277,000.
Major League Baseball spring training had begun and opening day was weeks away. The advent of Spring was stirring the athletic juices of young baseball players and gymnasts.
Coronavirus leveled the playing field. Indoor Sports closed temporarily because most of its customers participated in after-school programs that had shut down.
“There”™s no way to do social distancing in a business like that,” the company”™s bankruptcy attorney, H. Bruce Bronson Jr., of Harrison, said in an April 16 telephone interview.
Then Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order: nonessential businesses had to close. Now there was no revenue to be had, while the lease still called for $12,360 a month.
Diaz, who lives in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, had made a deal to buy the property from South Broadway Realty Corp. of Maspeth for $4 million. He had made a $200,000 down payment.
But an investor group he was working with “didn”™t come through fast enough,” Bronson said. He needed more time to line up financing, so he filed for bankruptcy.
Indoor Sports made $450,000 in 2018 and $600,000 last year, from gymnastics and baseball classes, team training, batting cages, private lessons, summer camps and field trips, and birthday parties.
Except for the $3.8 million owed on the contract to buy the building, it had little debt.
Diaz and his wife, Ligia Diaz, had put $375,000 in the business. The company had invested $77,000 in equipment: six Iron Mike pitching machines; turf and netting; bats and balls; two bounce houses; and gymnastic bars, vaults, beams and mats.
The company projected income of $40,000 in its first 30 days of bankruptcy, and $33,661 in expenses, leaving a net of $6,339.
Now, Bronson said, Indoor Sports hopes to “weather the storm” and come back gradually. Long-term, he said, the future looks good. Short-term, “like everybody else, they”™re holding on by their teeth.”
Indoor Sports probably will not buy the building now, but it still has six years left on the lease.
“Everybody is reasonably negotiating here,” Bronson said. “We”™re very close to working something out with the landlord.”
Indoor Sports also hopes to get a loan from the U.S. Small Business Administration”™s Paycheck Protection Program.
“Businesses like Indoor Sports are very dependent on government programs giving them some reprieve,” Bronson said. “This is exactly the kind of business that can use it.”
