Bankruptcy-foreclosure-and-problem-projects

Excerpt:

One of the nation's largest land developers, SunCal Cos., still is wrestling with the consequences of dozens of failed investments made before the real-estate bubble burst. Yet the company is making deals again.

Excerpt:

With the legal sparring between Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. /quotes/comstock/11i!lehmq LEHMQ -2.31% and SunCal taking a new, nasty turn in California, Lehman is turning to a New York bankruptcy judge to block the real-estate developer from attempting an "end-run" around the court's previous rulings.

Excerpt:

When developers imploded the old Oak Knoll Naval Hospital last week, crowds cheered and veterans wept.

After all, the demolition appeared to be a major milestone in the grueling, exasperating, mind-numbingly complex transformation of the Bay Area's former military outposts.

It wasn't.

Excerpt:

Irvine-based master developer SunCal Cos. suddenly has the makings of a growth push after several years in legal limbo.

The company, one of California’s most aggressive land buyers during the real estate boom, earlier this month got the lead role in a 180-acre redevelopment at a former Army Reserve base in the Bay Area.

It also reclaimed control of three California mega projects that have been in bankruptcy protection for more than two years.

Excerpt:

A former Navy hospital imploded in a massive cloud of brown dust in the Oakland Hills on Friday, marking the end of a military medical center that served generations of wounded American soldiers.

Excerpt:

Workers who had started stripping the old buildings of asbestos to ready them for demolition left when SunCal could no longer pay them, leaving piles of trash behind. Vandals stripped wiring, pipes and every bit of metal from the structures, trespassers used them as party houses and their walls as graffiti canvasses. Drug dealers and squatters took over the hospital and other buildings for a time.

Excerpt:

In court papers filed Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Santa Ana, Cailf., SunCal Management LLCLimited Liability Corporation, whose development arm helped to conceive the projects with Lehman's backing, said the trustee's plan tries to "gerrymander" Lehman's claims in a bid to unfairly force a "cramdown" on the properties' junior lenders.

Excerpt:

OAKLAND -- The last remaining decrepit structures at the former Oak Knoll Naval Hospital, including an 11-story concrete building, will be demolished this year by the property's owners after a federal bankruptcy judge agreed to release $1.7 million to complete the work.

Excerpt:

A federal judge approved a compromise between Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and a bankruptcy trustee, paving the way for the sale of a handful of stalled Southern California real-estate projects Lehman helped finance in conjunction with developer SunCal Cos.

udge Erithe A. Smith of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Santa Ana, Calif., approved the deal between Lehman's commercial-paper unit and Chapter 11 trustee Alfred H. Siegel, subject to certain "narrow conditions," according to court papers filed Thursday.

Except:

A trio of properties run by Irvine-based master developer SunCal Cos. could soon be put up for sale at a fraction of their former value, following a recent decision in Santa Ana’s federal bankruptcy court, the Wall Street Journal reports.