Excerpt:

SunCal suffered three years of tough luck, with the Irvine-based developer losing a slew of California development projects after its financial partner, Lehman Brothers, tumbled into bankruptcy. A planned 55,000-acre development outside Albuquerque slid into foreclosure, while Alameda’s City Council voted SunCal off the Island after voters soundly rejected the company’s development and business plans for the Point.

But the same economic crisis that shut the door on dozens of the developer’s planned projects opened a window for an experienced development company that could access the capital needed to buy stalled projects from bankrupt builders – for a fraction of what had originally been invested in them. With the reported backing of D.E. Shaw and other financiers, SunCal began buying up stalled projects in Chicago, Las Vegas, Texas and elsewhere.