Oceanwide Holdings massive mixed-used project in Downtown Los Angeles is the financially troubled developer’s last project standing in the U.S. after it lost control of a Manhattan site where it planned to build a 1,500-foot skyscraper.
It remains to be seen whether the latest move is a signal that Oceanwide will try to salvage the L.A. project, known as Oceanwide Plaza, an unfinished 2 million square-foot hotel condo and retail development on Figueroa Street, across the city’s convention center.
The developer’s property at 80 South Street in Manhattan’s Financial District went into receivership after Oceanwide failed to pay back $165 million out of a $175 million loan from Midtown-based DW Partners, according to a filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange last week.
Oceanwide defaulted when it missed a $1.3 million payment in January.
A representative for Oceanwide could not be immediately reached for comment. Ownership of the property has been passed to Kalo, an insolvency and restructuring firm headquartered in the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands, according to the filing.
Oceanwide bought the property for $390 million in 2016 and invested another $20 million into the site, though construction never started.
The firm planned to build a tower rising roughly 1,500 feet above the street. It would have been the tallest building in Lower Manhattan by roof height. But the same year Oceanwide bought it, it quietly marketed the property for sale for $300 million.
Last year, Oceanwide started shopping the property again, this time enlisting Colliers International to sell the property for around $200 million.
Without its New York property, Oceanwide is down to one U.S. project — an unfinished 2 million-square-foot condo, hotel and apartment development in Los Angeles dubbed Oceanwide Plaza.
In October, creditors on Oceanwide’s San Francisco project seized it after the company missed a debt payment. The development is now for sale.