There’s a new chapter in the ongoing saga of the Broadway Trade Center.
After bankruptcy filings, a failed sale and a foreclosure, Joel Schreiber has lost his Downtown L.A. trophy.
An affiliate of Starwood Capital, a lender on the property, acquired the building at 801 South Broadway earlier this month through a public foreclosure auction, according to property records filed with L.A. County.
Starwood placed a $200 million credit bid on the property — a mechanism that allows debtholders to bid on a property up for foreclosure with the amount the owner owed. Neither Starwood nor a representative for Schreiber responded to requests for comment.
Starwood filed a lawsuit to foreclose on the property in May, alleging that Joel Schreiber — known as WeWork’s first investor — and his partner Jack Jangana had defaulted on $254 million in debt as of March. It’s unclear why Starwood only bid $200 million, given the firm had alleged Schreiber defaulted on millions more.
To avoid a foreclosure, Schreiber filed for bankruptcy on the property and pushed for a conventional sale, according to federal bankruptcy records.
Schreiber came to an agreement in October to sell the 1 million-square-foot building to Quintin Primo, the CEO of investment and development firm Capri Capital Partners, for $325 million. But the sale never materialized.
Primo missed multiple deadlines to put a deposit down on the building, and then in early December, Schreiber notified the court the deal was dead.
The Broadway Trade Center was Schreiber’s largest real estate asset, but the property is in need of redevelopment. In 2016, he scored a $164 million refinancing from Jamestown. Two years later, Starwood provided a $213 million refinancing package. At one point, a startup named EMCEE planned to buy the whole building, but the deal fizzled out.
Keith Larsen contributed reporting.