Brian Tuttle Affiliates Sued in Main Street Bankruptcy Case

Brian Tuttle is trying to “sabotage” a $60 million bankruptcy sale of his distressed Main Street development site in Royal Palm Beach, a lawsuit alleges.

Concord Wilshire Capital is in line to purchase the site and says it was working to close the deal within all deadlines. But Tuttle “conspired” to divert the deal to a backup buyer, The Ardent Companies, because that would allow him to keep a stake in the property, the lawsuit alleges.

Los Angeles-based Concord Wilshire Capital, led by Steve Sirang, sued Tuttle and his affiliates Main Street at Tuttle Royale and TLH-26 Giles on Thursday in bankruptcy court in West Palm Beach.

It is the latest headache over the 38-acre property where Tuttle planned a mixed-use project with 400,000 square feet of retail, 401 apartments, a 125-key hotel, 83,000 square feet of medical offices and three garages. Construction hasn’t started.

Tuttle’s affiliate Main Street at Tuttle Royale filed for Chapter 11 reorganization in September, narrowly avoiding a foreclosure auction for the site. By the time Tuttle’s entities filed for bankruptcy, the debt to senior secured lender Fuse Group had reached $57.9 million, including principal and interest.

Bankruptcy Judge Erik P. Kimball approved the reorganization plan a month ago with two possible paths to resolve the default: Track one is a $60 million sale to Concord Wilshire, and track two is a sale to Atlanta-based Ardent if Concord fails to close.

Under the Ardent deal, Tuttle would keep an equity interest, according to Concord Wilshire’s lawsuit. As Concord worked to close, it found out its partner ECI Group, which was responsible for $12 million of the $60 million price, was actually partnering with Ardent on the purchase. As deadlines approached, ECI pulled out of the deal and told Concord to deal directly with Ardent, Concord alleges. Ardent allegedly pushed to buy the site, promising to sell Concord the retail development, the lawsuit states, likely referring to the retail portion of the development site.

The earliest deadline to close the purchase was last Friday, according to the lawsuit, though Concord exercised an extension option to April 10 by increasing its deposit by $1 million to $2.5 million. Although at one point Concord requested a closing extension to May 10 due to ECI’s pullout, it quickly withdrew that request and said it will close by April 10.

Yet, Main Street “surreptitiously” sent a letter claiming Concord defaulted on the deal, Concord alleges.

“Tuttle wants the Ardent deal under track two to succeed so that he can retain his equity interest in the reorganized debtor at the expense of all creditors,” Concord wrote in the complaint.

Attorney Brad Shraiberg, who represents Main Street in the bankruptcy case, called the allegations “ridiculous” and said Concord sued “as a stall tactic to try to delay the closing.”

Talks are ongoing to resolve the suit, he said.

Concord also requested a temporary restraining order to prevent Main Street from interfering with the sale and to enforce its compliance with the bankruptcy order.

Tuttle is a longtime Florida land assembler, who stitches together large tracts, remedies environmental issues, entitles sites for development and sells them to builders.

The Main Street project was supposed to be his transition into development, as he counted on it for “mailbox money,” he told The Real Deal in a 2023 interview.

Main Street is part of the 200-acre Tuttle Royale project on the southwest corner of U.S. 441 and Southern Boulevard that Tuttle assembled and master planned. Over the years, he sold Tuttle Royale lots to other developers, keeping Main Street.

Problems arose in 2024 when an affiliate of Fort Lauderdale-based Fuse, led by Eyal Peretz, filed a $38.4 million foreclosure across three loans, winning a $47.4 million judgment.

When Main Street filed for bankruptcy in September, it claimed that it had lined up Ardent to buy the loans for $48 million and pay a $3 million non-refundable deposit. But Fuse allegedly “declined to accept the full cash payment” and honor the agreement, according to a news release issued at the time.

Fuse sought a dismissal of the Chapter 11 reorganization, saying Main Street has engaged in “multiyear exploitation” of the lender and that it filed for bankruptcy only to keep Fuse “at bay for as long as possible” while trying to find “the white knight they [Main Street] have been unable to find since the loans” matured, Fuse wrote.

In its filing, Fuse referenced an email Tuttle sent to Main Street stakeholders shortly after the foreclosure was filed, saying elevated interest rates and insurance have turned off investment appetite for the project and that he would file for bankruptcy to “buy” more time on securing an equity partner.

Kimball denied Fuse’s motion to dismiss.

This isn’t Tuttle’s first financial woe. During the Great Financial Crisis, he lost land across Florida, including 5,800 acres in Sarasota County, and a pair of Palm Beach County homes, one of them his homestead.

Sirang, of Concord, has a felony conviction for bank and wire fraud tied to checks he wrote around the time of Black Monday in 1987.