Copia Lending Buys San Jose Building After Owner Bankruptcy

Copia Lending has purchased a 105,000-square-foot office building in North San Jose for $23.7 million after its owner filed for bankruptcy to avoid foreclosure after defaulting on a $29 million loan.

An affiliate of the lender bought the vacant building at 10 West Tasman Drive after its owner, Heritage 10 West Tasman LLC, went belly up, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

The price was the value the lender estimated for the building when it took ownership of the office hub. The transaction works out to $226 per square foot.

The building, built in 1997, was once part of Cisco’s global headquarters.

Heritage 10 West Tasman bought the building in 2021 for $30 million, or $286 per square foot. Its leadership included Ji Wan Jung, Sung Hong, Samyang Development, Doo Pyo Lee, Daehyun Kang, Ji Young Kim and David Jankowitz, bankruptcy court records show.

The eight-year-old firm bills itself as manager of more than $1 billion worth of “technology-enabled alternative investments for endowments, foundations, hospitals, insurance companies and family offices.”

The ownership group filed for bankruptcy in a failed quest to ward off the foreclosure and loss of the building as well as its investment in the property. The date of the bankruptcy filing, as well as its outstanding debt, were not disclosed.

The investors had blamed a pandemic shift to remote work for a failure to lease the building.

“The pandemic and prolonged more rigorous lockdowns in California as well as the time it took for businesses to wind down on remote working and revert to a traditional working environment” undermined tenant interest in the building, the prior property owners stated in court filings.

The assessed value of the building in January was $51.3 million, or $489 per square foot, according to the Mercury News.

It’s not clear where Copia Lending is based, or whether it’s linked to The Copia Group, a lender based in Chicago.

— Dana Bartholomew