Bank to foreclose on Delmar Place project
A $10 million project to build 40 town homes along a once-desolate stretch of Delmar Boulevard is headed toward foreclosure.
Consider the Delmar Place town home project a casualty of the housing slide that began in 2008, said Stephen Acree, chief executive of the Regional Housing and Community Development Alliance. The foreclosure, initiated by Truman Bank, is scheduled for next Thursday.
Acree’s organization and another nonprofit, West End Community Conference, had formed Delmar Place Land Development LLC to assist the project on what had been city-owned land in the 5300 and 5400 blocks of Delmar, just west of Union Boulevard.
Town & Country Homes Inc. began construction in late 2003, but built only 24 of the planned town homes before the project stalled in 2009. A company representative declined to discuss the project or the foreclosure.
Acree said Thursday that Truman, still owed about $180,000 on a loan guaranteed by Town & Country in 2006, will try to sell the foreclosed property, perhaps to another builder fast cash. Town & Country is going out of business, Acree said.
The foreclosure affects only the 20 Delmar Place lots that remain vacant. The 24 lots on which Town & Country built homes are unaffected. Acree had helped Town & Country structure the project’s financing.
"It was a hard one to make work because of the extra infrastructure cost involved and the unproven market for that kind of residential development on DeImar west of Union," he said.
Delmar Place was designed for two rows of town homes, one facing Delmar and the second behind the first. The project stalled after Town & Country built the row of homes closest to the street. Acree said if there is a "silver lining" to the project’s failure it’s the improvement to Delmar’s streetscape.
Previously on the site were derelict apartment buildings.