I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
The company that purchased the 55,000 acre former Atrisco Land Grant on Albuquerque’s west side is brand spanking new. It incorporated in Delaware on September 15, just a few days before buying the massive property at an auction on the steps of the Bernalillo County Courthouse last week.
The property was foreclosed on last December by Barclays Capital Real Estate after SunCal Corporation and D.E. Shaw failed to make payments on their outstanding $180 million debt, for which the property was used as collateral.
SunCal filed for bankruptcy on the project in the spring, with $361 million in assets, and $198 million in debts. At the time, the company said it needed time to try to come to an agreement with its creditors.
That bankruptcy claim was dismissed by a judge in June, and the property was put in the hands of a neutral third party, then auctioned off last week on behalf of Barclays and other creditors, selling for $148 million to Western Albuquerque Landholding Company.
SunCal management has offered to help the new company manage its property here in Albuquerque, according to the Albuquerque Journal.
The massive property was purchased by SunCal Corporation in 2007 from Atrisco heirs after a contentious debate. SunCal mounted a campaign to convince shareholders in Westland Development Corporation, which had been formed by Atrisco heirs decades before to manage the land, to sell their interest in the land. Securities and Exchange Commission filings by SunCal’s parent company, SCC Acquisitions, show the telephone scripts used by the company to urge shareholders to vote in the election about whether to sell the land to the company, or not.
SunCal, one of the largest privately held land developers in the west, ran into problems when the housing market crashed.
When its properties began going belly up in California, it’s representatives in New Mexico, under it’s subsidiary Westland Devco LLC., assured legislators and the broader public that the financial difficulties would have no impact in New Mexico. In 2009 the company mounted a massive public relations campaign, spending at least $250 thousand dollars, to convince legislators to authorize tax increment development bonds for their planned developments.
Those bonds would have been paid back, in theory, by taxes generated within the boundaries of the planned communities, once companies and residents were in place.
