Acting on a hunch that the growing bodycount in Uptown nightlife compounded by a nationwide downturn in hotel performance has slammed local outfits, a search of county records indicates that one of the nation’s largest real estate investors owes the city and county some $377,000 in 2008 property taxes.
The recently renovated, formerly Adam’s Mark hotel on McDowell Street, tax value of $15.3m. in 2007, is the property in question. It is owned by the 555 Blake LLC, which itself is controlled by The Chetrit Group, owner of the Sears Tower and a multi-billion dollar, Manhattan-based real estate concern.
In all, four parcels in the hotel complex are listed as overdue and owe around $10K in interest penalties. Added to the outstanding tax bills, the total due comes to $377,323. But the Blake is far from the only high-dollar property that the county says still owes 2008 property taxes.
The owners of the space occupied by the Courtyard by Marriott on South Tryon owe $233K, including $4500 in interest penalties. In the University area, the 23-acre, $14m. former home of Verbatim now owned by Paragon Media owes $191K. Across the street, what was once a large First Union office now owed by an arm of Highwoods Properties, a multi-state commercial real estate investment trust out of Raleigh, owes $170K.
Off of Westinghouse Blvd. an $11m. warehouse until last year owned by General Motors, now finds the current owner, the Detroit-based Inheritance Capital Group, with a $156,000 tax bill past due. ICG, by-the-way, bills itself as “the only minority owned enterprise in the country certified … to buy and sell corporate sale lease backs.”
In South End, the $10m. Design Center of the Carolinas, home of Pike’s soda shop and smack up against the South Blvd. light rail line, owes $137,592 in taxes. And way across town, the old KMart Supercenter big box recently vacated by Steve & Barry’s owes $122K.
Aside from the hospitality angle, what ties many of these properties together is that they are owned by large, out-of-town real estate operations with massive exposure to the ongoing commercial real estate correction. In this way, their ability to service local tax obligations depends not on the local estate market, which is itself continues to soften, but on national trends. And there are many, many other six-figure tax bills which are overdue.
We’ll get to those soon enough.
