Article
Courtesy of The Orlando Sentinel
By Mary
Shanklin
Published January 23, 2016
Prominent Orlando condo developer and homebuilder Albert
Kodsi was among those recently hit with a $15 million judgment for unpaid
debts on the Fairview Grande midrise on Lake Fairview.
Orlando attorney Brent Kimball, part of the team that helped win the
judgment for the creditors, said the amount was "not run of the mill."
"Unfortunately, there have been a great many foreclosures, in all shapes and
sizes," the lawyer said. "This one does stand out as being rather large."
Orange County Circuit Judge Lisa Munyon earlier this month stood by her
previous decision to award $15 million to Fairview Grande of Orlando LLC,
based out of Massachusetts.
Orlando attorney David Glassman, who represented Kodsi and other defendants
in the case, had no comment. An appeal has been filed.
Kodsi, one-time president of Royal Palm Homes, launched the Fairview Grande
project almost a decade ago on the heels of developing downtown Orlando
condominium towers called The Sanctuary and Star Tower, which later went
bankrupt.
As planned, Fairview Grande was to include several condo buildings with more
than 100 units overlooking paddleboarders, scull boats and sailboats on the
lake near College Park.
The market bottomed out and buyers could not get mortgages due in part to
Fannie Mae's reluctance to back condominiums. The squeeze on mortgages for
condos killed more than 70 of 120 purchase contracts at Fairview Grande,
according to a group that has been marketing the resurrected property. Only
about 50 units were completed.
The Kodsi group, which included Lake Fairview Development LLC, abandoned the
project in 2009 and it was foreclosed on in November 2012. Creditors took
over the debt about three months later. The courts arrived at the $15
million figure because it was the difference between the foreclosure sales
price and the amount owed to the Massachusetts investment group for taking
on the project debt, said Kimball, who worked on the case under Greenspoon
Marder attorney Edmund Loos.
The decision isn't the first judgment against Kodsi in recent years. In
2011, a judge in Volusia County entered a $12.6 million judgment against him
over a failed $20 million Daytona Beach hotel redevelopment that was
foreclosed on.
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