Baltimore developer David Cordish, the surprise front-runner in Maryland's recent slot-machine bidding, is also the logical favorite to buy Harborplace and the Gallery from their pitiful and nearly bankrupt landlord.
He has the smarts to revive Baltimore's waterfront centerpiece, owned by the giant General Growth Properties. He could probably get the financing, even in this miserable recession. He wants not just Harborplace but also its sister "festival" markets in Boston, New York and elsewhere.
"I'm most interested in Harborplace, because it's here," he said in an interview this week. "It's the kind of thing we do. It interests us a great deal, and we're talking to them."
But like everything else in this constipated economy, any Harborplace deal is on hold.
You'd think a distressed seller and qualified buyer could make a bargain. Not in super-slo-mo 2009. General Growth and dozens of similarly situated companies need to suck it up, book losses and break up their bloated empires. Until they do, the recovery will be on hold.
Chicago-based General Growth got Harborplace in 2004 when it bought the Rouse Co., whose tourist-friendly shopping centers of the 1980s inspired urban revivals in dozens of cities. Like many of us recently, General Growth paid too much, put too little down and got what amounted to an adjustable mortgage.
Its results were no different than anybody else's. Payments on more than $1 billion in General Growth debt are overdue, the company said a few days ago. Bankruptcy lawyers are standing by. General Growth stock has fallen from $40 to pennies since last summer. Lenders could demand sped-up repayment of another $4 billion, based on General Growth's financial deterioration.
But they haven't. Nor have they foreclosed. Nor has anybody agreed to refinance. The place is in limbo.
Cordish had been dealing with the Bucksbaums, General Growth's founding family. But John Bucksbaum resigned as chief executive in October after the family made loans to General Growth executives, a breach of company policy. The family no longer has day-to-day control.
The company officially put Harborplace, Boston's Faneuil Hall and New York's South Street Seaport on sale in December. But nothing has happened. Has Cordish made an offer?
"Not a dollar figure," he said. "I haven't been able to get it that far. I haven't been asked for it, to put it bluntly."
