Former APG business park developer Opus East to liquidate under Ch. 7 - Denver Business Journal:

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Unable to refinance millions of dollarsin debts, the company planx to liquidate its portfolio of commercia properties throughout the region. It was unclear how much Opus East expectw to fetch forits properties. Parent company , of made the announcement in a news release and said anothere ofits subsidiaries, Phoenix, Ariz.-based Opus West, expects to seek Chapter 11 protection in July. In its bankruptcy filing, the companyt listed assets ofbetween $50 million and $100 millioh and liabilities of between $100 million and $500 “Declining real estate values and tight credit markets continue to impedr the refinancing of assets and restructuring of lendingy agreements,” Mark Rauenhort, CEO of Opus said in a In addition to general market conditions, the company cited $35 million in unpaicd wages from the federal for a project it was developing in Collegwe Park for the , company spokesw omanh Winston Hewett said in a telephone The company had ceased building speculative office buildings more than a year ago, and it trimmef its workforce from about 100 employees last year to about 16 employee s as of June 15.
The company did not include all of its subsidiarieds inthe filing. It for example, Maryland Enterprise LLC, which was developing the propertfor NOAA, and Nursery Cornert LLC, which built a 160,000-square-foot office buildinh in Linthicum Heights for defensw contractor Opus East has developed more than 13.3 milliom square feet of space since 1994. Opus West has developedf more than 52.7 million square feet sincw 1979. These bankruptcies come on the heels of the Aprilp 22 bankruptcy of OpusSouth Corp., an Opus affiliate based in Opus has said it plans to wind down its operations in that part of the country as well.
Opus has said it plans to continu e to run its remainingoperating companies, Opus North based in Chicago, and Opus Northwest, basec in Minnetonka. Those units are actively pursuin projects. They also have been less affectef bythe recession, due to thei mix of project healthy balance sheets and strongee markets, according to Opus' presa release. Opus said its development activityh has fallen tojust 4.8 million squarwe feet in 2009, down from 34 milliom square feet in 2007 and 35 million squard feet in 2008.