Condo developer hit with $15 million judgment

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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