A delay has occurred in downtown Hartford landlord Northland Investment Corp.’s drawn out foreclosure case involving its signature City Place II office tower, officials said.
A Hartford judge had given the building’s owner until Tuesday to pay off the $32 million mortgage or hand over the keys, but Northland has appealed the decision which will prolong the case even further, court documents show.
In November, Judge Susan A. Peck ordered the 18-story tower into strict foreclosure, a type of legal action taken against delinquent borrowers’ whose debt is greater than the value of their property, papers show.
But Northland appealed that decision on Dec. 15 and it’s unclear when the next court appearance will be. The landlord did not immediately return a phone call Tuesday for comment.
The building at 185 Asylum St. has been tied up in a legal struggle for nearly three years, after Northland defaulted on a $25 million mortgage on the property in 2009.
Northland has said it has had difficulty refinancing the mortgage, which was securitized and sold to a group of investors.
According to court documents, City Place II is well under water. Northland owes more than two times the fair market value of the property, which was recently appraised at $12.8 million. That would make it very difficult to get increasingly risk averse lenders to refinance the debt.
