A U.S. District Court has ordered the property for Mike Moreno’s proposed River District development in Baton Rouge be seized and sold at auction to satisfy the businessman’s debt to Goldman Sachs Bank, ABiz reports.
On July 8, the New York-based bank sued Moreno, his wife, Tiffany, and a number of his various entities for defaulting on a $52 million loan he took out in Oct. 11, 2013, just two weeks before his fracking company, Green Field Energy Services, went belly-up and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Green Field was liquidated in mid-2014, and ABiz reports Moreno is also being sued for $230 million by the liquidating trustee for allegedly stripping assets from the company in the months leading up to its bankruptcy.
Along with the River District property on Nicholson Drive, the U.S. District Court for the Western District has granted Goldman Sachs Bank USA’s request to seize and sell property at the Port of Iberia owned by the Lafayette businessman. U.S. marshals in Lafayette and Baton Rouge have been ordered to take control of the properties and sell them to the highest bidder.
Federal marshals are now moving forward on the foreclosures. The court has ordered the marshals to turn the property over to Latter & Blum Management, a “keeper” that will manage the property through the process of appraisals, advertising and other necessary steps leading up to a public sale to the highest bidder.
The River District had been envisioned as a 40-acre mixed-use development that would include 1,800 residential units—both condos and apartments—a 220-room hotel, 100,000 square feet of office space and 100,000 square feet of commercial space, including a 40,000-square-foot neighborhood grocery store or drugstore.
After six years of planning and acquiring property on both sides of Nicholson, near Magnolia Mound Plantation, plans for River District were unveiled at a community meeting in January 2014. As Daily Report detailed at that time, renderings of the project prepared by architect Steve Oubre of Architects Southwest depicted multiple images of a cityscape that is very different than the blighted Nicholson Drive of today—sleek, glass-front buildings, a neighborhood grocery store, a public plaza and a streetcar down the center of the median.
Citing Goldman Sachs’ lawsuit, ABiz reports that Moreno, who still has a home in Lafayette, is now living in Harris County, Texas, presumably Houston.
