MATTESON, Ill. – The former commercial real estate CUSO of Texans CU has filed a foreclosure lawsuit to collect nearly $39 million on the suburban Lincoln Mall, a troubled shopping center outside of Chicago.
The former Texans Commercial Capital LLC alleges that the Texas partnership, called Realty America Group LP, that owns the mall failed to make monthly mortgage payments beginning Sept. 10, according to a complaint filed in Cook County Circuit Court.
In a counterclaim, Realty America seeks to collect $20 million from the lender, now called CU Liquidity Services LLC, and alleges the lender’s executives have jeopardized the project by conducting a campaign to force the partnership into default.
The dispute comes after the 2007 return to the mall of J. C. Penney Co. after a seven-year absence, a key step in the mall’s revitalization. Now, the foreclosure jeopardizes a pending $10-million subsidy, approved by the Matteson village board in October, intended to help finance another phase of the project.
Texans Commercial was launched in 2004 by the $2 billion Richardson-based credit union. In 2004, Texans Commercial issued a $62-million loan to finance the initial stages of Lincoln Mall. The loan had an outstanding balance of $37.6 million last month, not including unpaid interest of $1.1 million, according to the foreclosure complaint
Texans CU sold off a majority stake in 2007 in Texans Commercial, which is now known as CU Liquidity Services LLC.
In its countersuit, Realty America charges the one-time CUSO couldn't fund loans promised for a 2007 mall renovation. The counterclaim alleged a fraudulent pattern in which the lender accumulated promises it couldn't keep on many deals. It said, for example, that when the lender operated as Texans Commercial Capital LLC, it had unfunded loan pledges of $260 million against only $8.2 million in loan loss reserves. The name change was part of the fraud scheme, the suit alleges.
