Foreclosure auction of six development sites over railyard postponed for the third time, to June 5. Don't bet on it.
The foreclosure auction of developer Greenland USA's rights to six development sites over the Vanderbilt Yard, originally announced for Jan. 11, postponed until Feb. 12, and then to April 30, has been postponed again, until June 5, according to a representative of the developer. The postponement seemed inevitable once we learned, at the April 18 meeting of the Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation, that state officials had no expectation that the foreclosure auction of would proceed, as the entity controlling the debt had not presented a potential developer to them. In 2014-15, a Greenland affiliate borrowed $249 million and then $100 million in two low-interest loans, under the EB-5 investor visa program, with $500,000 investments from Chinese nationals organized by the U.S. Immigration Fund, a "regional center" or middleman. About $63 million of the first loan has been paid back, but the rest has languished past the due date, and a USIF entity, which