By THOR KAMBAN BIBERMAN, The Daily Transcript
Fernando Landa, Trigild Corp.
Fernando Landa,Trigild Corp.?s new general counsel?s unusual tasks have included what to do with a tenant growing a large indoor pot farm in Northern California, getting a body out of a Kansas apartment and closing a brothel that operated out of a truck stop.
While these events are not the typical fare for Landa since joining Trigild last November, he has learned to expect the unexpected.
Landa recalled taking over one commercial property in Northern California where marijuana was being grown.
?Medical marijuana is legal at the state level, but it?s still illegal at the federal level so we had to abide by that,? Landa said, adding that the grower was booted off the property.
Landa said Trigild sometimes runs into surprises when inspecting an address.
?We found a brothel at a truck stop in the Northeast and found a dead body (apparently of natural causes) in a property in Kansas City ? ?We handle everything from these kinds of cases to apartments with bad neighbors to really nice hotels,? Landa continued.
?Trigild is really knowledgeable about what to do in these instances and they make my life really easy.?
Maybe not quite so easy. For example, in the case of a portfolio of 50 gas stations, he has the challenge of finding all the responsible parties to clean up the petroleum from leaking into underground storage tanks.
Landa must also remove legal obstacles to facilitate the resale of foreclosed hotel properties. One of the success stories was San Diego-based Pacifica Host Hotels?purchase of the 98-room Inn at Morro Bay on the Central California coast out of foreclosure. The hotel, which had roughly $14 million in debt, reportedly sold for about $9 million earlier this month.
With hotels, Landa notes it is necessary to deal with labor law, liquor licenses, amend existing franchise agreements and a host of other matters if the property is to be successfully transferred.
Trigild has especially become well known for its disposition of apartment properties. Most notable among these, which came before Landa?s time, was the Bethany Properties portfolio that consisted of seven Arizona apartment complexes comprising 2,759 units. Bethany literally walked away from the units, leaving tenants to fend for themselves.
?These complexes had a combined occupancy of about 40 percent,? Landa said.
Landa said he was pleased that Trigild had that occupancy to about 90 percent by the time an Arizona Superior Court judge approved the sale of the portfolio for $123 million to Standard Portfolio last August. What?s more, the court was so assured that it allowed Trigild to go directly to the sale rather than having to navigate the foreclosure process.
While he wasn?t personally involved with the Bethany case, Landa said cases like it are the reason he took the job with Trigild.
?It?s a fascinating line of work ?? Landa said. ?You just jump in with the leasing issues, repairs and maintenance.?
Along with handling completed projects, Landa noted that Trigild is called into finish incomplete jobs. Despite a few very unusual cases, Landa is just as comfortable in real estate as he is in the legal world.
Prior to practicing law, Landa was an associate at the London Group Realty Advisors, providing strategic consulting and financial analysis services for real estate developers and investers throughout the United States and Mexico, and was also a public policy analyst at the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp.
Landa was previously an associate with Hecht Solberg Robinson Goldberg & Bagley LLP, a leading San Diego real estate law firm, where he was involved in the acquisition, development, financing, leasing and disposition of residential and commercial real estate assets. He also possesses significant litigation experience, including alternative dispute resolution and trial work.
As general counsel, Landa provides legal and strategic expertise to company management. In this capacity, he develops and negotiates real estate contracts, represents Trigild in judicial proceedings, serves as receiver and provides guidance on a wide variety of corporate and real estate issues.
Landa said he is involved in sales and leasing work, due diligence, probate, the liquidation of assets and a variety of consulting roles as well as acting as a receiver.
At Trigild, Landa oversees a 10-person legal department that includes five paralegals and said that they are hiring more staff.
Landa notes that Trigild is still seeing a tremendous amount of distressed property during its day-to-day operations.
?Commercial real estate is going to get worse over the next two years. We keep getting busier,? he continued.
Landa says the good news is commercial real estate buyers, whether individual investors or giant real estate investment trusts, are returning to the market.
This entry was posted on Friday, March 16th, 2012 at 2:32 pm and is filed under Build(SD) PAC, Membership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Source: http://blog.biasandiego.org/2012/03/bia-member-in-the-news/
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