Collier Town Square set for sheriff sale

Faced with $17 million owed on its mortgage and unable to meet its monthly payments, the five-year-old Collier Town Square shopping center in Collier is facing a sheriff sale in December.

The date for the sale was confirmed by the Allegheny County Sheriff's Office, which conducts the monthly sales.

A default judgement is being sought by the mortgage holder, LBUBS 2007-C2 Washington Pike Limited Partnership, based in New York.

Occupancy at the 64,546-square-foot center on a 7.25-acre site at 1597 Washington Pike, has declined as a number of stores, including several restaurants, have closed during the past year.

About 18 stores are opened, including a Damon's Grille, Starbucks, Moe's Southwest Grille, Golden Dragon Chinese Restaurant, a UPS outlet, a National City Bank branch and Taste of Chocolate.

The center was developed by members of Praxis Resources LLC, which lists as its address as 1 Forsythe Road, Presto, Pa. One of the principals of Praxis, Jerome J. Sukernik, is listed in the complaint as the local officer of Collier Town Square LLC, the owner.

Attempts to contact Sukernik and any member of Praxis, were unsuccessful.

One former tenant said she and others closed or moved because the center lacked sufficient parking, with 406 spaces, and because the landlord raised rental costs.

"We moved from the center to our current location at 301 Old Washington Road, because of the parking situation," said Krista Lorenzo, owner of Curves, who moved about a half-mile away. "Every tenant I talked with during my four years at the center -- from January 2004 until June -- complained about the parking," she said.

Lorenzo said some tenants left because of the hike in the rent. Initially it was about $20 per square foot for most tenants, but the owners raised it to $30 per square foot.

Tenants who left included New York Deli, Tambellini's restaurant and the Hottest Dog. At least one restaurant, Scoglio's Italian Restaurant relocated instead of closing, she said.

The center has been up for sale for the about a year by Michael Liquori, associate broker at Langholz Wilson Ellis, a commercial real estate firm.

"We received several offers, but when the economy took a nosedive this summer, the offers were rescinded," he said.

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Federated to relocate 2 units to Marshall

It took just over a week for the new owner of Swedish telecommunications giant Ericsson AB's corporate campus in Marshall to confirm that it has attracted a major tenant to the five-building complex.

Early next year, Downtown-based mutual fund giant Federated Investors Inc. will begin moving 320 employees to office space in two of the buildings in the complex that Keystone Property Group of Bala Cynwyd purchased from Ericsson for $39.7 million last week.

Ericsson remains the largest tenant at the 101-acre complex, with about 180,000 square feet of office space under lease, or about one-third of the 541,000 square feet in the complex. Federated will take over about 96,000 square feet.

The relocation involves two business units, Federated Investor Services, a customer services unit, and its Business Information Systems Division, said spokesman J.T. Tuskan. A small number of human resources personnel also are involved.

The employees will move during January and February from the Pittsburgh Office & Research Park in McCandless, where Federated has been a tenant since 1997.

The move will not affect any employees at the company's Downtown headquarters in the Federated Investors Tower at Liberty Center, Tuskan said. It occupies 240,000 square feet at the 27-story building under a lease that extends to 2014.

"As one of the nation's leading investment management companies, Federated remains committed to keeping its corporate headquarters in downtown Pittsburgh, where we have been since our company was founded in 1955," Tuskan said.

"Our new North Hills location has a footprint that is very conducive to support areas of the company, which in our view operate very well in facilities with plenty of open space."

Keystone Property Group signed the lease with Federated before it completed its purchase of the complex, said Matthew Sigel, senior vice president of acquisitions for Keystone.

"With the lease in escrow effective on the closing date, it helped us with the acquisition of financing, and it confirms the quality of this campus when a tenant like Federated Investors would want to move a major operation to this site."

The lease will bring occupancy at the site from about 72 percent to about 89 percent, he said.

Federated will occupy two floors in Building 4000 and one floor in Building 5000 at the Marshall site in the Regional Industrial Development Corp.'s Thorn Hill Industrial Park

Other tenants in the complex include the H.J. Heinz Co.'s Global Innovation & Quality Center, which occupies 135,000 square feet in two buildings; Siemens Water Technologies, Accredo Health Group Inc. and Rockwell Automation.

Amenities at the site and access to major highways helped attract Federated, Tuskan said.

In a memo to employees, Federated said the campus includes a large cafeteria; an exercise room; an outdoor basketball court; a walking and jogging trail; and parking.

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Union at Universal Stainless could strike

Steelworkers at Universal Stainless & Alloy Products Inc. in Bridgeville could go on strike because of an ongoing contract dispute with the company, a union representative said today.

The 240 members of the United Steelworkers Local 9531 have gave union leadership authorization to call a strike and have notified the company they could walk off their jobs after giving sufficient notification that would allow for an orderly shutdown, said James Watt, a USW staff representative for Local 9531. The union's bargaining committee was meeting this afternoon to discuss the status of contract talks and will meet with its members this evening, Watt said. He declined to comment on details of the negotiations.

The union has been working under an extension of its former five-year contract, which expired on Aug. 31. But the union notified the company it was cancelling the extension and gave Universal Stainless a 24-hour notice on Monday that its members might walk off the job, Watt said.

Paul McGrath, general counsel for Universal Stainless, which makes semi-finished specialty steel products, could not be reached for comment.

Steelworkers at Universal Stainless want a contract similar to that won by the USW at Latrobe Specialty Steel Co., said John Ross, a member of the bargaining committee that negotiated the contract that expired in August. Wages, pension benefits and health care costs remain outstanding issues, Ross said.

The contract at Latrobe Specialty Steel provides for pay scales ranging from $20 an hour to $26 an hour, with annual average salaries of about $56,000. The Latrobe steelworkers won their contract in July after a combination of a strike and lockout that lasted 81 days.

"We're the lowest paid steelworkers around," Ross said.

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Chatham completes $16M building purchase

Chatham University has completed its $15.99 million purchase of the 250,000-square-foot Eichleay building on Penn Avenue in East Liberty and will occupy about 47,000 square feet of space with several graduate programs starting next summer.

The seller was Six 6585 Penn Avenue Associates LP, with George F. Eichleay, president, signing for the seller, according to a deed filed in Allegheny County.

About a dozen faculty members and about 400 graduate students will attend classes in interior architecture, landscape architecture, nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy and physician assistant programs.

Three tenants in the building will remain, said Chatham spokesman Paul Kovach.They include Management Science Associates Inc., the largest tenant, he said.

"We are not under any pressure to leave, and we intend remaining at this location," said Dr. Alfred Kuehn, founder and president of Management Science.

Although he did not disclose when his lease expires in the building, Kuehn said he believes Chatham University may want to work with his company regarding the radio technology it provides.

The company, with about 700 employees at the Eichleay building, provides a radio network for sports and band concerts for about 200 high schools, broadcast over 32 radio stations and the Internet, allowing military personel in the Near East to keep in touch with their high school teams.

"Ninety-six percent of our business is outside the Pittsburgh area," Kuehn said.

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Region's foreclosures down 20 percent

Residential foreclosures in the Pittsburgh region have dropped two consecutive months compared with a year ago, according to a report issued Wednesday.

Foreclosures filings fell to 396 homes in August, a drop of 20.3 percent, compared with 497 in August 2007, said RealStats, a South Side-based real estate information company.

That decline followed a 29.1 percent drop in foreclosures in July in Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Washington and Westmoreland counties, said Daniel Murrer, vice president of RealSTATs.

Murrer said those figures could signal that the region may see fewer foreclosures for the entire year versus a year ago, he said.

"This is good news for the region in today's sea of bad news," said Murrer. "With another drop expected in September, we'll have a full (three months) of year-over-year fewer foreclosures."

Even with the latest monthly decline, foreclosures for the year from January through August are still running at a record pace for the region, but only slightly.

The 3,220 foreclosures for the eighth-month period are only 11 more than the record 3,209 set in the comparable period of 2007, according to RealStats figures.

Murrer cautioned that this August had two fewer business days than August 2007, which could have affected the number of foreclosures filed. RealStats tracks housing statistics using public deed records, and in the case of foreclosures, there were two fewer days for banks, school districts and municipalities to record their foreclosures, he said.

In August, RealStats said there were 219 foreclosures in Allegheny County, a decline of 38.1 percent from August 2007. Beaver County had 33, declining 23.3 percent, and Westmoreland County had 46, a decline of 14.6 percent.

Butler County had 30 foreclosures, an increase of 76.5 percent, and Washington County had 68, up 134.5 percent.

Maryellen Hayden, head organizer for Acorn (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) in Western Pennsylvania, said her group is seeing more people asking for help to avoid foreclosures.

"This may show that the work of all the counseling agencies working on this problem may be bearing fruit," she said.

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84 Lumber shifts into light commercial building projects

Looking to expand its business away from the slumping residential home building market, 84 Lumber Co. is bidding on what it calls light commercial building projects.

The company's largest project thus far is a resort known as Grand Palisades at Lake Austin, in Winter Garden, Fla., where 84 Lumber is supplying all the building materials for 890 condominium units. Materials supplied and installed by 84 Lumber personnel include metal studs, insulation, exterior sheathing, interior drywall, trim and metal trusses.

The project is estimated to take 22 months to construct and is slated for completion in February 2010.

"This involvement with commercial projects is not in lieu of residential building, that remains our bread and butter," said 84 Lumber spokesman Jeff Nobers. "But this is something we wanted to take a look at given what's happening with residential construction."

Nobers said 84 Lumber worked with Grand Palisades' agent, Synergy Group Inc., of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., on Mona Lisa, a 200-unit commercial project in Celebration, Fla., where the Eighty Four, Washington County-based company installed the trim and supplied other materials.

The nationwide housing industry slowdown fueled a 7.9 percent drop in 2007 revenue at 84 Lumber. That decline, coupled with flat sales the previous two years, put a serious crimp in ambitious plans announced in 2006 to grow revenues to $10 billion by 2010.

Last year, the nation's largest privately held building products/services provider had total revenue of $3.1 billion, down from more than $3.9 billion in 2006 and 2005.

The company, founded in 1956 by Joe Hardy and operated by daughter Maggie Hardy Magerko, has downsized its headquarters staff by about 75, to 625, through layoffs and attrition, and closed unprofitable stores.

In July, 84 Lumber said it posted an undisclosed profit in May, its first profitable month in 2008. The company operates some 380 stores in 37 states and 13 component manufacturing plants.

Nobers said 84 Lumber is not actively bidding on any commercial projects in the Western Pennsylvania region.

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Marchers to Downtown housing office get only referrals

Chanting "Save Our Homes," members of a group working to help people facing home foreclosure marched down Sixth Avenue, Downtown, on Wednesday as the government introduced a $300 million program to help troubled homeowners swap mortgages for affordable loans.

Sign-carrying members of ACORN -- the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now -- walked from the Duquesne Club to a local office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in Heinz 57 Center on Sixth.

They then learned that applications for the new "Hope for Homeowners" program launched yesterday weren't available there.

"That's disappointing," said Alexander Banai, an electrician from Scenery Hill in Washington County, after hearing he'd have to instead try to contact HUD-approved counseling agencies or dial one of two toll-free telephone numbers to start the application process.

Banai needs help soon to avoid a foreclosure on his home, he said, because he can't afford an adjustable rate mortgage whose payments have gone from $653 to $1,058 in two years.

"Right now I think my interest rate is at 11.25 percent, and it probably will go up to 12 percent or higher in December," said Banai. "So my mortgage is going to be over $1,200.

"I'm just a working class guy, trying to do something with what I have," said Banai. "And I can't afford my own home."

Cheryl Campbell, director of HUD's Pittsburgh Field Office, said her staff was still getting acquainted with the program. "We want very much for Pittsburgh residents to have a successful experience," she said.

She told the nine-member ACORN delegation that HUD officials will do whatever they can to help as many local homeowners as possible.

She said information on the Hope for Homeowners program is available on HUD's Web site, and she and other staff members distributed information to the group.

Sources of help include a list of HUD-approved housing counseling agencies; the Federal Housing Administration's hotline number 800 (CALL-FHA); and a toll-free phone line of the existing Hope Now Alliance at (888) 995-Hope.

"For homeowners in trouble, this may be the help that they need," HUD Secretary Steve Preston said yesterday at a news conference.

To qualify, borrowers must be spending more than 31 percent of their income on mortgage payments. Loans made this year are excluded, except for those completed on Jan 1. Borrowers must have made six months of payments on their loans.

Lenders, rather than borrowers, will decide whether to participate in the program, which requires lenders to take a loss on the initial loan. Preston acknowleged that the government has not yet released a list of participating lenders.

Officials also did not have an updated estimate of how many homeowners were likely to qualify, beyond a Congressional Budget Office estimate from earlier this year that 400,000 borrowers would participate.

The program was passed by Congress this summer as part of a massive housing bill. It is one of several government efforts to stem the mortgage crisis.

Critics, however, call the government's actions sluggish and inadequate. Earlier action to modify loans, they say, might have prevented a $700 billion financial industry bailout now being debated in Washington.

"Some of these loans are so bad that they are driving people into foreclosure, and that's part of the problem," said Maryellen Hayden, head organizer for ACORN in Pittsburgh. "The homes of about 400 families a month in Allegheny County go to foreclosure, and we are really trying to stop this.

"We decided to come down here and ask for help because they took the help out of the $700 billion bailout package."

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