PORT ST. LUCIE — Financial and legal problems are mounting at the exclusive Tesoro development in St. Lucie County.

Tesoro’s parent company, the Ginn Cos., remains tight-lipped over how the company plans to cope with money problems and a new lawsuit filed recently in St. Lucie County.

Company executives indicated Tuesday the company still was negotiating with creditors over missed loan and interest payments due over the summer.

“We are currently negotiating with a group of lenders that represent a credit facility on several of our communities including Tesoro,” said Ginn spokesman Ryan Julison. “However, these negotiations are ongoing and we have not reached resolution regarding the go forward.”A credit facility is a massive business loan that involves various terms and conditions, collateral and interest rates.

Julison declined to comment on how the problems would affect the upscale Port St. Lucie development or Tesoro residents and would only say, “Tesoro Club is currently open and operational.”

The Ginn Cos. is a development company founded by Bobby Ginn in Celebration near Orlando.

The 1,400-acre community is a master-planned development that features luxury homes with lake and golf course views. In 2007, home sites ranged from $400,000 to more than $700,000 and home-only prices ranged from $1.2 million to more than $5 million.

Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson designed the private golf course at the Tesoro Club, which played host to the Ginn Classic at Tesoro, a PGA Tour Fall Series event played Oct. 25-28 last year.

In addition to Tesoro, the company and its subsidiaries are negotiating debt with a group of lenders that helped finance Ginn’s other communities, including Quail West in Naples, Laurelmor in North Carolina and Ginn sur Mer in the Grand Bahama Island.

The company’s money problems surfaced this summer, when Rob Gidel, Ginn’ s president, announced the company did not make principal and interest payments on a $675 million credit facility from Credit Suisse and had reached a forbearance agreement with several of the company’s lenders.

Forbearance is a postponement of loan payments, granted by a lender or creditor for a temporary period of time.

Julison declined to comment on the status of those negotiations or forbearance agreement.

Ginn’s other communities, Reunion Resort & Club, Hammock Beach, the Conservatory, Bella Collina, Old Bahama Bay, Tesoro Preserve and Cobblestone Park, are not affected by company’s financial problems because they were not part of Credit Suisse’s credit facility.

Gidel previously said the slowdown in the residential real estate market made it impossible for the company to make payments due under the credit facility.

Now, Ginn is facing a lawsuit filed in St. Lucie County on Oct. 21 alleging the company took part in several violations of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, several counts of fraudulent misrepresentation and breach of contract.

Fort Lauderdale-based attorney Eric Salpeter is representing John Migyanka, Flora Migyanka and Christopher Delany, who all bought property at Tesoro. The trio claims Ginn told property buyers they “could immediately flip their lots and profit substantially by doing so,” according to the lawsuit.

The three claim they have suffered diminished property value and lost profits because of their purchases. Salpeter could not be reached Tuesday.

By Nadia Vanderhoof, TCPalm.com

Tags: Bobby Ginn, creditors, development, Ginn Cos., lawsuit, loan, Ryan Julison, tesoro, tesoro club

This entry was posted on Friday, November 14th, 2008 at 10:25 am and is filed under Economy, Port St. Lucie. 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.