Tempe's Centerpoint towers sold for $30M, will be renamed West Sixth

The saga of the unfinished Centerpoint in downtown Tempe was resolved Friday afternoon when Cleveland-based Zaremba Group purchased the property. It was the same deal that was supposed to close last October but fell apart because of complicated mechanics lien issues and disagreements with the title company. The deal closed about 4 p.m., according to Mark Winkleman, chief operating officer of ML Manager LLC, the owner of the property. At 5 p.m. Zaremba announced that the two-tower complex in downtown Tempe will be renamed West Sixth in deference to the formal address of 111 W. Sixth St. What was intended to be luxury condos will be offered as rentals as soon as the project is completed. Construction will begin immediately and is likely to take several months. “We got it done. There were so many documents to sign,” Winkleman said. Originally the deal was a fairly simple one with Zaremba acquiring the 375-unit project for $30 million and finishing it. But a day before the October closing, title company Fidelity National Title Co. backed out. At issue were an estimated $21 million in mechanics liens filed against the troubled project. In the deal today, Zaremba paid ML Manager $30 million, the same amount it offered previously, with ML Manager talking $13.2 million of that to acquire the mechanics liens back from Zaremba. Now ML Manager will pursue its insurance claims against Fidelity for those mechanics liens. When other costs of closing the deal are put together, however, investors with ML Manager won’t be seeing any take home money. Winkleman is adamant, however, that ML Manager will be successful in its fight with Fidelity and will recoup some of its losses on behalf of investors. Right now he’s just relieved to have the deal close.

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