Time for “new blood”? : Westwood Plaza in foreclosure, put up for sale by the sheriff | New

JOHNSTOWN, PA – A foreclosure has been enforced on Westwood Plaza in the Township of Lower Yoder, owned by Westwood Zamias Limited Partnership.

More than a dozen commercial tenants rent space in the plaza, located at 1910 Minno Drive, Johnstown.

Zamias has owned the place since 1990. Company president Perry Russ was on a trip last week and said in an email that the company has no comments on the sheriff’s impending sale at this time.

The property includes the Westwood Plaza Theater & Cafe, Andolina’s Barber Shop, Bargain Beer & Pop, Burger King, Capri Pizza & Restaurant, Dollar Tree, Dunkin ‘Donuts, H&R Block, HF Lenz Company, Conemaugh Health System offices, Northwest Bank, O ‘Shea’s Candies, Pizza Hut, Vantage Physical Therapy, Fine Wine & Good Spirits and Main Source Trading Corp.

The place is on the county sheriff’s December 10 sale schedule to the highest bidder, according to Cambria County Courthouse documents.

The base offer price would reflect the Cambria County Sheriff’s Office costs to list the property. This cost has not been finalized, staff at the sheriff’s office said.

The planned sale of Westwood Plaza is set to enforce the total $ 11.5 million foreclosure judgment rendered against Zamias in June. The sale can be stopped if Zamias pays for the judgment or files a petition to have the court set aside the judgment, according to the notice filed at the Cambria County Courthouse.

Follows the Galleria sale

The foreclosure of the plaza and the sheriff’s planned sale follows that of The Johnstown Galleria shopping center in Richland Township, a former Zamias property.

The Galleria’s mortgage lender, the US Bank National Association, bought the mall in a sheriff’s sale last month at the base auction of $ 238,718.

The sheriff’s sale of the Galleria was the culmination of a 20-month foreclosure process, which began with a court-appointed receiver taking over the management of the mall from Zamias Services Inc.

A $ 15 million foreclosure judgment was subsequently issued against the mall owner, ADAR Johnstown LLC. Although Zamias managed the mall until foreclosure, the mall’s mortgage had been owned by Florida-based company ADAR for years.

The creditor has continued to operate the mall since removing it from the sheriff’s sale.

Court documents show that the foreclosure of Westwood Plaza began in June, with the appointment of a receiver to manage the property in place of Zamias. A foreclosure judgment followed a few days later.

The plaintiff in this case is Zamias’ mortgagee, Deutsche Bank Trust Co. Americas, as trustee on behalf of the registered holders of GS Mortgage Securities Corp. II.

“Slow drainage”

Westwood Plaza Theater & Cafe owner Blake Fleegle, who is also an entrepreneurial coach with local economic development agencies, said he believes a sale to a new owner would be a positive change for tenants in the square long-term.

“In the short term, there will be obstacles in determining who the new owners will be and what their strategy is – but in the long term, if you get someone who just bought the place, they will be financially interested. by bringing in new tenants and not leaving it as it is, ”he said. “It has been a slow drain for the past 10 years. Hopefully, with new blood we can start to reverse this trend. “

Fleegle said the theater has a lease in effect for the next five years, so he doesn’t expect any drastic changes to the plaza in the near future.

He said the loss of key grocery store tenants, the last of which left in 2015, has resulted in a drop in traffic to the square.

“I think the biggest change, which really wasn’t anyone’s fault, came when BiLo closed and then Good Cents after them,” Fleegle said. “They had an auction and sold the contents of the space, and now it’s just a big white box, which is hard to rent. Without that big anchor point at the corner, it reduced traffic for the square in general. When you lose a big anchor like that, it hurts everyone.