Trinity Towns site to be auctioned at foreclosure sale today

In 2010, construction was supposed to begin on Trinity Towns, a townhome project that, if they were all built, would have featured about 60 units.

Planned for just a few blocks from Bank of America Stadium and within walking distance of Uptown, the project was to be built on roughly 1.72 acres at 1449 S. Church St.

But the project ended up being nothing more than a plan: Construction never started, and what should be Trinity Towns is an empty lot. Black-and-white plastic pipes — for sewage and other utility connections — jut out of the ground like stunted trees surrounded by real vegetation growing out of control.

Now, the site is being sold at a foreclosure auction set for 10:30 a.m. today.

According to foreclosure documents, California-based MIL Acquisition Venture is the holder of the property’s loan, and the property has a $4.45 million mortgage. According to Mecklenburg County, the site has a tax value of $3 million.

On Monday, the day before the foreclosure sale was set to take place, a sign at the site still proclaimed that the project would be “coming soon.” The townhouses, though, have never made it beyond a rendering on a sign at the intersection of South Church and West Summit Avenue. Those who walk up to the sign might notice that the back has been spray-painted to cover up some sort of information, but a phone number and address for mytownhome.com have been spared the obscuring powers of the spray paint.

Scott Lindsley, a former real estate agent for Charlotte-based realty company My Townhome, who had represented Trinity Towns, said the project didn’t generate the number of presales required by the lender.

“I don’t remember the exact number needed, but the bank pretty much wanted us to have half of them presold, and we did not,” he said Monday. “In the past three years, people have been very reluctant to buy into a project like this and then wait six to eight months for it to be built. They see a townhome across the street that is already built and the prices on it have been cut and they just go buy that.”

In 2006, Charlotte developer The Boulevard Co. bought the site for $3 million, according to mytownhome.com. The Boulevard Co. owner Chris Branch had done at least one other project on South Church Street: Closer to Bank of America stadium, he developed 1225 South Church apartments, a 196-unit project finished in 2009 and sold to Memphis, Tenn.-based Mid-America Apartment Communities  for $27.5 million in 2010, according to Mid-America’s website.

Pricing for Trinity Towns was to start at about $149,000 per unit, according to mytownhome.com.

Contacted Monday by a reporter, Branch said he couldn’t talk about Trinity Towns.

The  Boulevard Co. is no more, and Branch now works for  Charlotte-based developer Faison. According to Branch’s profile on Faison’s website, where he has worked as senior managing director of multifamily development since last year, he founded and ran The Boulevard Co. for 19 years.

Looking back at Trinity Homes, Lindsley makes it sound like it should have been a success.

“We had a ton of interest in those town homes,” he said. “I probably had 15 to 20 calls about people wanting to buy one.”

Baughman can be reached at [email protected].