The rumor on the street is the foreclosure on the Trump Tower in downtown Tampa was completed yesterday on the court house steps. The timing of the event is not as important as the fact that Colonial Bank had already received judgement against Simdag, LLC last month. The bank taking ownership was just a matter of when, not if.
Foreclosure of the property is the final act in the end of a long, sordid tale. The Tower project has become a microcosm of the latest boom and bust era of the Tampa real estate market. Trump Tower was supposed to be the tallest building in the area. The project went to pre-construction sale at a time when the real estate market craze was long in the tooth and it never received the construction funding necessary to move the project along. The deal eventually erupted in to a legal battle between SimDag, LLC (the developer) and Donald Trump (self proclaimed real estate tycoon) over licensing issues. Donald Trump eventually sued and hinted that he would take over the project, if necessary, to make sure buyers were made whole and his name not sullied by the project. Trump never carried through, though, and buyers and lenders were left holding the bag.
