138-Acre Massachusetts Sports Complex Files For Bankruptcy Protection
The owners of a 138-acre planned sports facility and hotel campus in Attleboro, Massachusetts, have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection amid financial difficulties brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.
New England Sports Village will continue to operate its lone completed property, a hockey rink at 1395 Commerce Way off Interstate 95, 40 miles south of Boston near the Rhode Island border. The property fell behind in mortgage payments due to poor business exacerbated by the pandemic, a representative told The Sun Chronicle. The filing kept a foreclosure auction for the site, assessed at $36M by Attleboro, at bay for a third time.
“There’s a dispute between us and the lender which we have not been able to resolve amicably,” Stuart Silberberg, managing partner of the company that owns the venue, told The Sun Chronicle. “We don’t believe foreclosure is the appropriate action.”
Silberberg declined to disclose how much the venue owed lender SHS, but in the filing said the complex has liabilities between $10M and $50M. SHS, which purchased the debt from Harbor One Bank in December, according to the filing, declined to restructure the loan after NESV’s drop in revenues.
The business also owes Attleboro $567K in real estate taxes. It also remains caught up in a lawsuit with Construction Source Management and its principal, John Kelly, who built the rink, according to the bankruptcy filing. The lawsuits remain active, according to Bristol County Superior Court records.
NESV, under Chapter 11, will continue to operate the 100K SF hockey facility which hosts the Johnson & Wales University men’s and women’s hockey teams, among other teams and leagues. The hockey rink was completed in 2016 and is the only built structure part of the larger, $53M project. Subsequent building phases are to include a 150-room hotel, a 110K SF field house to host multiple sports and a 52K SF tennis and aquatics center.
Silberberg's company purchased the former industrial business park plot for $2.34M in 2015 from the Attleboro Redevelopment Authority. The sports facility’s bankruptcy comes as other entertainment and hospitality assets, including movie theaters, restaurants and hotels, have struggled to survive pandemic restrictions.
