The owners of the former Nate's Clothing building in downtown Minneapolis, where Om restaurant opened to great fanfare in late summer 2009 and quietly closed last month, have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The bankruptcy comes one month after lenders foreclosed on the property.
The 401 Group LLC listed assets of $3.4 million and liabilities of $9.1 million in documents filed this week in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Minneapolis.
The company is run by the father-son development team of Sohan and Vik Uppal. The Circle Pines business purchased the building at 401 1st Av. N. for $3.65 million in 2008 with plans to renovate the historic property with Om on the ground level and apartments on the upper floors.
Work on the apartments was not completed, according to Ann Johnson, attorney for the 401 Group.
Property records show the estimated market value of the building as $2.5 million. Its liquidation value is listed as $1.6 million in the bankruptcy filings.
Central Bank, which foreclosed on the building in January, is listed as the largest creditor; it holds mortgages for $3.71 million and $1.76 million. The original lender was Mainstreet Bank, a bank in Forest Lake that concentrated too heavily on loans to developers and builders. Regulators shut the insolvent bank in 2009 and Central Bank bought the deposits and eight branches.
Sohan Uppal and Vik's mother, Vijay, who also is involved in the family business, listed a personal loan of about $2.1 million among the unsecured claims in the bankruptcy filing.
Other unsecured claims ranging from about $27,000 to about $176,000 are mostly from contractors that did construction work on the building.
