A portion of the largest office park in the Twin Cities metro could soon fall under control of Minnesota’s largest credit union after the current owner, a New York-based investment firm, has failed to keep up with mortgage payments.
Wings Financial foreclosing on portion of Normandale Lakes Office Park
New York-based owner Opal Holdings owes $40.3 million in unpaid mortgage to the credit union for the 8200 Tower of the largest office park in the Twin Cities metro.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
April 2, 2024 at 7:17PM
Wings Financial Credit Union sued Liberty 8200 Normandale LLC — an entity of owner Opal Holdings that specifically represents the 8200 Tower of the Normandale Lake Office Park in Bloomington near the Hwy. 100 and I-494 interchange — seeking to foreclose on the property and sell it in a sheriff’s sale.
Opal acquired the office park, a collection of five buildings built between 1983 and 2009 with 1.7 million square feet of office space, for $366 million in 2022. The 8200 Tower is 11 stories comprising 277,481 square feet of that space. Wings provided the financing for that deal in June 2022.
As of last week, Wings Financial said Opal owed $40.3 million on its mortgage and has accrued interest of more than $4,300 per day. The credit union declined to comment further Tuesday.
As of November, the occupancy rate of the park was in the mid-80s percentile, but Opal also hadn’t fully paid nearly $10 million in property taxes to Hennepin County, including nearly $850,000 in penalties. Opal Holdings was not reachable for comment.
The suit noted “the mortgage provides that upon default on the note and/or mortgage, Wings may pursue all available remedies including foreclosure of the mortgage.” Wings is also seeking to appoint a receiver, a neutral third party to oversee the management and sale of the property.
United Financials Capital, an amalgam of four Minnesota credit unions, helped finance another of the Normandale Lake buildings, the 8400 Tower, but Apple Valley-based Wings is not part of that group.
The largest banks typically dominate commercial real estate lending, but credit unions have become more active in the industry. In a recent overview of commercial real estate lending, business analytics firm Moody’s wrote, “even though [people] traditionally think of credit unions as lenders for cars and homes, they have been growing in the CRE space over the past few years.”
Star Tribune staff writer Jim Buchta contributed to this story.
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