How Torode was bucked off Calgary's real estate bull
BY JASON MARKUSOFF, CALGARY HERALDMARCH 27, 2010 7:32 AM
The 39-storey Condo Arts (or Residences at Hotel Arts), slated to rise in this parking lot, remains a dream.
Photograph by: Gavin Young, Calgary Herald
T hanks to the recession, last year's Calgary Stampede was missing a few of its annual soirees, but no party was as conspicuously absent as the Torodeo.
John Torode's invite-only feast and dance had gained a reputation over two decades as the place to see and be seen. He had lately hosted it at his Hotel Arts, the first of many stylish transformations the developer planned to bring to Victoria Park.
But last July he was busy with other matters.
Piece by piece, John Torode's business empire was slipping away.
The day before the July 3 Stampede Parade, he fully lost control of his Arriva tower project, quashing his plan to erect Alberta's tallest condo building.
The next week, his nearly complete downtown office building also fell into receivership, and a court ordered him and his company to pay $7.2 million toward an expired loan on another development property.
In August, with creditors starting to reach at his mountain of debts and personal loan guarantees totalling $187 million, Torode sought court protection from personal bankruptcy.
Even if he drained his bank account and sold nearly all his personal property, shares in foreign racehorses and his Bentley convertible, it wasn't nearly enough.
A bankruptcy trustee estimated the businessman was only able to propose giving eight cents for every dollar he owed to anticipated unsecured creditors, court documents show.
His development firm, TRL Capital, could fare much better with its sell-off proposal, but still fall short.
The banks and lenders rejected the offers. On Nov. 27, with the disintegration of his financial universe well underway, Torode and TRL were declared bankrupt, punctuating the 37-year career of one of Calgary's most prominent deal-makers.
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