La Vista on Lavaca is Back: to Proceed With Construction

La Vista on Lavaca, an eight-story residential mixed-use tower consisting of 19 condominiums on the top four floors, a three-floor Executive Business Center, and first floor restaurant, is set to emerge from its construction freeze after months of inactivity.

After running into financial problems, the project was halted during a rare mid-construction freeze. Typically, projects do not break ground until they have lined-up enough sales to receive financing to support the entire construction process. The developers of La Vista on Lavaca — which billed the project as “Downtown Living for Grown-up Texans” — began construction after receiving a building permit and a street closure permit last April. They renewed the street closure permit once in November but failed to renew it at it’s recent anniversary. With the interest accumulating quickly and contracts that typically require developers to meet tight deadlines, mid-construction stoppages are extremely rare. Typically, stoppages only occur when projects run out of money or when the developer and key contractors win-up in a legal dispute.

In the latest move, one of the founding partners has sold the shares of another partner to a syndicate of three new investors. With fresh capital injected into the project, La Vista on Lavaca is set to resume construction in January.

Here is a summary from the Austin Business Journal:

A $30 million condominium project near the University of Texas that’s been delayed for eight years has new partners that plan to move it forward again.Mary Guerrero-McDonald, one of the original partners in the project, says she has sold a portion of the LaVista on Lavaca condominium project for an undisclosed amount to three new partners: Mac Pike, a partner in the Sutton Co.; Austin real estate developer Jimmy Nassour; and a third undisclosed partner.Guerrero-McDonald had previously partnered with Gene Fondren, a lobbyist for the Texas Automobile Dealers Association who suffered a stroke. Guerrero-McDonald says she sold Fondren’s portion to the three new investors, and says she will remain involved as a partner.Pike declined to say how much Sutton and the two investors paid for the project, but says construction should start again in early January.