Firm close to deal on Cranmer Courts

Press, 15 December 1983, Page 18

Firm close to deal on Cranmer Courts

Berryman Properties, Ltd, the Cranmer Courts developer, is close to concluding a financial package to complete stage one of the project. For this reason, Mr Justice Cook yesterday adjourned two winding up petitions against the company in the High Court until February 8, next year. The application for adjournment was made by Berryman Properties’ counsel, Dr W. G. G. A. Young, and supported by four of the company’s creditors. The petitions were presented by Hollobons Hire Services, Ltd, and an Auck-land-based engineering and architectural firm, Kingston, Reynolds, Thom and Allardice, Ltd. Both have lodged petitions before and have had them adjourned; Hollobons seven times and K.R.T.A. nine times. While they did not speak in support of yesterday’s adjournment neither did they oppose it. For Hollobons, this represented a change; the company has previously pushed for a hearing, sometimes strenuously.

The principal shareholder in Berryman Properties, Mr Chris Berryman, said later yesterday that a scheme of arrangement to bind the company’s debts had been filed on Tuesday for Court approval. That secured, a creditors’ meeting would be called for February 1 to discuss the proposal, he said. The consent of 50 per cent of them representing 75 per cent of the debt is needed before it can be formally endorsed. However, Mr Berryman said that that was “pretty well a foregone conclusion.” The Westpac Bank, which holds a $600,000 second mortgage on the development, offered early in October to provide a further loan of $450,000 for the completion of the first stage of the townhouse project subject to a number of conditions. These requirements now had been met, Mr Berryman said, and construction would resume immediately the creditors had approved the scheme of arrangement. He said that the company,

which would in future be controlled by appointed managers rather than himself, might sell stages two and three of the complex. Alternatively, it might retain a 50 per cent share in them. “Several negotiations” were in progress. Fletchers Development and Construction, Ltd, is poised to pick up the construction contract for stage one. The development manager, Mr Don Turner, said yesterday that the company had incorporated a proposal to that effect in the scheme submitted to the Court but that as yet it was not a formal party to the agreement. “Hopefully something will happen soon,” he said. “I think everyone is‘ getting a little concerned at the time taken but it is not an easy thing to sort out.” Mr Turner said that “all going well” the company hoped to begin work early in February and that it would then consider buying the balance of the development, stages two and three.