BALTIMORE — Continental Realty Corp. (CRC) has launched an internal program to aid the restaurant industry in the communities it serves. CRC owns and operates retail centers and multifamily properties in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and Florida. Between April 14 and May 15, any CRC employee who provides a receipt for food items bought locally will be reimbursed up to $200. “We feel extremely strongly about initiating a program that benefits our loyal and hard-working team members and supports the restaurant sector,” says Crystal Frey, senior vice president of human resources for CRC. “With restaurants reduced to handling carry-out and curbside orders, we encourage other companies to follow our lead to minimize the disruption impacting both locally owned and nationally operated locations.” CRC is based in Baltimore and focuses on value-add properties throughout the Southeast.
AUSTIN, TEXAS — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has issued an opinion stating that property owners that have been economically hurt by the COVID-19 outbreak are not eligible for the temporary tax exemption under section 11.35 of the Texas Tax Code. The state’s top law enforcement official wrote the opinion in response to a request from State Senator Paul Bettencourt. In assessing the issue, Paxton noted that the temporary tax exemption identified in section 11.35, which was adopted in 2017 to give relief to property owners following Hurricane Harvey, only applied to “property physically harmed as a result of a declared disaster.” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared the COVID-19 pandemic a disaster on March 13 and extended the declaration for another 30 days on Monday.
CHICAGO — The temporary conversion of a portion of Chicago’s McCormick Place Convention Center into an alternate care facility for COVID-19 patients is expected to be complete by Friday, April 24. Walsh Construction, the contractor for the project, completed the first 500 beds earlier this month. The facility will have the capacity to treat up to 3,000 low-to-moderate acuity patients across three of the convention center’s halls. Patients will be separated by the level of care required. The Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are directing the conversion of the temporary field hospital. The project is designed to relieve pressure on the city’s hospital system by freeing up beds for more patients with severe COVID-19 cases in anticipation of a surge in positive diagnoses. Stantec provided design and engineering services for the project.
FLORISSANT, MO. — Tarlton Corp. has completed the conversion of a Quality Inn hotel in Florissant into the state’s first alternate care facility to treat non-acute COVID-19 patients. The facility, if needed, will serve as backup for patients referred by St. Louis-area hospitals. Members of the Missouri National Guard will staff the facility. Tarlton worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the project, as well as Ross & Baruzzini, Rock Hill Mechanical Corp. and Guarantee Electrical Co. The 4.5-day project yielded more than 100 patient rooms on the four floors of the 130-room hotel. The team built a nurse’s station on each floor and turned the existing phone system into a nurse call system. The project assignment came just hours after Tarlton President Tracy Hart and COO Dirk Elsperman lost their father, Bob Elsperman, to COVID-19. Bob Elsperman led Tarlton from 1972 to1999. He was admitted to a St. Louis-area hospital on March 30 and died eight days later at the age of 83.
MANHATTAN BEACH, CALIF. — True Religion, a premium jeans retailer based in Manhattan Beach, filed papers in Delaware bankruptcy court on Monday, April 13. In its filing, the company stated that pandemic-related closure of all its retail location and all the stores of its wholesale buyers had accelerated “existing liquidity constraints.” Due to these factors, True Religion furloughed all nonessential employees and reentered Chapter 11, which it previously entered in July 2017. “While the debtors would have preferred to wait out the current instabilities of the financial markets and retail industry generally, [True Religion] simply could not afford to do so,” according to the filing. The company, which was founded in 2002, stated in its bankruptcy filings that it has just north of 1,000 employees, 92 percent of them currently furloughed. The Chapter 11 petition listed between $100 million and $500 million in liabilities.
AUSTIN, TEXAS — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced on Monday that Goldman Sachs and LiftFund, along with other community development financial institutions (CDFIs), are partnering to provide $50 million in loans to small businesses in Texas that have been negatively affected by COVID-19. These loans, made through the U.S. Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), will primarily be used for payroll so that employees can continue to receive paychecks and small businesses can retain their employees. Goldman Sachs will provide the capital as part of its $550 million commitment to COVID-19 relief, and LiftFund, alongside other CDFIs, will administer the funding to qualified small businesses. If all stipulations are met, small business can have their loans forgiven in full by the SBA.
PLANO, TEXAS — Cinemark Theatres (NYSE: CNK), an operating subsidiary of Cinemark USA Inc., has announced the sale of $250 million in senior debt notes in a private offering, the Plano-based entertainment company said in a statement on Monday. The offering on senior secured notes that are due in 2025 is expected to close on April 20, subject to customary closing conditions. Cinemark said it plans to use proceeds from the sale for “general corporate purposes” that will increase liquidity. Multiple news outlets, including The Dallas Morning News and the Phoenix Business Journal, also report that Cinemark is laying off 17,500 hourly employees and furloughing about half its corporate staff. As of September 2019, Cinemark operated 344 theaters totaling 4,630 screens in 41 U.S. states. Movie theaters were among the first categories of retailers to close their doors in response to the outbreak of COVID-19.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Smithfield Foods Inc. has closed its pork processing plant in Sioux Falls until further notice. Nearly 250 workers tested positive for the coronavirus, more than half of the active coronavirus cases in the state of South Dakota, according to Gov. Kristi Noem. The Smithfield plant is one of the largest pork processing facilities in the U.S., representing 4 to 5 percent of U.S. pork production. It supplies nearly 130 million servings of food per week, or about 18 million servings per day. Smithfield employs 3,700 workers at the facility and more than 550 independent family farmers supply the plant. “The closure of this facility, combined with a growing list of other protein plants that have shuttered across our country, is pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply,” says Kenneth Sullivan, president and CEO of Smithfield. “It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running.” Virginia-based Smithfield will resume operations in Sioux Falls once local, state and federal officials give further direction. The company will continue to compensate its employees for the next two weeks.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is expected to grant extensions to the 45-day identification period and 180-day purchase period that applies to commercial real estate investors seeking to transact via 1031 exchanges. The expectation that an extension will be granted is supported by Legal 1031 Exchange Services, a New York-based law firm specializing in this type of transaction. The firm is one of several trade groups that has pushed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to make an official announcement on the subject. Historically, extensions for both periods have been 120 days in length. The IRS has already extended the deadline for filing federal income taxes for 2019 to July 15, 2020 in response to the pandemic.
ATLANTA — The State of Georgia has signed a contract with Pacific Architects and Engineers (PAE) to build a 200-bed, alternate care facility at Georgia World Congress Center (GWCC) in downtown Atlanta for coronavirus (COVID-19) patients, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced Sunday. Starting immediately, the Georgia National Guard, Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency, Department of Community Health, Department of Public Health and contractors will begin to prepare GWCC to house and treat patients with mild to moderate illness levels excluding ventilator support. Nearby Grady Memorial Hospital will lend additional support to the center. As of Monday, April 13, there have been 10,726 confirmed cases in Georgia and 1,422 in Fulton County, according to Johns Hopkins University (JHU). HealthData.org projects the peak date for COVID-19 cases in the state will be Sunday, April 26.