Court halts Channelside Bay Plaza sale

TAMPA — A bankruptcy court in Delaware has delayed the Tampa Port Authority's plans to buy the troubled Channelside Bay Plaza. The court ruled that the Irish Bank Resolution Corp., which owns the retail center's buildings, must do additional due diligence before it can sell the center.

The port owns the land that the 234,520-square-foot Channelside Bay Plaza sits on and had hoped to buy the buildings for $5.75 million.

Irish Bank Resolution Corp. needed the federal court to approve the sale because it has place many of its U.S. properties under bankruptcy protection.

A significant reason for the courts decision was an offer by Punit Shah, president of the Tampa hotel company Liberty Group, and Santosh Govindaraju, managing director for Tampa-based real estate private equity firm Convergent Capital Partners LLC, to buy the property for $7 million. The two had offered a cashier's check for the full amount to the Delaware court for the property.

In a statement following the court's decision, the Tampa Port Authority said it looked forward to continuing to work with the special liquidators for the Irish Bank Resolution Corp. and the courts to find the best solution for Channelside and the Tampa Bay community.