A lender is aiming to deliver a knockout blow against boxing promoter Don King over a distressed 52-acre redevelopment site in Palm Beach County.
A foreclosure auction for the former jai alai fronton at 1415 45th Street in Mangonia Park is set for May 18 after Palm Beach County Circuit Court Judge Scott Kerner last month awarded a $42.5 million judgment in favor of an affiliate of Taylor Made Lending, a Pompano Beach-based hard money lender, court records show.
King and Taylor Made Lending’s attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.
Two entities managed by King that own the property listed the site for sale in April without an asking price, but sources said the boxing legend was seeking offers in the $100 million range.
The same month, Taylor Made Lending sued the entities for allegedly defaulting on three loans totaling $38 million that were obtained between 2023 and last year. Taylor Made is the special servicer, representing a consortium of investors that own the mortgages, including Miami-based Winston Capital Management.
The lawsuit alleges King is a personal guarantor of the loans, but he is not named as a defendant in the complaint. King has a pending motion to dismiss the foreclosure case.
The property includes a shuttered 282,800-square-foot jai alai fronton built in 1973, and a lot that is used for parking for a neighboring Tri-Rail passenger rail station, according to an online offering memorandum. King, who organized some of boxing’s greatest all-time matches, bought the site for $6.3 million in 1999, records show.
King took out the first loan for $22.3 million at a 13.9 percent annual interest rate in 2023, court records show. A year later, he took out the second loan for $9 million at an 18.5 percent annual interest rate, and the third loan for $800,000 with a 2 percent annual interest rate, according to the two mortgages, which were attached to the foreclosure complaint.
Taylor Made alleges King stopped making the monthly $138,750 interest-only payments on the $9 million loan in September and failed to repay the $800,000 loan when it matured in December.
King last attempted to sell the Mangonia Park site a decade ago, but a deal with West Palm Beach-based FRI Investors fell apart.
The property is approved for primarily office, governmental, medical outpatient, educational and manufacturing uses, but 25 percent of the site could be developed into some retail such as pharmacies, gift shops, restaurants and gyms, the offering states. In July, King sold another distressed property facing foreclosure. An affiliate of Straticon, a Boca Raton-based construction firm, paid $11 million for King’s warehouse in Deerfield Beach that served as the boxing promoter’s headquarters. Proceeds from the sale satisfied an allegedly delinquent $5.1 million mortgage King took out on the property in 2023.
