Trinity Capital Advisors buys note on the struggling Steel Yard

Trinity Capital Advisors has bought the note on the Steel Yard in Southend.

Trinity Capital Advisors of Charlotte partnered with Urdang Capital Management, a division of Bank of New York Mellon Corp., to buy the property, which includes three buildings totaling 78,539 square feet on 2.78 acres.

Located along South Boulevard and Tremont Avenue, the property includes the historic Tompkins Toolworx building and is home to Sullivan's Steakhouse. The Steel Yard had been struggling and was in default. Earlier this year, the property lost a major tenant, the Mexican restaurant La Paz, because of a landlord dispute.

"We've been tracking this asset and its challenged capitalization for a long time, and this note purchase allowed us to gain control of fundamentally strong real estate at a compelling basis," said Walker Collier, Trinity Capital's managing director. "This project has suffered over the last year due to its capitalization structure, and now we're ready to re-position and stabilize the asset within the marketplace."

The Steel Yard had been in default on its loan but the note has since been prepaid, according to a review of data provided by Bloomberg News.

Trinity Capital Advisors has been on a buying spree. At the beginning of the year, the Charlotte real estate investment company bought the debt and equity interest in NASCAR Plaza in uptown. The 393,000-square-foot office tower had been scheduled to be sold by its lender at foreclosure auction. For that deal, Trinity partnered with Rubenstein Partners, a Philadelphia-based real estate fund manager.

Trinity Capital Advisors has hired sister company Trinity Partners to manage the Steel Yard. Trinity Partners' Rhea Green will handle office leasing and Charles Thrift at Collet & Associates will handle retail leasing.

Urdang Capital Management is the sole real estate investment management subsidiary within The Bank of New York Mellon Corp., and ranks as one of the largest global asset managers with $1.3 trillion in assets under management.

Trinity Capital has acquired and developed a portfolio totaling four million square feet with a total cost of more than $400 million.