Owner seeks to sell
Aloha Tower Marketplace

The owner of the Aloha Tower Marketplace wants to sell the troubled waterfront complex to its lender for $25 million in an effort to emerge from bankruptcy protection.

In court papers filed on Tuesday, Aloha Tower LP said it wants to transfer ownership of the 165,000-square-foot center to mortgage holder AHI Aloha LP.

The seller said the sale will enable it to pay off more than $200,000 in delinquent rents owed to the state, which owns the fee interest to Aloha Tower.

The company said it also will pay off about $200,000 owed to vendors and other creditors, or about 52.5 percent of the money owed to those creditors.

The deal requires the approval of the bankruptcy court and the state. The state Aloha Tower Development Corp., which oversees the project, will meet Thursday to discuss the proposed sale.

Aloha Tower is controlled by Trinity Investment Trust LLC, whose partners include developers George Ruff, Charles Sweeney and Jon Miho.

AHI Aloha's partners include Trinity and Wall Street dealmaker Leon Black's Apollo Real Estate Advisors LP.

In the proposed deal, the buyer will not pay cash but will wipe out some of the debt owed by the seller. Aloha Tower borrowed more than $83 million from AHI Aloha when it purchased the center in 1997.

Built at a cost of $100 million in 1994, the center has been a subject of complex litigation between lenders, creditors and builders.

Aloha Tower LP filed for Chapter 11 bank-ruptcy reorganization in January 2002, listing debts of more than $100 million.

The center's previous owner, Aloha Tower Associates, also filed for bankruptcy protection in the late 1990s, forcing the project's sale to its current owners.