Christiana’s Move to N.Y. Is Put On Hold
Christiana Cos.’ headquarters move to New York has been halted, and the once-booming real estate development company will remain based in San Diego, at least temporarily, the company’s new president said Wednesday.
The operating plan calls for “business as usual at Christiana” until Dallas-based Western Savings Assn., which took over a controlling 39% interest in Christiana late Monday night, can review the company’s operations, Bernard V. Carrico Jr., Christiana’s new president, said in a telephone interview from Dallas.
Carrico is vice chairman and chief operating officer of Western, which assumed control over 930,000 shares of Christiana stock from Texas investor John H. Roberts Jr.
When Roberts’ Summit Savings Assn., a $350-million-asset savings and loan based in Plainview, Tex., missed a quarterly loan payment due Western on Nov. 30, Western seized possession of Summit, which owned the Christiana stock.
Roberts had used all of Summit’s stock as security for a loan of more than $8 million that Western assumed last summer, Carrico said.
Western has not disclosed the exact loan amount, but will have to in Securities and Exchange Documents that will be filed next week, according to Carrico.
Roberts and directors John P. Holmes, Martin Fenton and Wendell Fenton all resigned Tuesday after Western’s takeover of Christiana.
Roberts assumed control of Christiana in February and immediately embarked on a diversification plan that included acquisition of F. A. O. Schwarz, a New York-based retailer of upscale children’s toys.
Part of the corporate change was a headquarters relocation to New York that was to have been completed next month.
“The New York move is on hold,” Carrico said Wednesday. “We don’t know what we’re going to do in the long-term, but we have no intention of moving (Christiana) to Dallas.”
Western’s review of Christiana will take a couple of months. “We’d like everybody (at Christiana) to continue to do what they’re doing,” Carrico said.
The company will honor its recently signed five-year lease for about 4,500 square feet of space in the La Jolla Gateway II project in the Golden Triangle area, Carrico said.
Under Roberts’ old plan, Christiana’s real estate development division--with about one dozen employees--was to remain in San Diego anyway.
Western, with $1.6 billion in assets, is already in the real estate business, operating a title insurance company and a property management firm, Carrico said.
