Local News in Brief : No on Horse Center Plan
A City Council board rejected a plan for financial reorganization of the debt-ridden Los Angeles Equestrian Center Wednesday.
However, a U.S. Bankruptcy Court is scheduled to evaluate the same plan today and could force the city to accept it, city officials said.
After Wednesday’s 4-1 decision by the Board of Referred Powers, an attorney for Gibraltar Savings--which loaned the center $18 million during the last several years--said the firm plans to foreclose on the 70-acre Griffith Park facility Friday, taking over the lease until it can find a new operator. Gibraltar said horses boarded there would be cared for until a new operator is approved by the city.
The foreclosure would mean the end of a tumultuous era for the center’s operator, J. Albert Garcia, under whose leadership the center has amassed $27 million in debts.
Under Garcia’s bail-out plan, the center would have received a $12.3-million loan from Trafalgar Holdings Ltd., a Los Angeles financial firm. About $9 million of that loan would go to Gibraltar to settle the debt.
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