EpiCentre headed for foreclosure after owner misses several loan payments

CHARLOTTE — Uptown Charlotte’s EpiCentre is headed for foreclosure.

Channel 9 learned the California company that owns the former hotspot has missed months of mortgage payments on its $85 million loan.

Now, the bank is asking a judge to put a receiver in charge of collecting rent directly from EpiCentre tenants while the bank pursues foreclosure.

“If they are successful, an order will be filed by the clerk’s office, allowing them to put the property up for auction on the courthouse steps,” bankruptcy attorney Heather Culp said. ”At the same time, what they’re asking a judge to do here, is to appoint a receiver to step in, in the meantime, and collect the rents from the tenants.”

Culp said the process of appointing a receiver to collect rent payments could happen quickly, but an actual foreclosure could take up to 75 days.

“It is the 11th hour for the borrower to take some pretty drastic steps to show that they can turn this around,” Culp said.

Ten businesses at the EpiCentre have been evicted since Jan. 2020.

“It’s been a slow moving train wreck over years and years,” Charlotte Councilman Tariq Bokari said.

Bokari believes the EpiCentre needs a massive makeover.

“I don’t think it can any longer be a mixed use place of bars, restaurants and retail, things like that to coexist,” he said. “There were so many issues, from murder to the crime rate that pushed people away from doing business there, that I think it has to be reimagined.”

The best way for the EpiCentre to slow down or stop the foreclosure efforts would be to file for bankruptcy, which happened before during the recession in 2012.

Channel 9 contacted the EpiCentre owners, CIM Group, asking them what they’ll do. They would only say their policy is not to comment on pending litigation.

(WATCH: EpiCentre property uptown at risk of default as debt payments fall short)

EpiCentre property uptown at risk of default as debt payments fall short

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