Questions surround Chase Tower plan

Source: South Bend Tribune, Ind.迷利倉Dec. 22--SOUTH BEND -- Cedric Franklin boasted an impressive resume this past fall when his company, Harley Stanfield Global Corp., agreed to buy the city's tallest building.Franklin, based in Washington, D.C., described a plan to pay $5.2 million for the 25-story Chase Tower. He also planned to spend $35 million to renovate its offices and restaurants, add high-end condominiums to five upper floors and upgrade the building's hotel brand from Magnuson Grand to Wyndham Garden.He even talked about opening a club called Trading Places, where people could access stock and commodity exchanges in a casino-style environment on the tower's top floor.The proposed $40 million investment sounded almost too good to be true for a building that's been stuck in receivership since February 2011.Unfortunately, several aspects of Franklin's story don't appear to be true.For example, he identifies himself as a doctorate-level economist, but the universities where he says he earned degrees told The Tribune they have no record of his attendance.He also claims to be a naval officer, yet a Navy spokeswoman said there is no record of his service.The Tribune asked Franklin to identify projects that Harley Stanfield has completed. He declined to do so. Some examples described on the company's website were ones that never came to fruition, according to people involved with the plans.Now, the entire Chase Tower redevelopment could be in jeopardy.The building is privately owned, but Franklin said he was planning to ask South Bend to issue an economic development bond to fund the renovation. He never ended up making the request, and it wouldn't have mattered if he did. Mayor Pete Buttigieg's administration said Friday the city will not issue bonds for the project."After continuing to do our due diligence, we determined that being part of a conduit bond would not be in the best interests of the city," said Chris Fielding, assistant executive director for the South Bend Department of Community Investment.The announcement came about four weeks after The Tribune began asking questions about Franklin's background.Buttigieg had never committed financial assistance for Chase Tower's redevelopment, but his tone was positive when Harley Stanfield's plan was unveiled in early November. "We've been here before, so it's not quite time to reach for the champagne and cigars yet," the mayor said at the time, "but it does look like we have a very serious and credible buyer."Also last week, Washington Square Realty, the company that holds the bank note for Chase Tower, seemingly acknowledged that Harley Stanfield might not seal the deal. Harley Stanfield reached a sales agreement with the building's court-appointed receiver in September.James Masters, a South Bend lawyer who represents Harley Stanfield, e-mailed The Tribune on Friday on behalf of Washington Square to say the company is prepared to complete the acquisition and renovate the building on its own if Harley Stanfield doesn't close the sale.Harley Stanfield spokesman Gerald Wicks said Franklin had heart surgery in late November -- which is the last time he spoke with The Tribune and responded to questions about discrepancies in his educational and professional background. The spokesman, however, said the company is still working to buy and renovate Chase Tower.The potential problems with the Chase Tower plan mark the second time a developer with a questionable history has attempted to acquire the building.Buttigieg and Common Council members passed on a public-private partnership offer from Chicago-area developer Satish Gabhawala in early 2012 after questions arose about unpaid taxes and liens on the developer's other properties. The Chicago Tribune later revealed that Gabhawala wasted $10 million in taxpayers' money on a hotel renovation he never finished in Harvey, Ill.'Dr. Franklin'Franklin jokingly called himself a "hippie street urchin" -- that is, a child influenced by the peace and love of the 1960s and early '70s -- in a June 2011 interview with Executive Leaders Radio."To say I'm a hippie street urchin, I still am," the 64-year-old said with a laugh. "I mean, that is still very, very much a part of me. I just happen to have about three college degrees and a business background."Franklin -- who identifies himself as "Dr. Franklin" -- told The Tribune in an interview last month that he attended Alma College in Michigan after he graduated from high school, but he didn't want to talk about where he earned degrees.He said in a January 2010 radio interview on "Leaders Portfolio with Dr. Rebecca Black" that he earned a bachelor's degree at Harvard University. He also said he earned a master's of business administration and a doctorate in economics and finance at the University of California, Berkeley.The Alma registrar's office confirmed that Franklin attended the college from 1968 to 1971 but didn't graduate.The Tribune contacted the registrar's office for Harvard's undergraduate college. A spokeswoman responded that there is no record of a Cedric James Franklin ever attending the school.A spokesman for Berkeley also told The Tribune the university has no record of a Cedric James Franklin's attendance.Franklin also lists Cambridge International迷你倉University on his Facebook and LinkedIn pages. No one from Cambridge International, an unaccredited online university, responded to The Tribune's inquiry about Franklin.The Tribune confronted Franklin with the discrepancies in his education background during a phone interview in late November. He insisted that he earned degrees from those institutions.Franklin told Inc. Magazine in a 2009 interview that he was a Navy officer for eight years in the San Francisco Bay area. A spokeswoman for the Navy, however, said there is no record of service for Cedric James Franklin.He told Inc. that, after leaving the Navy, he began trading commodities and worked in finance for 25 years.He said he rose to the position of executive vice president at Salomon Brothers, a now-defunct Wall Street investment bank, before founding Harley Stanfield in 2003. The investment bank's name is misspelled as "Solomon Brothers" on his LinkedIn page and Harley Stanfield's website.The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission levied a $25,000 fine in 1995 against a Cedric James Franklin, who lived in North Hollywood, Calif., and had a company named Trading Places Commodities in Los Angeles. The National Futures Association, a regulatory organization for the U.S. derivatives industry, penalized a Cedric James Franklin of Trading Places in 1996 with a $200,000 fine and a lifetime ban from the association. The allegations against Franklin included willfully submitting false and misleading information to the organization.Harley Stanfield's Franklin lived in North Hollywood from 1994 to 2000, according a public records search The Tribune ran on him.He didn't respond to The Tribune's questions about his military service or the fines mentioned above.Harley StanfieldHarley Stanfield was incorporated in 2003 in Delaware, and the company apparently expanded quickly.It was third on Inc. Magazine's list of the fastest-growing, privately held companies in the United States in 2009. Its revenue was $38.4 million, up from $287,640 in 2008, according to that listing.Earlier this year, Black Enterprise magazine listed Harley Stanfield as 10th among the nation's largest black-owned private-equity firms. The company employed 41 people and had $404 million in capital under its management, according to that list, which was published in June.Despite those big numbers, Franklin couldn't tell The Tribune about specific projects his company has completed.One project highlighted on Harley Stanfield's website was described as an $80 million, bond-financed deal to bring wind-turbine gear production -- and 200 jobs -- to Marion, Ind. That never happened."There were no bonds ever sold," said Aisha Richard, an administrative assistant speaking for Lisa Dominisse, who is Marion's development director. "It was a discussion a couple of years ago, but it just never happened."Another project highlighted on Harley Stanfield's website was The Enchantment Way, an environmentally sustainable resort community in Las Vegas. Mike Purtill, an architect with Tate Snyder Kimsey, the Las Vegas firm that designed the project, told The Tribune the resort was never built.Franklin told The Tribune in two separate interviews in November about a 200-acre wind farm that Harley Stanfield is working to develop with LA Wind near Pocatello, Idaho.Linda Tigert, a planner in the Bannock County Office of Planning and Development, said the department issued a permit for LA Wind to build a facility with 15 to 25 generators in 2010, but the company hasn't developed the project. LA Wind had to apply for a permit extension in October, she said, and county commissioners denied that request.Franklin finally explained that he couldn't point to completed projects because his firm's primary business is arranging venture capital."That's the formula for investment banks and lenders," he said. "We know that a large percentage of what we do is not going to work out."Franklin also admitted that Harley Stanfield has never been the principal on a project as large as the Chase Tower renovation.He said Janee Hotel Group, which is Harley Stanfield's partner, approached his company about the South Bend opportunity. Janee, however, was not incorporated until October, according to the Delaware Division of Corporations website.Janee Hotel's president is Kenneth Moore, who previously was managing partner of Suburban West Properties, based at the same address of 2135 City Gate Lane in Naperville, Ill. Suburban West filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May and later dissolved, according to documents from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois.Ronald Williams, director of development for Janee Hotel, said in a phone interview last month that Suburban West has no affiliation with his company.Franklin, in a separate interview in late November, acknowledged the bankruptcy but didn't consider it a major problem."You find me a significant developer of any consequence that hasn't filed for bankruptcy or had financial problems at one point or another," he said.KAllen@SBTinfo.com574-235-6244Twitter: @KevinAllenSBTCopyright: ___ (c)2013 the South Bend Tribune (South Bend, Ind.) Visit the South Bend Tribune (South Bend, Ind.) at .southbendtribune.com Distributed by MCT Information Services自存倉