The Boatworks Building, home to the upscale NorthCoast restaurant on Lake Minnetonka, is headed into foreclosure.
The downtown Wayzata office building is scheduled to be auctioned off at a Hennepin County sheriff's sale May 6 with about $30 million owed on the mortgage, according to a foreclosure notice that appeared Wednesday in Finance and Commerce.
It's the latest building owned by Wayzata property investor M.G. Kaminski to fall on hard times after the commercial real estate crash. A large piece of Pentagon Park, an office park in Edina with multiple buildings that Kaminski once owned and planned to redevelop, went into foreclosure last year.
Kaminski, head of property management company Wayzata Properties LLC, said Thursday in an interview that he doesn't own any of the Pentagon Park buildings now. As for Boatworks, he said he expects to work out a deal with the lender and special servicer handling the debt, which he said was securitized, or bundled with other commercial mortgages and sold to investors. Wells Fargo Bank is trustee for the registered holders of the certificate, according to the foreclosure notice, and J.E. Robert Co. Inc. is the special servicer.
The Boatworks Building, at 294 Grove Lane E. in downtown Wayzata, has about 64,000 square feet of first-grade office space. It's one of the only commercial buildings in Wayzata that sits directly on Lake Minnetonka and is on the site of the original Moore Johnson Boat Works, a boat building operation run by Royal Moore, according to Terry Middlekauff at the Wayzata Historical Society.
Middlekauff said the original boat factory burned in 1892 and was rebuilt. (Hennepin County property records list the construction date as 1940.) In a nod to its history, there's a small restored runabout in the building's lobby, Middlekauff said.
It's now a multitenant office building, and about two-thirds full, Kaminski said.
NorthCoast, owned by Kaminski's wife, Brenda, remains open, but the surf-and-turf eatery has had its own challenges. The state Department of Revenue in 2009 yanked the sales tax license of the entity operating NorthCoast for failing to pay a $345,288 tax bill to the state.
A new legal entity now owns the restaurant, but the previous debt has not been resolved, according to the Revenue Department. The state has filed three tax liens against a Matthew G. Kaminski regarding the debt. The state has also filed tax liens against the new entity, NorthCoast Wayzata LLC, for more than $100,000.
M.G. Kaminski said he's owned the building for about 10 years and continues to manage it. He blamed the economy for his trouble with the mortgage.
"The rents in Wayzata aren't what they used to be, or not even close, and property taxes are ridiculous. It makes getting tenants hard," he said. "I anticipate that we figure out a deal."
Kaminski said he still has more than 10 commercial buildings in his portfolio, which mainly are in the Twin Cities and owned by various entities.
"The rest of my portfolio is in great shape," he said. "This is my last problem child."
Jennifer Bjorhus • 612-673-4683
