About 10 years ago, the ongoing business that was Ashbourne Market was sold to a group of investors lead by Arsen Kashkashian. Mr. Kashkashian is a lawyer and real estate investor based in Bristol, PA. After Ashbourne closed, he leased the building to a number of other businesses, all of which have now left. The building has been vacant for several years.

As an added layer of complexity, a portion of the building (literally a 15 foot wide section of the building) is owned separately by the Emanuel-Ruth Investment Corporation, run by the grandchildren of a deceased local real estate investor.

After CreekSide Co-op was formed, we entered into several agreements to obtain the building - first as tenant to a local developer, Brinton Housing Partners, and later (after Brinton withdrew from the transaction) under a direct agreement to buy the entire property from Mr. Kashkashian. Funding for the project was to come from the USDA, but after almost a year of waiting for funding, we were told by the USDA that we did not qualify for the program. We appealed that decision, but because we were, at least for the moment, out of the funding program, we could not keep the building under agreement. The agreement of sale with Mr. Kashkashian was terminated and we focused our attention on winning the appeal and getting back in the funding program. As everyone now knows, our appeal was successful, and we are once again qualified for funding. As we will discuss in more detail below, qualification for funding does not yet mean actual funding.

In the meantime, a group of local investors lead by Mitch Goldenberg and Peter Abrams bought the first position mortgage against Mr. Kashkashian's portion of the building and effectively became the "lender" to Arsen. We believe that they bought the paper at a steep discount, although we do not know the details of their deal. The board was aware of this transaction.  

A few months ago, with the cooperation of Mr. Kashkashian, Mr. Goldenberg and Mr. Abrams proceeded to foreclose the mortgage against the property. The property went to sheriff's sale in March and, because there were no other bidders at the sheriff's sale (we would have loved to have been able to buy the property at the sheriff's sale, but we simply didn't have the funding yet) Mr. Goldenberg and Mr. Abrams took title to Mr. Kashkashian's portion of the building, which includes the dry cleaner at the corner of High School and Montgomery.

That is the current status of the property - Mitch Goldenberg and Peter Abrams own the bulk of Ashbourne Market and the dry cleaner by way of foreclosing on the old loan. Emanuel-Ruth still owns a 15 foot wide chunk of the Ashbourne Market building.

As for the future, we understand that Mr. Goldenberg and Mr. Abrams have agreed to sell the dry cleaner building to the folks that operate the business there. They have listed the rest of the property, we believe under a co-marketing arrangement with Emanuel-Ruth, with a broker and are actively trying to sell it.

We have been in contact with the owners of both portions of the building and continue to try to work out a deal to buy the building. There are many complex issues that need to be hammered out, not the least of which is that we are still waiting for USDA to receive the federal funds needed to proceed with the project (we hope to have news about that in the next few weeks).

Even though they are well aware of our interest in the property and our ongoing efforts to put together funding, Mr. Goldenberg and Mr. Abrams, as well as the Emanuel-Ruth family, have decided to continue to market the building for sale to anyone who wants it. This makes sense from a strictly business standpoint, but is disappointing from the standpoint of an all-volunteer board that has spent literally hundreds of hours trying to get this deal done for no other reason than it would be a wonderful thing for the community. We are now in a race against time to get funding in place and make a deal before they sell the building to someone else.

Despite all of the challenges we have overcome, and those we still face, the board remains optimistic. We have made tremendous progress in our financing efforts, including developing a very beneficial relationship withThe Reinvestment Fund - a non-profit lender that has a "fresh foods initiative" and has funded other co-ops in the past, including Weavers Way. The Pennsylvania office of the USDA has given us several indications that they support our application. Our application has been fully vetted and accepted and we believe that the only hurdle we have left in front of us is for sufficient funds from the federal budget to be allocated to Pennsylvania to fund the project. We expect to have a final answer about that soon.

Last updated on May 20, 2011 by Creekside Co-Op