(Rendering via City of Mesa)
By Richard Ruelas | Arizona Republic
A federal bankruptcy judge has denied a request from government attorneys to replace the owners of Legacy Park in east Mesa for incompetently running the popular facility, saying he feared doing so would delay the sale of the facility, expected to be months away.
Judge Daniel Collins, in his ruling issued Aug. 9, did not dismiss the government’s detailed argument that the park had been run in a way that showed gross mismanagement. The judge said he expected the parties involved in the bankruptcy proceeding would investigate and ferret out any misdeeds.
“The Court smells smoke,” he wrote, adding that the government and the bank and entities owed money would “eventually determine whether there is fire.”
Collins wrote that he intended to “make sure any party engaged in wrongdoing …will be held to account.”
Collins said that there could come a time when it might make sense to replace the owners of Legacy Park with an outside entity, as the government requested. But, he said, that time was not now.
Doing so, he said, would slow down the process of selling the park, a vital step to make sure investors get paid back as much of their money as possible.
“Importantly,” Collins wrote in his ruling, “from day one in this case, all parties appear to agree on one thing—this estate is losing money at an alarming rate and the estate’s assets must be sold sooner than later.”
