Penn-Florida Companies has sold a 1-acre development site in Boca Raton for $27 million after facing foreclosure. The property, located at 375 East Royal Palm Road, was intended for an assisted living facility but remained undeveloped. The buyer, SobelCo, also acquired an adjacent 0.2-acre vacant lot at 343 East Royal Palm Road for $3.1 million from a Delray Beach-managed entity. This brings the total purchase to $30.1 million for 1.2 acres of land.
SobelCo, led by Jeffrey Sobel, secured a $10 million loan from Goldman Sachs to finance the acquisition, according to records and real estate database Vizzda. The smaller lot is approved for a four-unit luxury residential building with five stories and a rooftop.
Penn-Florida had planned an upscale 193-unit assisted living facility on the main site since receiving approval from the Boca Raton Planning and Zoning Board in 2017. The company demolished an existing two-story building but never began construction.
The firm originally paid $1.2 million for the property and nearby sites in 2005 and later increased its borrowing on the land through City National Bank of Florida to $5.7 million across several loan modifications between 2016 and 2023.
Last year, City National Bank of Florida reassigned the loan to Safe Harbor Equity, which then filed foreclosure proceedings against Penn-Florida and Mark Gensheimer, who guaranteed the loan. Safe Harbor alleged default on the loan’s maturity in 2024.
The recent sale resolved this foreclosure case. According to court filings by Palm Beach County Circuit Court Judge Carolyn Bell, all parties notified the court that they had settled, with instructions issued to file dismissal papers as part of standard procedure.
Neither SobelCo nor Penn-Florida responded immediately to requests for comment.
Penn-Florida has experienced financial challenges across multiple South Florida properties amid higher interest rates, rising insurance premiums, and increased construction costs. These conditions have led many developers in the region to halt projects or sell sites due to difficulties meeting debt obligations or refinancing loans as banks become more cautious about new lending.
In another case involving Penn-Florida in Boca Raton last year, Blackstone Mortgage Trust initiated a $145 million foreclosure against a Penn-Florida affiliate’s apartment building at 101 Via Mizner following default issues. The affiliate filed for bankruptcy in January before a scheduled auction could take place; by July, federal bankruptcy court Judge Erik Kimball approved a $235 million sale of that property to a joint venture between Penn-Florida and Grant Cardone’s crowdfunding syndicate.
