Pasquinelli Homebuilding, the Burr Ridge, Ill.-based builder whose roots date back to the mid-1950s, last Thursday became the latest of several Chicago-area builders that have gone bankrupt during the recession when it petitioned a U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Illinois for protection under Chapter 7 while it proceeds to liquidate its remaining assets.
There doesn’t seem to be much left of the company that was once among the 25 largest builders in the U.S. and was active in at least eight states. In its bankruptcy filing, the company stated that its assets were only $500,001 to $1 million. The builder stated that its liabilities fell somewhere between $10 million and $50 million, and that its creditors numbered between 10,000 and 25,000.
As of Saturday, the company had not filed a list of its largest unsecured or secured creditors. News of Pasquinelli’s Chapter 7 filing was first reported in the Chicago Tribune. That article quoted the builder’s attorney, Brian Shaw of the law firm Shaw Gussis Fishman Glantz Wolfson & Tow, who indicated that Pasquinelli’s operations had been “shut down for a while.”
Indeed, the builder’s revenue and closings had been slipping since at least 2007. BUILDER reported in February 2009 that Pasquinelli had halted construction at all of its subdivisions. (It marketed its products under the brand Portrait Homes.) When it stopped building, Pasquinelli had active subdivisions in Indiana, Texas, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Illinois. It also had dormant subdivisions in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Florida. BUILDER could not ascertain at press time how many of these still had homes to sell when the company filed Chapter 7.
Shaw told The Tribune that the builder decided to liquidate, as opposed to reorganize its operations under Chapter 11 court protection, to preserve the value of what few assets it had left. The newspaper notes that Pasquinelli did not list among the businesses it would liquidate one of its subsidiaries, called BnA Management, which has been marketing homes in subdivisions in Joliet, Ill., and Charlotte, N.C. BUILDER could not ascertain if that subsidiary is active, or whether Pasquinelli’s patriarch Bruno Pasquinelli (the “B” in BnA) intends to go forward with this operating entity.
By liquidating, Pasquinelli Homebuilders becomes a member of a notable group of Chicago-area builders that the housing recession took down. Other failed builders headquartered in or near the Windy City included Kimball Hill Homes, Kirk Homes, and Neumann Homes.
John Caulfield is senior editor for BUILDER magazine.
Learn more about markets featured in this article: Chicago, IL.
