An artist’s rendering of the Edwards RiverPark development. (Eagle County)
A long-delayed development in the Eagle County town of Edwards that has suffered from one developer’s death, infighting between two others, a pandemic and a receivership is now the subject of a lengthy lawsuit on the eve of the project’s purchase and revival.
The testy litigation, which accuses a partner of atrocious behavior “going beyond all possible bounds of decency,” comes at a time when the project’s court-appointed caretaker warns it is “at an important but fragile juncture” — one decade after it was dreamed up.
Edwards RiverPark was initially the brainchild of Keith Novick, a longtime lawyer who moved to the Vail Valley from Tennessee and bought an old gravel pit in 2016 with plans to develop it. He financed the 100-acre purchase with an $8.6 million high-interest loan from Broadmark.
Little has gone right since. A partner brought on in 2018, Don MacKenzie, died unexpectedly in 2020. The next year, Novick sued MacKenzie’s company and another partner, Rocky Cortina, for not putting enough money into the project and not buying Novick out of the project.
Novick won a $3 million verdict in 2022, which survived two appeals to higher courts. A judge then appointed a receiver for the project, noting that Novick and Cortina were out of money, could not get along, “and have not proposed a means to navigate around this deadlock.” Denver District Judge Shelley Gilman tasked receiver Randy Lewis with selling the land.
“Development of those parcels is not realistic,” she wrote in an order three years ago.
Lewis has found a buyer in Aptitude Development, a New Jersey firm better known for building student housing. Aptitude plans to close on the land sale soon and build 440 housing units and an early childcare center alongside 35 acres of open space. A hearing before the Eagle County Planning Commission is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.
An artist’s rendering of the Edwards RiverPark development. (Eagle County)
“Administering the receivership estate has been challenging in several respects. The acrimony between the companies’ members continues,” Lewis wrote in a report March 13.
“The most persistent challenge? The estate has no money. What little funds the estate had when the receiver was appointed were paid to the companies’ secured lender,” he added, referring to the Broadmark loan, which has never been repaid and has a balance of $27.2 million. Lewis wrote, “The receiver is holding approximately $1 in a bank account.”
In February, Novick reached out to Lewis with an idea: the receiver should sue Cortina. When Lewis held off doing so because he was fearful of tanking the sale to Aptitude, Novick sued his estranged business partner instead. He blames Cortina for the huge unpaid loan.
“This matter arises from a development project that has been plagued by a member’s persistent refusal — apparently in connection with that member’s desire to see the plaintiffs go bankrupt or to purchase the relevant real property at a foreclosure sale — to abide by its contractual obligation to cooperate with refinancing opportunities,” Novick wrote of Cortina.
Novick seeks an unspecified amount of money from Cortina and his companies for breach of contract, unjust enrichment and outrageous conduct, “all done with the explicitly stated goal of bankrupting Mr. Novick and ensuring that he receives nothing from the development.”
An attorney for Cortina, Wendell Porterfield Jr., did not answer requests for comment.
An artist’s rendering of the Edwards RiverPark development. (Eagle County)
A long-delayed development in the Eagle County town of Edwards that has suffered from one developer’s death, infighting between two others, a pandemic and a receivership is now the subject of a lengthy lawsuit on the eve of the project’s purchase and revival.
The testy litigation, which accuses a partner of atrocious behavior “going beyond all possible bounds of decency,” comes at a time when the project’s court-appointed caretaker warns it is “at an important but fragile juncture” — one decade after it was dreamed up.
Edwards RiverPark was initially the brainchild of Keith Novick, a longtime lawyer who moved to the Vail Valley from Tennessee and bought an old gravel pit in 2016 with plans to develop it. He financed the 100-acre purchase with an $8.6 million high-interest loan from Broadmark.
Little has gone right since. A partner brought on in 2018, Don MacKenzie, died unexpectedly in 2020. The next year, Novick sued MacKenzie’s company and another partner, Rocky Cortina, for not putting enough money into the project and not buying Novick out of the project.
Novick won a $3 million verdict in 2022, which survived two appeals to higher courts. A judge then appointed a receiver for the project, noting that Novick and Cortina were out of money, could not get along, “and have not proposed a means to navigate around this deadlock.” Denver District Judge Shelley Gilman tasked receiver Randy Lewis with selling the land.
“Development of those parcels is not realistic,” she wrote in an order three years ago.
Lewis has found a buyer in Aptitude Development, a New Jersey firm better known for building student housing. Aptitude plans to close on the land sale soon and build 440 housing units and an early childcare center alongside 35 acres of open space. A hearing before the Eagle County Planning Commission is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.
An artist’s rendering of the Edwards RiverPark development. (Eagle County)
“Administering the receivership estate has been challenging in several respects. The acrimony between the companies’ members continues,” Lewis wrote in a report March 13.
“The most persistent challenge? The estate has no money. What little funds the estate had when the receiver was appointed were paid to the companies’ secured lender,” he added, referring to the Broadmark loan, which has never been repaid and has a balance of $27.2 million. Lewis wrote, “The receiver is holding approximately $1 in a bank account.”
In February, Novick reached out to Lewis with an idea: the receiver should sue Cortina. When Lewis held off doing so because he was fearful of tanking the sale to Aptitude, Novick sued his estranged business partner instead. He blames Cortina for the huge unpaid loan.
“This matter arises from a development project that has been plagued by a member’s persistent refusal — apparently in connection with that member’s desire to see the plaintiffs go bankrupt or to purchase the relevant real property at a foreclosure sale — to abide by its contractual obligation to cooperate with refinancing opportunities,” Novick wrote of Cortina.
Novick seeks an unspecified amount of money from Cortina and his companies for breach of contract, unjust enrichment and outrageous conduct, “all done with the explicitly stated goal of bankrupting Mr. Novick and ensuring that he receives nothing from the development.”
An attorney for Cortina, Wendell Porterfield Jr., did not answer requests for comment.
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