Foreclosure Of Property Avoided – Pinole Eatery House Is Now Free!

The foreclosure process initiated against Pinole’s Peer Street Bistro is off, thanks to the previous owner of the building stepping in and bringing most of the redevelopment loans up-to-date for this purpose.

The former owner, John DonKonics, is represented by Tom Gozzano, a realtor and mortgage broker. According to him the trustee handling the foreclosure initiated by the city in last August has agreed upon a payment of $88,422.69 including the foreclosure fees of $2,248.54 and did give up on receiving the payment.

The owner of Bistro, Gary Wong had defaulted 24 months payments on Pinole Redevelopment Agency loans and the total outstanding principal mounted to more than $400,000 as on end October. Wong had unpaid property taxes to the tune of $17,842 due to Contra Costa County and this was also paid by Gozzano.

Another redevelopment loan taken in 2003, with an initial principal of about $58,000 had arrears of $9,000 to the city and that has been cleared by Wong earlier this week. The above loan acted as a third party mortgage on the Bistro property on San Pablo Avenue at Fernandez Avenue in Old Town Pinole. Wong had also other redevelopment loans dating back to 2001.

According to confirmation available from Interim City Manager, Wong is now up to date on all his redevelopment loans.

There is a principal balance of about $595,000 on DonKonics’ second mortgage and Wong is in arrears on that loan also. According to Gozzano, DonKonics is a family friend of Wong and would not initiate foreclosure proceedings and would wait for the outcome of Wong’s negotiations for sale of his building to Robert Frangieh, a Pinole businessman and the escrow is expected to be closed sometime in this December. The news of this sale was also confirmed by Sally Frangieh, wife and business partner of Frangieh last month and she could not divulge further info, owing to a confidentiality agreement.

Wong also crossed another hurdle to reach the affordable housing covenant to the four apartments above the Bistro building when another tenant was certified as falling within income guidelines by the city. With this, three of the four apartments have been cleared by certification, leaving the fourth one as vacant and available for rent.

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