Hampshire takes escrow after Park bank fails
Will complete Tuscany Woods streets
HAMPSHIRE -- Less than a year and a half after Park National Bank foreclosed on Pasquinelli Homes' mortgage and took over the unfinished parts of Hampshire's Tuscany Woods Unit One residential development, the bank itself was seized by federal officials Friday night.
Because Hampshire officials had foreseen that coming over the past two months, residents apparently can be confident the final improvements to the subdivision will be finished anyway. During an emergency meeting Monday morning, village board members voted to pull $1.3 million out of an escrow account set up last month with money from Park National in case the bank did fail.
(Sun-Times Media File)
Village Administrator Eric Palm said the $1.3 million should be enough to put a final coat of asphalt on the development's streets, finish improvements to its entranceway from Route 72 and do the most important landscape improvements.
Patrons of Park National's retail bank facilities in West Dundee (the former Cardunal Savings Bank) and in Geneva apparently will notice few changes, because ownership of their accounts was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and turned over to the Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank.
What the bank failure will mean to recent buyers and would-be buyers of Tuscany Woods homes remains less clear.
"We still have more questions than answers," Palm said Monday.
Over the past two months, Chicago media often reported about the declining financial health of Park National's parent company, Oak Park-based FBOP Corp. But when the U.S. comptroller of the currency shut down FBOP's nine banks after closing time Friday and the FDIC announced that U.S. Bank will be taking them over, it came as a surprise. Just that morning, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley had officiated over a celebration in which U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner presented Park National with $50 million to stimulate construction of charter schools, clinics and stores in low-income areas.
FBOP owned nine banks in Illinois, California, Arizona and Texas. Park National had 31 branches.
The FDIC guarantees the safety of only up to $250,000 in each bank account. But FDIC spokesman David Barr said that, because of the way this deal was structured, U.S. Bank will take over all FBOP accounts, "whether you have $1 in the account or a million dollars."
He said depositors automatically will become depositors of U.S. Bank. Depositors can continue to draw money out of their former Park National accounts by writing checks or using ATM or debit cards. Checks previously drawn on the accounts will be processed by U.S. Bank.
After the Pasquinelli Homes mortgage foreclosure made its laborious way through the court system, Park National had hired Gladstone Special Asset Solutions to resume selling the finished homes at Tuscany Woods and to finish the half-built ones. Whether U.S. Bank will have Gladstone continue doing that remained unclear, as did how the change will affect people who are in the middle of buying a Tuscany Woods home. Gladstone Vice President Adam Dontz said he would be unable to comment about the situation until today.
Palm said he believes Gladstone has sold nine or 10 townhomes since Park National took over. He estimated the development has up to 24 more finished townhomes left, plus eight to 10 unsold single-family houses.
