Harbor East ‘Whitney’ Auction Flops As Chasen Project Reverts To Lender

The high-profile redevelopment at 600 S. Caroline St., the century-old Meyer Seed Co. warehouse that Chasen Companies had been turning into a mixed-use building called The Whitney, failed to attract a single bid at a foreclosure auction Friday and reverted to the lender. The very public stumble puts a question mark over when the long-promised apartments and ground-floor retail will actually materialize on the Harbor East site.

Auction returned to lender

According to the Baltimore Business Journal, the Alex Cooper Auctioneers sale ended without any qualified bids, and the property was formally recorded as returned to the lender. CRE MarketBeat had already spotlighted the site ahead of the auction and noted Alex Cooper’s role in the listing.

From seed warehouse to planned luxury housing

Chasen bought the 50,000-square-foot Meyer Seed building in 2022 and set out to fold it together with an adjacent parcel into a sizable mixed-use project with hundreds of apartments and significant retail space, MacKenzie Commercial Real Estate Services reported. The redevelopment was branded as “The Whitney,” and Chasen had already started marketing ground-floor retail space as construction moved ahead.

Part of a string of Chasen-linked distress

The stalled Caroline Street deal is not an isolated headache. It fits into a broader run of distress around Chasen-linked projects, including a bankruptcy filing tied to the company’s construction arm and sale listings that were canceled or postponed, according to the Baltimore Banner. Those moves left several Harbor East and Fells Point properties in legal limbo before they edged toward public sale.

Retail deals and local stakes

Chasen had been pitching sizable retail bays on the ground floor and in 2023 announced Puttshack as an anchor tenant, according to a Chasen Companies press release. With the property now back in the lender’s hands, the schedule for any tenant build-outs and the broader delivery of The Whitney has been thrown into uncertainty.

What comes next

When an auction ends with a return to the lender and no bids, the noteholder can try again on the auction block, work a private sale, or simply hold the collateral, a mix of options that can drag out a project’s timeline, the Baltimore Business Journal noted. For now, the Harbor East block anchored by the historic Meyer Seed building is back in limbo as the lender decides which path to take.