ATLANTA-A shopping center owner affiliated with the joint venture which owns the Shops Around Lenox shopping center, adjacent to the Lenox Square Mall here, has purchased a $5.7 million note from Birmingham, AL-based Regions Bank, says Rob Jordan, president of the Jordan Company, an Atlanta-based brokerage and real estate consulting firm, who brokered the deal.

The loan had originally been taken out by the Novare Group, an Atlanta-based developer, in 2006. The developer had planned to do a condominium/mixed-use project at the site, which is an assemblage of various retail and office properties on Howell Mill Road in Atlanta’s Buckhead submarket. The property covers 5.3 acres and has 37,000 square feet of improvements, including an 18,000-square foot post office, a 1400-square foot McDonald’s, a Willy’s California-Style Burritos restaurant, and office space, says Jordan, whose company specializes in selling REOs. The sale of the loan closed on March 27, 2010. While Novare still owns the property, the new owner of the loan could foreclose.

Jordan believes that the Novare Group had purchased the site for future development. Because it had good tenants, he says, Novare held on to the property and enjoyed the income.

While Novare defaulted on the Regions Bank note, the developer has a lot of projects it still owns in Atlanta, noted Jordon. Among other developments, Novare is known for its TWELVE chain of boutique hotels. Novare is a developer of office, condominium, retail and hospitality projects.

Jordan believes that Healey Weatherholtz Properties will probably sit on the Buckhead property for a while. Last summer, an affiliate of Healey Weatherholtz, which owns and operates mixed-use developments as well as shopping centers in the Atlanta area, including Commerce Crossing, Howell Mill Shops, and Peachtree City Marketplace, bought-- with joint venture partner, Baltimore-based Alex Brown Realty, Inc.-- the Shops Around Lenox, a 126,000-square-foot-shopping center for $10.5 million.