SimDag-RoBEL LLC - Tampa-centered condo developer

Today (August 12th) we retroactively add the implosion of the clumsily-named SimDag-RoBEL, the builder hired by Donald Trump to build the Tampa incarnation of the Trump residential towers. The bankruptcy filing occurred on June 20th.

SimDag's president, Frank Dagostino, had said in August 2007:

However, in an interview with the Tampa Bay Business Journal in August 2007, Dagostino laid out what would be his game plan if the bankruptcy courts had to get involved. "The only way to slow [the lawsuits] down would be to do a protection bankruptcy to give us the breathing room so that we could go to a judge and say we're going to sell the property, we need this amount of time."

For months, Dagostino has said the property where he had intended to build a 52-story, $225 million Trump Tower Tampa is on the market but that he still held out hope of building a revised project that could include both condominium and hotel components.

Angry buyers started suing Trump and SimDag when the latter failed to complete the complex on schedule (doubtless, falling potential market values was a factor as well). In fact it was someone doing the latter that actually pushed all of SimDag into bankruptcy, lest the plot of land intended for the Tower go up on the auction block.

Trump also sued SimDag for failure to pay licensing fees (it seems they did not care too much about the failure to build the actual building.).

We are seeking more details on SimDag; please let us know if you can help. Interestingly, almost all coverage has focused on Trump and there are virtually no details on SimDag-RoBEL.