Owner of Sierra Marketplace center going private

The partnership that owns the Sierra Marketplace shopping center at Moana Lane and South Virgina Street is going private.

Biggest Little Investments L.P. previously had been required to report its financial results and significant transactions in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The partnership is moving forward with a 1-for-100 reverse split of its partnership units. Small investors will be bought out at a price of $120 per partnership unit before the reverse split.

The end result: The company will have fewer than 300 investors and no longer will be registered with the SEC or required to make public filings

By going private, the partnership estimates it will save about $107,000 a year.

None of the partnership units have traded publicly in more than three years, Biggest Little Investments said in a filing with the SEC.

“Interest by the investor community has been minimal,” the company acknowledges.

But the company says it has paid anywhere from $90 to $113 a unit when it’s repurchased them from investors under a program that began in September 2009.

The plan to take the partnership private will provide liquidity to small investors, Biggest Little Investment says in materials distributed to the investors. The price of $120 per unit was reviewed independently by Houlihan Capital LLC of Chicago.

The analysts noted that Sierra Marketplace is troubled by high vacancy, and revenues and profits have been declining since 2009.

The 210,000-square-foot center on 18.4 acres was 82 percent vacant at the end of 2012.

Along with the shopping center, which Biggest Little Investments got through a deed-in-lieu-of-foreclosure in 2003, the partnership has been involved in lending to a casino in Grand Falls, Iowa, and has invested in publicly traded equities.

Houlihan’s analysis found that Biggest Little Investments will pay about $1.7 million to cash out the smaller investors.

Ben Farahi of Reno, the manager of the Maxum LLC, the general partner in Biggest Little Investments L.P., and his brother, Bob Farahi, have given their OK to the reverse split. Between them, they own 57.1 percent of the partnership units.

John Farahi, a third brother, owns an 18.2 percent.

The Farahi family developed Atlantis Casino Resort Spa next door to the shopping center. Ben Farahi, who was co-chairman of Monarch unti 2006, owns 12 percent of Monarach’s stock.

Bob Farahi and John Farahi currently serve as co-chairmen of Monarch.

NNBW staff