Jameson Broadway & Birch: Granville Street lenders ask out of the stay

Five parcels on Granville Street and West 13th Avenue in Vancouver are the security at the centre of the newest fight in this CCAA proceeding, and none of them lies under the tower the proceeding is about. In November 2021, Portage Capital Corporation agreed to lend $21,500,000 to bare trustees holding those properties for James Holdings Ltd., against a collateral second mortgage ranking behind Vancouver City Savings Credit Union, a $3,225,000 interest reserve and guarantees from James Holdings and from Anthony, John and Thomas Pappajohn, its directors. The interest was expected to come from the Granville buildings' rent after Vancity was paid, topped up from the reserve; the reserve was exhausted on August 1, 2023, and the loan's term ran out on January 1, 2025 without an extension, per the Affidavit #1 of Jeffrey Burt, July 24, 2026, paras. 16–19, 22.

The tower is 28 storeys and 258 rental units at the southeast corner of West Broadway and Birch Street, and its builders, 1061511 B.C. Ltd., Jameson Broadway & Birch General Partner Ltd. and Jameson Broadway & Birch Limited Partnership, obtained an initial order on November 25, 2025, with Alvarez & Marsal Canada Inc. as monitor. James Holdings owns 75% of the general partner and 74.9% of the partnership's units, and at filing was owed $12.5 million by the petitioners on a loan whose $9,008,748.91 of principal, the monitor reported, it had funded from the Portage facility and a separate facility from Argo Ventures Inc., per the First Report of the Monitor, Dec. 3, 2025, paras. 5.2, 5.5–5.6, 5.12, 5.18, 5.24. On December 4, 2025, the amended and restated initial order extended the stay to James Holdings as against three of its creditors, Portage among them.

Nine months later the Portage side wants out. CMLS Financial Ltd., which services the loan for Computershare Trust Company of Canada as custodian for funds managed by RBC Global Asset Management Inc., applied on July 27 to lift that stay. The petitioners sought an adjournment; on August 17 CMLS booked 30 minutes before Justice Coval for directions the next day, per the Requisition – General, Aug. 17, 2026, p. 1, and on August 24 it requisitioned a full day before Justice Brongers on September 8, per the Requisition – General, Aug. 24, 2026, p. 1. The reply sworn on September 2 is about one conversation before the filing, and whether anyone told the lenders the stay would not reach the Granville Street security.

A stay drawn around a holding company

Paragraph 13 of the amended and restated order bars any proceeding by Portage, Argo or British Columbia Housing Management Commission "against or in respect of James Holdings Ltd." without the written consent of the petitioners, James Holdings and the monitor, or leave; James Holdings must meanwhile carry on in the ordinary course and not dissipate its affected assets, per the Amended and Restated Initial Order, Dec. 4, 2025, paras. 13, 15. The monitor supported it because the controlling minds of the petitioners and James Holdings are identical, because James Holdings could not repay Portage, Argo or BC Housing, to which it is a covenantor on the construction loan, while the petitioners were not paying it, and because the stay reached those three creditors and no others, per the First Report of the Monitor, Dec. 3, 2025, paras. 5.28, 12.2–12.5.

At the time there was a buyer. The petitioners had an agreement of purchase and sale with FPB Holdings Group Inc. at $235,000,000, and on October 29 James Holdings directed that $16,482,090.68 be paid to Portage on a sale of the development, a condition, the monitor reported, of Portage keeping its facility available, per the First Report of the Monitor, Dec. 3, 2025, paras. 5.25, 5.53–5.54. FPB did not waive its financing condition, and the agreement was terminated on December 19, 2025, per the Second Report of the Monitor, Jan. 27, 2026, paras. 5.1–5.2. CMLS says the direction then ceased to act as security for the lenders, per the Notice of Application of CMLS Financial Ltd., July 27, 2026, Part 2, para. 32.

The stay's reach was in dispute well before July. Computershare served notices of intention to enforce under s. 244 of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act on December 24, 2025, and in an application response dated April 27, 2026 took the position that the stay did not restrain enforcement against James Holdings' assets unrelated to the development, which James Holdings and the petitioners disputed. The order as entered, it said, was "by inadvertence" not the draft negotiated between counsel, so "the terms of the JHL Stay of Proceedings are in dispute," per the Application Response of Computershare Trust Company of Canada, Apr. 27, 2026, Part 4, paras. 13–15. A forbearance agreement dated February 9 depended on court approval of a $35,000,000 mortgage over the Birch Street development in favour of Computershare and Argo, subordinate to the existing mortgages and court-ordered charges. The court dismissed that application on May 1, per the Fifth Report of the Monitor, July 24, 2026, paras. 1.4–1.5, and the forbearance agreement expired on July 31, per the Affidavit #2 of Jeffrey Burt, Aug. 28, 2026, para. 7(g).

What the lenders say the stay has cost

The application seeks leave for the Portage Lenders, the record's collective name for RBC Global Asset Management, Portage, CMLS and Computershare, to enforce against James Holdings' interest in the Granville properties and in two penthouses and a unit at 1477 West 15th Avenue added as collateral in 2024, per the Notice of Application of CMLS Financial Ltd., July 27, 2026, Part 1, para. 1(b); Part 2, paras. 11, 22. As of July 20, according to Jeffrey Burt, a director in CMLS's special servicing and loan workouts group, the borrowers owed $23,740,728.23 at 12% a year, of which $1,791,733.33 was arrears accrued since the first missed payment on December 1, 2025, growing by more than $215,000 a month. He also deposes that James Holdings claims to have received $1,827,523.73 from the August 2025 sale of a property whose net proceeds had been assigned to the lenders, as a creditor rather than as a partnership distribution, and that the money went to Mohel Holdings Ltd. under a direction dated August 19, 2025, per the Affidavit #1 of Jeffrey Burt, July 24, 2026, paras. 21(a), 27–28, 30, 37–38.

The legal argument starts from Yukon Zinc Corporation (Re), 2015 BCSC 1961, under which lifting a CCAA stay is discretionary and the applicant carries a "very heavy onus"; CMLS says the third parties in the cases where courts drew them into a stay had "a material role in the reorganization," and of this one, "This is not such a case," per the Notice of Application of CMLS Financial Ltd., July 27, 2026, Part 3, paras. 44, 48–49. James Holdings is "primarily an equity investor and, more recently, a creditor," in its account, "just seeking shelter under the Stay in the hope that it receives a limited partnership distribution from the Birch Property," per the Notice of Application of CMLS Financial Ltd., July 27, 2026, Part 3, para. 52. The notice also doubts a sale process that would take hotel bids while the rezoning was unapproved and BC Housing had not agreed to discharge its s. 219 covenant, and puts the added arrears at approximately $1,100,000 if the lenders stay bound to December 31, per the Notice of Application of CMLS Financial Ltd., July 27, 2026, Part 2, para. 3; Part 3, paras. 54–55.