Nashville's Plaza Mariachi files for bankruptcy, temporarily halting foreclosure

Nashville's Hispanic cultural hub Plaza Mariachi filed for bankruptcy on Monday, putting a stop to First Financial Bank's planned foreclosure sale of the property on Tuesday.

Known for its authentic Mexican food and events like salsa night, Plaza Mariachi has been in hot water since early June. Its lender First Financial Bank issued a public notice June 6 that it was foreclosing on the Nolensville Pike property.

"That's going to stop the sale today," attorney and First Financial-appointed trustee over the foreclosure David Anthony said. "You never know what's going to happen. In some situations, bankruptcies get quickly dismissed, and so with all the uncertainty of this happening yesterday afternoon, the bank directed me just to continue it out 60 days, which is a right that we have under Tennessee law."

The notice stated that Plaza Mariachi defaulted on its payments, and it advertised a foreclosure sale at the county courthouse on July 2 at 11 a.m. The same day, owner Mark Janbakhsh issued a statement saying that he had not defaulted on any payments. In fact, he said the business was not struggling at all financially and instead was "operating on a positive cash-flow basis."

This is Janbakhsh's second bankruptcy in seven years. The first was in 2017 with his used-car company called Auto Masters . Plaza Mariachi did not respond to The Tennessean's request for comment on July 2.

"We are not going anywhere," Janbakhsh said in a statement in June. "We have been in talks with other lenders and real estate brokers to restructure the financial terms for Plaza Mariachi."

That's likely happening now and could include selling off properties around Plaza Mariachi.

Plaza Mariachi filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which is often referred to as "reorganization bankruptcy." It would allow Plaza Mariachi to continue its regular business operations while reorganizing its assets and debts under court supervision.

In the filing, Janbakhsh listed Plaza Mariachi LLC's assets in the range of $10,000,001 to $50 million and said the business's liabilities fall into the same value range.

Anthony classified the Plaza Mariachi filing as a "skeleton petition," meaning it is the minimum filing to receive a bankruptcy case number. He said that the foreclosure proceedings will likely be canceled within the next 60 days.

"The bankruptcy will have either caught wind or some sort of resolution will have happened," he said. "We'll see how this one goes."

Hadley Hitson covers trending business, dining and health care for The Tennessean. She can be reached at hhitson@gannett.com . To support her work, subscribe to The Tennessean .

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville's Plaza Mariachi files for bankruptcy, temporarily halting foreclosure