The Landlord Is in Bankruptcy Court. The Ducks Have Volunteers.
September 17, 2026
September 17, 2026
In late June, a Lindsay Wildlife Refuge board member named Liz Harvey posted a warning on Nextdoor. Somebody, she wanted people to know, needed to stop trying to catch the wild mallards at Blackhawk Plaza and drive them somewhere else. The ducks were fine. They could fly. Moving them was illegal anyway, and if there were ducklings involved, it could break up a family that didn't need breaking up.
The reason anyone was talking about relocating ducks in the first place is that the plaza's lower pond had been drained for maintenance just before summer started, leaving the resident mallards without their usual water and a small crowd of concerned regulars without their usual view. Volunteers and plaza staff started hauling in supplemental food and water while everyone waited on replacement parts. It wasn't all good news. A pair of Canada geese that had nested near the pond for years were killed in vehicle strikes on the property, and their three goslings had to be captured and driven to International Bird Rescue. But by early July, residents had organized around the birds that were left, and the parts needed to refill the pond were expected within weeks.
Here's the thing about that story. It happened at the exact same shopping center whose ownership group had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy three months earlier, was being sued by its own tenants over deferred maintenance, and was in the middle of arranging a sale to get out from under $36 million in secured debt. Two things were true about Blackhawk Plaza at the same time this summer. One was a corporate finance story. The other was a neighborhood taking care of its ducks.
If you've followed the Blackhawk Plaza coverage in the Danville San Ramon or seen it pop up on SFGate, you already know the outline. Ramanujan Group LLC, the Newport Beach firm that bought the plaza in 2020 for roughly $38 million, filed a voluntary Chapter 11 petition on March 18, 2026, in federal bankruptcy court. The filing came after Preferred Bank and Nano Banc had both issued notices of default on loans totaling $36 million, and after an Orange County judge had already ordered a receiver to take over the property in a separate case. A coalition of property owners at the plaza, including the museum on the site, had also sued the ownership group over what their complaint described as widening cracks in the parking lot, broken staircase railings, and even live exposed wiring.
By July, attorneys for Ramanujan Group confirmed in a bankruptcy court filing that the plan is to sell. KW Commercial and CBRE are handling the listing. The land alone was appraised at $57.38 million back in 2023, well above what the group paid for it, even with $35.8 million in liens and over $657,000 in unpaid property taxes sitting on top. The original June 16 deadline to file a full restructuring plan needed a 90-day extension, which pushes the next real milestone into fall.
None of that is a story about Blackhawk the neighborhood failing. It's a story about one ownership group's balance sheet failing, on a piece of land that happens to be worth more today than it was five years ago. Those are different things, and the difference matters if you're trying to figure out what any of this actually means for daily life around the plaza.
If you've been away from the plaza for a while, the tenant list has genuinely shuffled, and not all in one direction.
Opened or opening:
Closed:
Draeger's owner John Draeger told SFGate his decision came down to conditions at the plaza that the landlord wasn't addressing. That's consistent with what other tenants have said in the ongoing litigation. But it's worth sitting with the fact that in the same stretch of months, three new food and retail businesses signed leases and opened their doors anyway. Whatever is wrong with the plaza's ownership structure, it hasn't stopped operators from betting on the location.
Apple Cinemas also walked away from a planned 26,200-square-foot theater in the space where the old Century Theatres used to run movies, citing uncertainty about who actually owns the property. That one stings a bit more, since a working theater has been the thing longtime visitors kept hoping would anchor a broader turnaround. For now, that space stays empty, and nobody's announced what comes next.
If you've wondered whether the Blackhawk Museum is caught up in any of this, it isn't, and there's a specific reason why. The museum sits on its own parcel, under separate ownership through the Behring Global Education Foundation, and Contra Costa County's own public FAQ on the bankruptcy confirms it directly: the museum is not part of the bankruptcy estate, and if the plaza is ever redeveloped, the developer would still be required to guarantee the museum adequate access under existing legal agreements.
That separation is why the museum could post a public statement this year clarifying that it remains open, fully operational, with unchanged hours, even as headlines about the plaza around it kept getting worse. It's also why 2026 turned out to be a genuinely good year for the museum on its own terms. East Bay Times named it Best Museum in the East Bay in its 2026 Best in the East Bay awards. The museum has also been adding to its collection, unveiling a new Bugatti Row with four classic Bugattis in its automotive gallery and a Tanzanite gemstone addition to the Art of Africa gallery.
The museum was one of the plaintiffs in the tenant lawsuit over deferred maintenance at the plaza, so it's not indifferent to what's happening around it. But its own future was never tied to Ramanujan Group's finances, and that distinction is the whole reason a bankruptcy filing and a museum award landed in the same calendar year without contradicting each other.
A few things worth knowing if you live nearby and just want the plain facts without the speculation. Contra Costa County has confirmed that no application to rezone or redevelop the plaza has been filed, despite rumors that have circulated since the bankruptcy news broke. The site's current zoning would technically allow residential density if an owner pursued that path someday, but there's no proposal on the table, and county officials have said as much publicly. In the meantime, the Blackhawk Police Department has stepped up patrols of the property to roughly three times a week while the ownership situation sorts itself out.
The sale process itself is still unfolding. Howard Grobstein, an independent restructuring professional, was slated to be appointed Chief Restructuring Officer around August 5 to manage the property while the bankruptcy case moves toward resolution, and the broader disclosure and sale timeline is now expected to stretch into the fall. Whoever eventually buys the plaza will be buying land that's appraised well above what the current owner paid for it, which is its own quiet signal about how the market actually views this corner of Blackhawk, separate from anyone's headline.
If you live here, none of this changes your Saturday morning. The tacos are new. The ducks have their water back or will soon. The museum is still open on its regular schedule and just picked up a regional award. The building's ownership is a legal and financial mess working its way through federal court, and that mess has already outlasted three restaurant tenants and outlived at least one grocery anchor. But the plaza itself, as a place people actually use, has kept functioning the whole time, run by whoever happens to be leasing the space this year rather than by whoever happens to be losing money on the mortgage.
That's usually how it goes with property in financial trouble. The corporate entity that owns the roof can be in genuine distress while the businesses and community underneath it keep operating on an entirely different clock.
If you're weighing a move to Blackhawk, or you already call it home and you're curious what's happening across the rest of Lamorinda this season, the team at Woehrle Real Estate and Development keeps a close eye on stories like this one, not because they move markets overnight, but because they shape what it actually feels like to live somewhere. If you ever want to talk through what's happening in your specific corner of the East Bay, reach out. What's My Home Worth is always a fair place to start the conversation.
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