Lenders threatening to foreclose on Rob Maguire’s long-delayed Playa Vista project are keeping pressure on the L.A. developer, despite having struck a tentative new deal on the $8 billion project last week.

On July 2, just two business days before the scheduled July 7 foreclosure sale of the Marina del Rey property, the two sides reached an “agreement in principle” to create new partnerships governing development of the 1,087-acre project and the proposed DreamWorks SKG movie studio at the site.

The new agreement postpones the foreclosure sale until July 25 a period made intentionally short to show that the lenders are serious about foreclosing if Maguire doesn’t move swiftly in his negotiations with them.

“I think it’s unrealistic to expect that we’re going to have definitive documents by July 25,” said one source close to the negotiations. “But the reason that it was such a short-term period was to keep Rob Maguire completely focused on his responsibility to move this along at a rapid pace.”

“It’s to show that the debt holders are fully willing to go in and foreclose if necessary,” he said.

The source said that, as long as Maguire cooperates in hammering out the remaining details of the agreement, the foreclosure sale would likely be postponed again beyond the July 25 date to allow time to complete the new partnership documents.

In a statement, Maguire said his Maguire Partners had reached an “agreement in principle” with affiliates of Morgan Stanley Real Estate Fund and Goldman Sachs & Co.’s Whitehall Street Real Estate Fund, which hold the $150 million in debt on the project, for the development of Playa Vista.

“It has always been our intent to reach an agreement on funding and I am pleased to now be in exclusive negotiations,” Maguire said. “This committment represents a determined effort on all sides to see Playa Vista come to fruition. After eight years, the obstacles to this project should finally be behind us, and we are earger to move forward.”

The partnership of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs owns 83 percent of the original debt on Playa Vista, with Oak Tree Capital Management in downtown Los Angeles holding the remaining 17 percent.

A partnership of Beverly Hills-based Pacific Capital Group and Washington, D.C.-based Union Labor Life Insurance Co. has an option to purchase a 33 percent equity stake in the project, according to several sources.

“I am pleased and encouraged that this important real estate development will finally become a reality,” Pacific Capital’s Garry Winnick said in a statement.

Winnick was at one time competing with Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to fund the Playa Vista deal, but has since joined forces with them.

A Morgan Stanley official confirmed the agreement in principle with Maguire but added: “We need to take that agreement and put it into definitive documents.”

Last week’s agreement was summarized in a 12-page document, but the final agreement is expected to be much longer and more detailed, he said.

Another source close to the negotiations said some of the most important details of those final documents will be the portions that describe Maguire’s new role in Playa Vista. What prompted the lenders to relent, and what is most important in the final documents, the source said, is for Maguire to agree to accept a smaller role in Playa Vista. That includes his being “excluded from any of the development of DreamWorks,” the source said.

The source also said that the lenders want to keep pressure on Maguire because the Playa Vista project has more than once been touted as “just around the corner,” only to fall through when an agreement in principal couldn’t be fashioned into a final document.

Michael Steed, a senior vice president at ULLICO, however, said in a statement that last week’s agreement indicates the parties “are now on a very positive course for the future of this project.”

ULLICO is a privately held financial services company and pension fund investment adviser that manages approximately $4 billion in pension fund money and is owned by a number of unions connected with the AFL-CIO.

According to sources familiar with Playa Vista, ULLICO has wanted to invest in the project for more than two years and negotiated at one time with Maguire and the project’s original lenders.

Steed would not comment on ULLICO’s involvement in Playa Vista, except to say that the union-backed investment fund wants to see the project succeed because of the estimated 10,000 jobs it would create, the economic benefit to Los Angeles and the “premium rate of return” ULLICO expects on its investment.

Whether Maguire or the debt holders held the upper hand at the end of last week remained a matter of some dispute.

“The lenders are sitting across the table from Rob holding a gun on him (in the form of a foreclosure), but Rob is holding a grenade in his hand (the threat of bankruptcy) with his thumb on the pin,” one source said.

But another source close to the negotiations disagreed, saying Maguire would lose too much if he filed for Chapter 11 protection because lawyers for the lenders might be able to foreclose anyway by having the Playa Vista property pulled out of bankruptcy.

“Rob stands to make between $50 million and $100 million in developer’s fees on this,” the source said. “If he went into bankruptcy court and lost, he could lose everything he stands to gain in the project.”

Yet another source agreed that the “across the table” scenario wasn’t quite accurate because most of the negotiations were taking place through a flurry of faxes and phone calls last week as everyone tried to get the deal done before the July 4 weekend and the July 7 scheduled sale date.