Dr. Kali Pradip Chaudhuri could be retired and enjoying a soft life at his 11,000-square-foot mansion in Hemet.
Instead, the 82‑year‑old orthopedic surgeon turned medical magnate and real estate developer is spending his days working on a high‑stakes $470 million bid to take over downtown’s Oceanwide Plaza – also famously known among Angelenos as “Graffiti Towers” – after Chinese conglomerate Oceanwide Holdings abandoned the site in 2019.
“This is the main square of the city. I would like to make it look good,” Chaudhuri said in an interview with the Business Journal.
A bankruptcy court judge confirmed the sale to KPC Square, a joint venture between Chaudhuri’s KPC Group and general contractor Lendlease July 20. The firm got a leg up in the competition when it purchased the senior lien against the towers from Mickey Cheng, the administrator of an EB-5 investment fund, earlier this year for an unknown amount. The EB-5 note, combined with Lendlease’s $169 million secured Chapter 11 claim account for about $400 million of KPC’s bid.
Now, a six-month clock has started for the parties to close the deal – the biggest of Chaudhuri’s short stint in U.S. real estate, and arguably bigger for Los Angeles itself as the city races to clean up the $1.2 billion eyesore across from the L.A. Convention Center before the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
“If KPC is victorious they will get this entire thing for a pittance,” said one person close to the bankruptcy proceedings who spoke to the Business Journal on condition of anonymity. “From a big picture standpoint, it ain’t over until it’s over.”
In fact, Chaudhuri wanted to buy the stalled trio of skyscrapers long before Oceanwide’s creditors forced the project into bankruptcy in 2024. Those who have watched him over the past three decades say this is precisely the kind of messy, contested situation in which he thrives.
The Graffiti Towers gamble
Stroll through the open-air courtyard between the Crypto.com Arena and L.A. Live, and it is impossible to miss Oceanwide Plaza. The three steel husks loom over the freeway, draped in graffiti and encircled by concertina wire that’s made the site famous on social media platforms.
“It’s a visual reminder of what downtown has become,” said Sonnet Hui, a project manager at Cumming Group who has followed the saga closely. “A lot of developers looked at the floor plan to see how to reduce the unit size and create more units to make it pencil.”
Oceanwide’s original design targeted overseas condo buyers, with units averaging 2,200 square feet above the hotel on the north side of the lot and 1,435 square feet in the residential towers. That’s much larger than what Hui said the local condo market can absorb, particularly with hefty HOA dues.
But Chaudhuri said he’ll keep the original business plan for the stalled project. Splitting up the units would mean adding more “wet” columns for plumbing, which means cutting vertical tunnels through heavily stressed slabs.
“It ends up being a logistical nightmare,” said John Petty, head of real estate development at KPC.
These challenges are a remnant from a foreign investment wave in downtown Los Angeles and other U.S. markets that’s largely over now. Beijing‑based Oceanwide Holdings paid $174 million for the 4.6-acre site at 1101 Flower Street in 2014 as downtown’s adaptive reuse renaissance gave way to high-rise residential construction.
City planning officials envisioned a touristy entertainment district for South Park with neon LED screens akin to Times Square. And Oceanwide promised to deliver, hiring Lendlease in 2016 to oversee construction of three towers comprising 504 condos, a 184-room Park Hyatt Hotel and 153,000 square feet of retail space. Three years later, capital controls from China brought the company’s North American plans to a grinding halt. Oceanwide Holdings ran out of funds as the Chinese government tightened restrictions on overseas capital investments.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit the region and took a toll on the city’s urban core – a surge in office vacancies, retail closures, tourism slump and stalled investment.
By the time Oceanwide stopped work and abandoned the site, the company had already poured $1.2 billion into the megaproject. A web of liens sprouted from investors, unpaid subcontractors and tax collectors. Graffiti artists and taggers broke in and laid claim to the unfinished towers, turning it into unlikely urban art canvas – thus earning the nickname. Daredevils base jumped from the upper floors.
Many real estate players in the region looked at the bundle of liabilities and shrugged.
But Chaudhuri saw an opening. This has been his playbook going back to the 1990s.
From Hong Kong to L.A. bankruptcy court
Chaudhuri’s path to downtown Los Angeles began on the opposite coast. He’d harbored an ambition to build a “supertall” in the United States for years, and Oceanwide’s collapse presented several opportunities across the country. He said the obvious locale was New York, and specifically a 15,000‑square‑foot parcel at 80 South St. near Manhattan’s South Street Seaport.
Oceanwide bought that site for $390 million in cash from the Howard Hughes Corp. in 2015, then acquired the neighboring air rights.
“It was an amazing piece of property,” Petty said. “We were literally in escrow.”
Then problems emerged next door at One Maiden Lane, a troubled high-rise that became known as the “Leaning Tower of New York.” The liabilities were too much even for Chaudhuri.
So KPC paused and started eyeing Oceanwide Plaza instead. What followed was a year‑long dance with the cash‑poor Chinese conglomerate and its creditors.
In July 2023, Chaudhuri and Petty flew to Hong Kong to negotiate directly with Oceanwide Chairman Lu Zhiqiang.
But the two sides did not see eye-to-eye on the value of the unfinished towers, and after two weeks the pair flew back to California empty-handed.
“We concluded that they were just so unrealistic about what they thought the property was worth,” Petty said. “We tried our best and couldn’t make it happen.”
And all of this happened before the word “bankruptcy” was on the table, Chaudhuri said. “I’m not a grave monger.”
A new class system – and the HMO revolution
Chaudhuri was born into a wealthy landowning family in Sylhet, in what is now Bangladesh. His surname literally means landlord, he explained.
By his own account, he grew up surrounded by privilege and a caste system he came to despise.
He scraped through medical school in Kolkata and then followed long trajectory from Malaysia to England to Canada, and finally the U.S., passing the newly imposed visa qualifying exam to complete his medical residency in Minnesota.
In 1984, lured by a residential building boom and a warmer climate, Chaudhuri opened a practice 80 miles southeast of downtown L.A. in Hemet, then a rural exurb. He later served as chief of staff at the 327‑bed Hemet Valley Medical Center.
This was the era when HMOs took hold in American healthcare, and Chaudhuri saw this as a problem – and an opportunity – in Riverside County.
“When HMOs came, they divided our medical group,” Chaudhuri said. “They said all the primary care doctors are the gatekeepers. That created a caste system, and I escaped from a caste system in India.”
Chaudhuri formed KPC Global Care, one of numerous physician practice managers that cropped up across the country to bring economies of scale to the fragmented industry. The firm shot to prominence in 1999, when it bought 81 bankrupt health clinics serving some 511,000 patients for $24 million from former medical giant MedPartners. KPC was one of dozens of claimants caught up in MedPartners’ Chapter 11 case that year, and that gave Chaudhuri a front row seat to American bankruptcy law.
“When they hit the bottom, I had two choices: either forgo my credit amount or exert myself into this,” he said. “If there’s any mistake that I made, it’s that I did not listen to them. I took the risk.”
It was a huge coup for a rural orthopedic surgeon, like Chaudhuri, without Wall Street backing. The deal was also a ticking bomb since MedPartners reported the clinics were hemorrhaging about $8 million a month before KPC took over and state regulators were hovering should the company go belly-up. Chaudhuri closed the underperforming sites and cut staff. KPC received $42 million in loans from the health plans it contracted with, news outlets reported at the time.
By June 2000, KPC was still losing about $2 million a month, he said. It closed its remaining 38 clinics by November, laid off thousands of workers and filed for Chapter 11, preempting a state takeover. More than 300,000 patients were left in the lurch.
It was a disturbing chapter of California’s healthcare evolution, according to Daniel Zingale, who’s retired now but at that time served as the founding director of California’s new Department of Managed Care.
“That bankruptcy concerned me very much,” Zingale said.“Bankruptcy was a threat to patient care, which was our primary mission.”
The problem, from Zingale’s perspective was the department had “extraordinary” powers over HMOs, but none over medical groups like KPC.
Chaudhuri, for his part, lost everything. But the allure of U.S. bankruptcy law would soon draw him back.
Resurrected ‘like a phoenix’
Chaudhuri does not describe himself as a savior in those days.
“Contrary to what has been reported, I fought very hard,” Chaudhuri said. “Since that time, I resurrected myself like a phoenix. Step by step, I have come back.”
He emerged from the early‑2000s wreckage with his credit restored enough to go shopping again – this time for Tenet Healthcare’s four struggling hospitals in Orange County.
The acquisition was nearly defeated by a competing bid from 70 local physicians led by infectious disease specialist Michael Fitzgibbons who scraped together an offer in the hopes of keeping the hospitals under community control. That counter bid failed, though it resulted in a trail of legal battles, ending in a $5.7 million civil payout to Fitzgibbons. The four former Tenet hospitals have since been rebranded under KPC’s “Global Medical Center” group.
Under his stewardship, they are still open, Chaudhuri said. And so is his adopted hometown facility, Hemet Global Medical Center.
“It’s very difficult to run a hospital in a remote area, but we are doing it,” Chaudhuri said. “It is still alive and still running.”
KPC’s portfolio currently includes seven California hospitals, plus the Kolkata campus, according to its website. It has attempted to expand further over the years with bids for Verity and Promise Healthcare.
Act II: Real Estate
A pivot to commercial real estate was inevitable, Chaudhuri said.
“The culprit is my grandfather,” he quipped. “I enjoyed being a doctor for a while, but something called in my genes.”
In India, Chaudhuri opened a 1.8‑million‑square‑foot private medical college and 750‑bed teaching hospital in Kolkata in 2006. He’s now adding two residential towers and a 58‑story mixed‑use medical and residential skyscraper that would be the city’s second tallest.
His early moves in the U.S. had been modest. Chaudhuri bought a 125,000‑square‑foot commercial property in Hemet in 2008 and later purchased 168,000‑square‑foot shopping center in Hemet anchored by Sprouts for $9.5 million.
In 2024, Chaudhuri paid $25 million for the 59-year ground lease at 3737 Stadium Drive across from SoFi Stadium in Stan Kroenke’s master-planned Hollywood Park. Just months later, work got underway on the fast-tracked 300-room Kali Hotel, marking Chaudhuri’s debut in the U.S. hotel market.
The luxury hospitality development designed by Lamar Johnson Collaborative scored $195 million in construction financing from Bank of America last year. It’s on track to open in 2027, Chaudhuri said.
The Supertall
But Oceanwide Plaza is still Chaudhuri’s largest catch.
Cut off from Beijing in 2023, KPC looked elsewhere for leverage, and soon found it through Mickey Cheng, the administrator of the $118 million EB-5 investment fund tied to the towers that’s been in default for years and has by now ballooned to more than $230 million.
With the towers still in limbo four years after construction halted, Cheng and KPC struck a deal. KPC acquired the note for the fund for an undisclosed amount, making the firm one of Oceanwide’s biggest secured creditors after unpaid subcontractors forced it into bankruptcy in 2024.
The case dragged on for two more years as lienholders litigated a tangle of priority disputes. Finally, a state judge ruled that the EB-5 fund – and by extension KPC – held the senior position over Lendlease, which has continued to cover security and nuisance abatement costs at the property throughout the proceedings.
By the time the towers hit the auction block, it was clear to both Lendlease and KPC that they could place a stronger bid together.
“Lendlease was the general contractor, so obviously knows a lot about the project,” said Howard Steinberg, who’s representing KPC in the Oceanwide case. “We felt that if we combined forces, we could make a go of it.”
Under their agreement, KPC and Lendlease would credit‑bid their debt, then inject fresh equity to pay off the property’s debtor-in-possession loan, about $40 million in delinquent county property taxes and other priority claims Steinberg estimates currently total about another $80 million.
From the outside, other would‑be buyers are watching closely. At least two competing bidders, whose identity is not fully revealed in court filings, are ready to pounce if KPC fails to close the deal. Steinberg dismisses any doubts.
“As for the other prospective bidders, that’s just noise,” he said. “No one out there has come close to writing the check they need to write… Those people are making such lowball offers and spreading rumors about KPC not having the ability, which is just nonsense.”
The city, the clock – and a question of trust
Meanwhile the image of the tagged and decaying skyscrapers weighs on Mayor Karen Bass and her aides, who are counting on the clean‑up of Oceanwide Plaza to help reframe downtown ahead of 2028.
“Oceanwide Plaza sits at the center of one of Downtown Los Angeles’ most important economic corridors, linking the Convention Center, Crypto.com Arena, L.A. Live, and the broader South Park district,” Bass said in a statement following the confirmation hearing for Oceanwide’s sale. “Completing this project is about far more than finishing a building – it’s about restoring confidence, reconnecting a vital commercial corridor, and unlocking the economic potential of one of the city’s most strategic destinations ahead of a transformative decade for Los Angeles. I look forward to an expedited closing and the proposed buyer delivering on their commitments.”
The status of the towers weighs on Chaudhuri as well, at least rhetorically.
“(The) Olympics is coming,” he said. “When people come here, I know they enjoy the graffiti, but do they really? Is it a good thing for our city?”
KPC agreed to fund graffiti abatement even before the sale closes. Steinberg said it’s around $3 million worth of cleanup. Crews began to hose the spray paint off the day after KPC’s bid was confirmed in court.
“We agreed as a showing of good faith to abate the graffiti,” Steinberg said. “So, if KPC doesn’t close, at least the graffiti is gone. They’re doing it now as we speak.”
But what he and Chaudhuri betray a glimmer of anxiety over is entitlements.
From a development perspective, KPC has made a key strategic choice: it will not attempt to redesign the towers or alter their unit mix in any significant way before completion. Under the plan now before the bankruptcy court, Chaudhuri said KPC’s acquisition is subject to two main closing conditions: approval of certain entitlements and permits by the city, and finalization of its financing package.
“Any developer would require that,” Steinberg said. “Otherwise, there’s no way to build. You have to prove it will be economically viable. You need to get that stuff approved.”
Some of KPC’s requests mirror concessions the city has granted to nearby projects. Others go further, Chaudhuri said. He didn’t reveal further details about the negotiations with the city or prospective lenders, adding only that “many have come forward.” What is not in dispute is that every month of delay burns more cash and frays more nerves.
“What’s been frustrating is we know what we need and we’re asking for things the city has done in the area,” Steinberg said. “We’re not asking for anything outlandish. We’re anxious because we can only do so much on our own if the city drags its feet.”
For his part, Chaudhuri is openly frustrated by what he sees as misperceptions about KPC’s ability to close this deal, questions about his real estate career and slow walking at City Hall, but he claims to hold faith in the process and that Oceanwide will be his to bring to completion soon.
“This is the only country that will give you an opportunity if you work hard,” he said. “Here, very little nepotism. Very little concern who you are, whether you’re black, white, brown, curly hair, short or tall. If you work hard, you can make it here.
“If I survive, and if I am able to do it, I have an obligation to make this look better.”
