The Mulberry Trust gave Omni a loan some years ago to pay off the building. The loan was just meant to be a temporary thing to get Omni up and running, but not supposed to be a long term loan (like that of a bank). From the wiki, these were the terms
Mortgage
Starting Jan 1st, 2017 we officially stopped paying rent and started paying off a mortgage loan! Our loan is for $975,000 at 5.5% interest, with a balloon payment due Jan 1st, 2021.
$5,365.61 + 5.5% ($312.28) = $5,677.89/mo"
The balloon payment ($900k) was supposed to be a way to get Omni to find some other lender in 2021 so that the trust could be off the hook. We couldn't pay it in 2021, and the lender gave 2 years of extension. We were hoping to get another extension this year too, given there was this property tax drama and the boycott, so its hard to find a lender right now, but we just got news that there will be NO extension. So unless we find the funds, a new lender, or a new owner who will lease or let us stay, we will have to leave Omni Commons.
So far, some ideas going are - find a big donor to foot the bill, get 20people or so to loan us $50k (idea copied from another hackerspace), find a partner who will let us stay, or find a land trust to own the land and let us use it.
A nonprofit called People's Programs has offered to bring in one of their donors to pay off the needed $900k, and keep us on as partners. They made a proposal to delegates about this on Thursday.
Also attaching an Omni brochure Silver made, and I just made edits to recently that we can share around. But it could use some better info for potential lenders/donors.