urban.one
05-06-2009, 08:13 AM
On this first one I blame the city for giving free reign to developers with little controls in place. Abandoned constructions site and the resulting sinkholes are another example of this - the city needs tighter controls and to possibly require developers to put up some sort of bonds when starting a project to guarantee their will be money to reclaim the site if the developer tanks.
Father's legacy to daughter in real danger
By Michael Platt, Sun Media
Josie, age 7, is the new owner of Booker's restaurant which she inherited after the death of a relative. Her family is worried that because of the construction and road closures around the eatery's 5st and 4 ave s.e. location that Josie's inheritance will go down the drain.
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/WeirdNews/2009/05/06/Josie250.jpg
For Mike Platt, apparently to run on Tuesday.
MIKE DREW/SUN MEDIA
Two customers eat their lunch, the only sign of activity in a restaurant filled with empty tables and idle staff.
It’s 12:30 on a Monday, the height of the downtown lunch-hour, and Booker’s BBQ and Crab Shack is in the midst of another money-losing day, tied to the construction taking place outside.
It’s a familiar tale in half-finished Calgary — cranes and barricades blocking access to customers, pushing a once-profitable business to the brink of collapse.
But this time the business owner is a six-year-old girl, and the restaurant in question is her dad’s legacy to her — Bruce Claypool’s only means of providing for his daughter as she grows up without him.
Josie Claypool spent many a memorable day at Booker’s with her dad, before a heart ailment claimed the 42-year-old last fall.
“It reminds me of my daddy,” says Josie, of the rustic and once-bustling crab shack, at 316 3 St. S.E. Instead of closing or selling the restaurant when Bruce died, friends of the restaurant owner decided to keep Booker’s operating on Josie’s behalf, until she is old enough to make her own decisions.
“Bruce would do the same for me,” says Lance Hurtubise, Bruce’s friend and Booker’s temporary guardian.
Hurtubise’s eyes sweep the purposely-primitive eatery, a 11-year-old venture decorated with bare brick, rough wood and a flea-market’s worth of knick-knacks.
“This is Josie’s future,” says Hurtubise, who will temporarily close the restaurant after the May long weekend, to stop financial hemorrhaging that’s cost $360,000 so far.
The problem is public access to Booker’s — or rather, the lack of it.
Right now, the only way to reach Booker’s is via the 4 St. flyover, meaning you have to leave downtown to get to the restaurant’s front door.
Even that road — 3 St. S.E. — is little more than a dusty gravel lot, with condo towers being built across the street.
The dust and noise, along with some less than savoury surroundings, makes walking to Booker’s a non-option, and with convenient parking reduced to a handful of stalls, it’s no wonder the crab shack is anything but cooking.
Even little Josie knows something is amiss with the once-busy restaurant.
“She’s scared that it will close,” says Kara Claypool, Josie’s mom.
“She knows that the road closure is very hard on the business — she understands this is a difficult situation.”
Losing her dad’s restaurant would be more than a financial blow for Josie — Kara says her daughter spent so much time with her father, hanging around Booker’s, that many of her prized memories of him are linked to the restaurant.
“She loved coming here with her dad — there are a lot of memories here for her,” said Kara.
“There’s never a time we pass by when she doesn’t mention some story of being here with her dad.” It’s been a double dose of the construction woes, with the condos going up across the street and the city closing Riverfront Ave. for upgrades, starting on the same day as Bruce’s wake.
What was expected to take a few weeks has now drawn into its ninth month, with no end in sight — and a date for the closures to end is all those running Booker’s want.
“All we want is an answer; all we’re looking for is an answer, and then we can work around that,” said Hurtubise.
Officials with Pointe of View, the owner of the condominium project, had no official comment, with CEO Randy Klapstein saying he can’t provide a date.
Chris Ollenberger, CEO of the city-owned Calgary Municipal Land Corporation, says the city is waiting on Pointe of View to reopen access from the Riverfront Ave. side, and he wasn’t sure when that would happen.
Such vague information had forced Hurtubise to order the temporary closure of Booker’s, with a closed restaurant costing $12,000 a month, versus $30,000.
“We’re making the assumption this is going to get done — Stampede is a critical date for us, and if it’s not done by Stampede, we’ve got some real problems,” he says.
Ald. Joe Connelly, who has been frustrated in his attempt to help Booker’s, or at least get answers, said the failure to protect small businesses must be bourn by the city.
“It’s ridiculous — this is killing their business, and this is an indication of city hall not working,” said Connelly.
“It shows how dysfunctional we are, when we can’t help this business.”
[email protected]
and
This is the same company with a project in the USA.
A high-rise headache
Construction delays, new lending guidelines giving all involved with Vantage Pointe condos...
By Lori Weisberg Union-Tribune Staff Writer
2:00 a.m. May 6, 2009
Vantage Pointe, a nearly finished 700-unit condo high-rise near San Diego City College, has contracts with about 300 buyers. (K.C. Alfred / Union-Tribune) - Al Thompson, vice president of construction at the Vantage Pointe condo development, looked out over downtown from the penthouse. He said work was delayed by factors such as wildfire smoke and contaminated soil. (K.C. Alfred / Union-Tribune)
The developer of downtown San Diego's largest condominium project is facing the possibility of losing dozens of its buyers if it doesn't meet a deadline to complete the nearly 700-unit high-rise by this weekend.
Finishing the mammoth project on time, though, is just one of the developer's worries in a slumping housing market that has significantly slowed sales of new condos downtown.
Pointe of View Developments has contracts with nearly 300 buyers at Vantage Pointe, but purchasers say they have been unable to get loans because of new lending guidelines that require condo developers to secure a high percentage of pre-sales.
Other downtown developers are struggling to boost languishing sales, but their projects are dwarfed by Vantage Pointe, in East Village bordering San Diego City College.
“I think Vantage Pointe is the poster child for everything that's gone wrong in the condo market,” San Diego real estate analyst Gary London said. “It was too big, the timing was completely off, and it's a B, bordering on C, location. No matter what happens with (lending guidelines), the reality is they're not going to sell enough units to make it anything other than a problematic project.”
Other condo developments that have a number of unsold units are grappling with stiffer lending requirements. Some have opted to rent units to bring in income, while others are lowering sale prices to ensure they will be in sync with present-day appraisals.
For Pointe of View, the most immediate challenge is the more than 70 buyers who have the option to back out of their purchase agreements and get their 5 percent deposits refunded if the developer cannot secure an occupancy permit by Saturday.
Under the sale agreements, the developer is obligated to have the units ready within 42 months of the signing a purchase contract. That is unlikely to occur for the first set of buyers.
“People are scared to death of closing; they're upset with the developer and feel like this should have been completed a long, long time ago,” said Brad Willis, a financial adviser who in November 2005 agreed to buy a one-bedroom condo on the 31st floor for $341,000. He has since organized an online message board for prospective buyers to air concerns about the project.
“Some of us are less than a week away from closing, and we don't know if this an apartment building, whether they will they get their occupancy permits and whether people will qualify, which is pretty ridiculous after a five-year period.”
A number of factors contributed to the construction delays, including an 11-month effort to remove contaminated soil at the site, smoke from the 2007 wildfires that shut down work for several days and occasional problems with cranes, said Al Thompson, vice president of construction for Pointe of View.
“In this industry, if you're two weeks late, you're doing very well,” he said. “My biggest frustration is with some purchasers who are trying to do whatever they can to make us fail.”
Developers such as Pointe of View are coping with a new requirement imposed by mortgage giant Fannie Mae that 70 percent of the units in condo projects be pre-sold before the government-controlled entity will purchase loans issued by private lenders. Up until March 1, the requirement was that 51 percent of a condo project's units be under contract.
A spokeswoman for Fannie Mae yesterday confirmed that it has granted an exception to its rule for Vantage Pointe and will allow the developer to meet the 70 percent pre-sale requirement for each of the project's three connected towers rather than for the entire building.
“Fannie Mae's pre-sale guidelines are aimed at protecting prospective condo buyers from investing in projects that have a higher risk of failure. We make exceptions to this requirement if we determine that a project still has a strong chance of success even if the pre-sale level falls below the prescribed 70 percent threshold,” Fannie Mae spokeswoman Amy Bonitatibus said.
How the exception will help Pointe of View close sales through its preferred lender, Wells Fargo, is uncertain because the current buyers are spread throughout the high-rise. It is unknown whether there are enough buyers in any one tower to meet the 70 percent threshold.
“It will help by cutting the project into different parts, so we'll relaunch (sales efforts for) the project this month, and we'll move ahead and hope to see some signs of recovery in the San Diego market,” said Brian Stoddard, president and chief operating officer of Pointe of View, which recently decided to rent out some of its unsold condos.
“This is not a project issue, it's a market issue. We'll ride out the market, and there will be a better day.”
Other major builders downtown say they are appealing to Fannie Mae to relax its lending rules. Meanwhile, they are discounting prices for buyers who entered into contracts at the height of the housing boom.
Last month, Bosa Development agreed to lower prices by an average of 15 percent to 20 percent for 82 buyers who entered into contracts two years ago in its 232-unit Bayside high-rise. The decision was driven by the rapid decline in housing values that made it difficult for the luxury condos to be appraised at the original purchase prices, Bosa President Nat Bosa said.
“I think we made a difficult situation somewhat easier,” said Bosa, who is hoping to persuade Fannie Mae to also grant his project an exemption from the 70 percent pre-sale rule. “We had a lot of questions from the purchasers, and we got several opinions to make sure we did the right thing, and then made the decision to do what we did, and hopefully it's the right decision.”
Early buyers at the 148-unit Breeza project in Little Italy also have received price reductions in keeping with today's lower market values, said Mike Chious, general sales manager for Intergulf Development.
Vantage Pointe faces the biggest challenges downtown because of the size of the project and the misfortune of opening during a depressed market.
Stoddard of Pointe of View insisted that units sold in 2005 are still being appraised for what buyers agreed to pay for them and should not require price adjustments.
Bryan Hall, who has done a walk-through for the two-bedroom unit on the 29th floor he purchased in 2005 for $460,000, said he will be disappointed if the sale cannot go through. He is renting in Mission Valley and awaiting word from the developer.
“It was going to be my dream home, a place where I've wanted to live for a very long time,” said Hall, a real estate broker. “I put so much mental energy and hope into living here, and now it seems impossible because I haven't been able to get a loan.”
Father's legacy to daughter in real danger
By Michael Platt, Sun Media
Josie, age 7, is the new owner of Booker's restaurant which she inherited after the death of a relative. Her family is worried that because of the construction and road closures around the eatery's 5st and 4 ave s.e. location that Josie's inheritance will go down the drain.
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/WeirdNews/2009/05/06/Josie250.jpg
For Mike Platt, apparently to run on Tuesday.
MIKE DREW/SUN MEDIA
Two customers eat their lunch, the only sign of activity in a restaurant filled with empty tables and idle staff.
It’s 12:30 on a Monday, the height of the downtown lunch-hour, and Booker’s BBQ and Crab Shack is in the midst of another money-losing day, tied to the construction taking place outside.
It’s a familiar tale in half-finished Calgary — cranes and barricades blocking access to customers, pushing a once-profitable business to the brink of collapse.
But this time the business owner is a six-year-old girl, and the restaurant in question is her dad’s legacy to her — Bruce Claypool’s only means of providing for his daughter as she grows up without him.
Josie Claypool spent many a memorable day at Booker’s with her dad, before a heart ailment claimed the 42-year-old last fall.
“It reminds me of my daddy,” says Josie, of the rustic and once-bustling crab shack, at 316 3 St. S.E. Instead of closing or selling the restaurant when Bruce died, friends of the restaurant owner decided to keep Booker’s operating on Josie’s behalf, until she is old enough to make her own decisions.
“Bruce would do the same for me,” says Lance Hurtubise, Bruce’s friend and Booker’s temporary guardian.
Hurtubise’s eyes sweep the purposely-primitive eatery, a 11-year-old venture decorated with bare brick, rough wood and a flea-market’s worth of knick-knacks.
“This is Josie’s future,” says Hurtubise, who will temporarily close the restaurant after the May long weekend, to stop financial hemorrhaging that’s cost $360,000 so far.
The problem is public access to Booker’s — or rather, the lack of it.
Right now, the only way to reach Booker’s is via the 4 St. flyover, meaning you have to leave downtown to get to the restaurant’s front door.
Even that road — 3 St. S.E. — is little more than a dusty gravel lot, with condo towers being built across the street.
The dust and noise, along with some less than savoury surroundings, makes walking to Booker’s a non-option, and with convenient parking reduced to a handful of stalls, it’s no wonder the crab shack is anything but cooking.
Even little Josie knows something is amiss with the once-busy restaurant.
“She’s scared that it will close,” says Kara Claypool, Josie’s mom.
“She knows that the road closure is very hard on the business — she understands this is a difficult situation.”
Losing her dad’s restaurant would be more than a financial blow for Josie — Kara says her daughter spent so much time with her father, hanging around Booker’s, that many of her prized memories of him are linked to the restaurant.
“She loved coming here with her dad — there are a lot of memories here for her,” said Kara.
“There’s never a time we pass by when she doesn’t mention some story of being here with her dad.” It’s been a double dose of the construction woes, with the condos going up across the street and the city closing Riverfront Ave. for upgrades, starting on the same day as Bruce’s wake.
What was expected to take a few weeks has now drawn into its ninth month, with no end in sight — and a date for the closures to end is all those running Booker’s want.
“All we want is an answer; all we’re looking for is an answer, and then we can work around that,” said Hurtubise.
Officials with Pointe of View, the owner of the condominium project, had no official comment, with CEO Randy Klapstein saying he can’t provide a date.
Chris Ollenberger, CEO of the city-owned Calgary Municipal Land Corporation, says the city is waiting on Pointe of View to reopen access from the Riverfront Ave. side, and he wasn’t sure when that would happen.
Such vague information had forced Hurtubise to order the temporary closure of Booker’s, with a closed restaurant costing $12,000 a month, versus $30,000.
“We’re making the assumption this is going to get done — Stampede is a critical date for us, and if it’s not done by Stampede, we’ve got some real problems,” he says.
Ald. Joe Connelly, who has been frustrated in his attempt to help Booker’s, or at least get answers, said the failure to protect small businesses must be bourn by the city.
“It’s ridiculous — this is killing their business, and this is an indication of city hall not working,” said Connelly.
“It shows how dysfunctional we are, when we can’t help this business.”
[email protected]
and
This is the same company with a project in the USA.
A high-rise headache
Construction delays, new lending guidelines giving all involved with Vantage Pointe condos...
By Lori Weisberg Union-Tribune Staff Writer
2:00 a.m. May 6, 2009
Vantage Pointe, a nearly finished 700-unit condo high-rise near San Diego City College, has contracts with about 300 buyers. (K.C. Alfred / Union-Tribune) - Al Thompson, vice president of construction at the Vantage Pointe condo development, looked out over downtown from the penthouse. He said work was delayed by factors such as wildfire smoke and contaminated soil. (K.C. Alfred / Union-Tribune)
The developer of downtown San Diego's largest condominium project is facing the possibility of losing dozens of its buyers if it doesn't meet a deadline to complete the nearly 700-unit high-rise by this weekend.
Finishing the mammoth project on time, though, is just one of the developer's worries in a slumping housing market that has significantly slowed sales of new condos downtown.
Pointe of View Developments has contracts with nearly 300 buyers at Vantage Pointe, but purchasers say they have been unable to get loans because of new lending guidelines that require condo developers to secure a high percentage of pre-sales.
Other downtown developers are struggling to boost languishing sales, but their projects are dwarfed by Vantage Pointe, in East Village bordering San Diego City College.
“I think Vantage Pointe is the poster child for everything that's gone wrong in the condo market,” San Diego real estate analyst Gary London said. “It was too big, the timing was completely off, and it's a B, bordering on C, location. No matter what happens with (lending guidelines), the reality is they're not going to sell enough units to make it anything other than a problematic project.”
Other condo developments that have a number of unsold units are grappling with stiffer lending requirements. Some have opted to rent units to bring in income, while others are lowering sale prices to ensure they will be in sync with present-day appraisals.
For Pointe of View, the most immediate challenge is the more than 70 buyers who have the option to back out of their purchase agreements and get their 5 percent deposits refunded if the developer cannot secure an occupancy permit by Saturday.
Under the sale agreements, the developer is obligated to have the units ready within 42 months of the signing a purchase contract. That is unlikely to occur for the first set of buyers.
“People are scared to death of closing; they're upset with the developer and feel like this should have been completed a long, long time ago,” said Brad Willis, a financial adviser who in November 2005 agreed to buy a one-bedroom condo on the 31st floor for $341,000. He has since organized an online message board for prospective buyers to air concerns about the project.
“Some of us are less than a week away from closing, and we don't know if this an apartment building, whether they will they get their occupancy permits and whether people will qualify, which is pretty ridiculous after a five-year period.”
A number of factors contributed to the construction delays, including an 11-month effort to remove contaminated soil at the site, smoke from the 2007 wildfires that shut down work for several days and occasional problems with cranes, said Al Thompson, vice president of construction for Pointe of View.
“In this industry, if you're two weeks late, you're doing very well,” he said. “My biggest frustration is with some purchasers who are trying to do whatever they can to make us fail.”
Developers such as Pointe of View are coping with a new requirement imposed by mortgage giant Fannie Mae that 70 percent of the units in condo projects be pre-sold before the government-controlled entity will purchase loans issued by private lenders. Up until March 1, the requirement was that 51 percent of a condo project's units be under contract.
A spokeswoman for Fannie Mae yesterday confirmed that it has granted an exception to its rule for Vantage Pointe and will allow the developer to meet the 70 percent pre-sale requirement for each of the project's three connected towers rather than for the entire building.
“Fannie Mae's pre-sale guidelines are aimed at protecting prospective condo buyers from investing in projects that have a higher risk of failure. We make exceptions to this requirement if we determine that a project still has a strong chance of success even if the pre-sale level falls below the prescribed 70 percent threshold,” Fannie Mae spokeswoman Amy Bonitatibus said.
How the exception will help Pointe of View close sales through its preferred lender, Wells Fargo, is uncertain because the current buyers are spread throughout the high-rise. It is unknown whether there are enough buyers in any one tower to meet the 70 percent threshold.
“It will help by cutting the project into different parts, so we'll relaunch (sales efforts for) the project this month, and we'll move ahead and hope to see some signs of recovery in the San Diego market,” said Brian Stoddard, president and chief operating officer of Pointe of View, which recently decided to rent out some of its unsold condos.
“This is not a project issue, it's a market issue. We'll ride out the market, and there will be a better day.”
Other major builders downtown say they are appealing to Fannie Mae to relax its lending rules. Meanwhile, they are discounting prices for buyers who entered into contracts at the height of the housing boom.
Last month, Bosa Development agreed to lower prices by an average of 15 percent to 20 percent for 82 buyers who entered into contracts two years ago in its 232-unit Bayside high-rise. The decision was driven by the rapid decline in housing values that made it difficult for the luxury condos to be appraised at the original purchase prices, Bosa President Nat Bosa said.
“I think we made a difficult situation somewhat easier,” said Bosa, who is hoping to persuade Fannie Mae to also grant his project an exemption from the 70 percent pre-sale rule. “We had a lot of questions from the purchasers, and we got several opinions to make sure we did the right thing, and then made the decision to do what we did, and hopefully it's the right decision.”
Early buyers at the 148-unit Breeza project in Little Italy also have received price reductions in keeping with today's lower market values, said Mike Chious, general sales manager for Intergulf Development.
Vantage Pointe faces the biggest challenges downtown because of the size of the project and the misfortune of opening during a depressed market.
Stoddard of Pointe of View insisted that units sold in 2005 are still being appraised for what buyers agreed to pay for them and should not require price adjustments.
Bryan Hall, who has done a walk-through for the two-bedroom unit on the 29th floor he purchased in 2005 for $460,000, said he will be disappointed if the sale cannot go through. He is renting in Mission Valley and awaiting word from the developer.
“It was going to be my dream home, a place where I've wanted to live for a very long time,” said Hall, a real estate broker. “I put so much mental energy and hope into living here, and now it seems impossible because I haven't been able to get a loan.”