Berry on Fractions & Shared Ownership: December 2007

Friday, December 07, 2007

December 6th

The reach of fractions continues to surprise me. In the past week inquiries from a Manhattan area golf and residential community, a luxe hotel in Miami expanding to CO ski and Manhattan, a fancy golf course outside of Denver, the best located of all Santa Fe deals and a couple of left-fielders from Panama! Those are just the calls I got to return.

Mac MacEwan, our marketing guru, and I are advising a nifty project in Hyannis, Cape Cod. No, it's not the windmill farm that the Kennedys are so excited about, but a full service, amenity-rich resort hotel property expanding into fractions. It's great to work with, in this case, entrepreneurs, who 'get it' and are on the move.

A new destination spa, major water park, and beach house are being added to go along with the current amenities. The beach house, right on the beach, and not inexpensive to say the least brings this project to the ocean. A shuttle will take owners to Hyannis for shopping and to the private beaches [owners only] that surround Hyannis. As this is a fee product the owners are, well, owners. Only in Hyannis, where the Kenneyds preach for the little guy can there be private beaches! So says a California guy, were we are proud to share our beaches with any bum that comes by!

15 fractional condos will be built on top of hotel wings [259 room resort hotel] and on top of the destination spa building, two and three bedrooms, lock-offs, robust rental program and fully leveraged HOA budget with all hotel personnel and services right there. The one missing spot right now is the fractional experienced sales director for a February soft opening.

Mike Bosch, our advisory team leader, and I have finished a stint in Atlantic City for a luxury condo tower that chose not to sell the top floor units so it can have a fractional project. Atlantic City? Yup. Only $11 billion going into new development on top of the $11 billion already invested. As they have seen the regional [Indian] casinos take away a lot of the day business they are transforming themselves into more of a Vegas, destination location.

Morgan Stanley's gaming company has launched a 3900-room hotel and when it is 'all in' the tab will be $2.5 billion, not to mention the new MGM Grand and a deck of others. Atlantic City is a happening place. . A new, twice-a-day train from Penn Station will begin this summer.

There are some 50 fractional condos, 1/6th shares, eventually. All amenities are in and in the building, and of course Atlantic City is the big amenity. There's a need for a sales director here, too. The good news is that the developer is very experienced in PA and well-established in Atlantic City.

Star is launching its 'Star Sales Education Center' in January. It's purpose is to inculcate the Star-way of selling to our new sales directors and sales teams, and not loose our grasp on how we have grown up with the fractional selling business.

About Carl Berry

Carl Berry is CEO of Star Resort Group, which is the nation’s oldest and most respected fractional/private residence club developer and marketer. Star is headquartered in Bozeman, Montana.

Star’s current projects are located in St Simons Island GA, Saratoga Springs NY and Windham Mountain NY. Completed projects are located in Lake Tahoe CA, Snowmass CO, Steamboat Springs CO, Cave Creek AZ, Pinehurst NC, and Stowe VT.

Carl was the founder of The World’s Finest Resorts, the leading luxury exchange company acquired in 2005 by The Registry Collection a unit of RCI.

Shared ownership projects have been the focus of Carl’s development career for 40 years. He brought to market the first, fee ownership timeshare project in the World, in 1973 located at Brockway Springs, Lake Tahoe CA.

The Manhattan Club, New York City is the largest urban timeshare project in the World with 242 luxury apartments. It has completed sales. Other urban timeshare projects developed by Carl are located in San Francisco and New Orleans.

Timeshare projects, in the Western United States, are located in Lake Tahoe CA, Sun Valley ID, Vail CO, Sunriver OR and LaJolla CA.

Holiday Clubs International was the first multi site hotel program, which was a venture with Holiday Inns using company owned properties from Bermuda to Hawaii.

He is a former Chairman of ARDA and a member of its Board for over 18 years. Previously he served a Chair of the ARDA International Foundation Educational Institute, Chair of the Meetings and Membership Committees and Chair of the National Timeshare Council.

Carl is a founder and director of the Meritus College Fund, nonprofit providing four-year college scholarships, a National Board Member of the Lionel Hampton Center Initiative for the University of Idaho, a former president of the University of Idaho Foundation and a former president of the Alumni Association. He was recently named to the University of Idaho Hall of Fame.