Star recently began working with Ocean Lodge and SeaGate Condominiums, both on St. Simons Island off the Georgia coast. Ocean Lodge is a very successful boutique hotel. Knowing the lodge’s 14 rooms would be only the start of his fractional program, owner Joe McDonough optioned the nearby, 24-room SeaGate, which is run as a condominium/hotel. McDonough also optioned the two houses between the projects, which will be demolished to create a solid and visible connection between the two buildings.
McDonough had Baker & Hostetler in Orlando, Florida, draw up the basic docs, then had an Atlanta-based firm conform them to Georgia law. Georgia is a disclosure state versus a registration state. Ocean Lodge has been accepted by The Registry Collection.
Star is to be project manager with an override on sales and a percentage of net sales as an incentive. This is a grand opportunity.
Star is also working on a project on Sea Island, Georgia, located next door to St. Simons Island. Randy Burgess is the project director who will complete sales of the ¼-share fractional program begun pre-recession, put on the shelf and recently restarted. The Sea Island project is much different than Ocean Lodge/SeaGate, so there should not be much, if any, competition between the two.
Back to Saratoga Springs: The appraisal came in lower than expected, so the bridge loan was not taken down. The project is still limping forward with severe cash flow needs. That said, one of the five partners is Mike Connor, founder of Connor Homes of Middlebury, VT, and early advocate of factory-built, quality homes. One of his homes is being featured on PBS' This Old House for 2016 and Connor is getting over 7,000 leads per week!
The project, Saratoga Polo, will link to Connor Homes to gain additional traction for sales. Additionally, real estate group Keller Williams Capital District will have a co-listing on phase one of the project. Many of the sales will likely be whole units, first and second homes. We've carved out a deck of units for fractional sales in 2017.
Tunisia, you say? Star has been approached to handle sales of SnowValley Resort, a North African mega-project. The drivers behind it are South African–based marketing executives Tom Stewart, from Scotland, and Denise Walker. There will be indoor skiing and a whole list of indoor winter sports to include ski cross, aerial events, halfpipe, slalom, snow tubing, ice skating, curling, long and short track skating, figure skating and ice hockey. Summer sports academies will include tennis, swimming and diving, gymnastics, basketball, indoor soccer, taekwondo, weight lifting and much more.
This project, should it come to pass as planned, is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Oh, and it will include whole and fractional condos. That's Star's play.
