With Trump coming in the deal flow is picking up; Red or
Blue, the market is upbeat about future resort development prospects.
Ocean Lodge on St. Simons Island, GA: The marketing plan, done by Star’s senior marketing exec Chris Cannon, is complete and accepted. We’re going after a wellness theme so our major market can see using four weeks of time. Our lead sales person, Sandy Staudemayer, is ready to leave Montana for Georgia. We plan to be in business the first week of February with dependable lead flow.
Seagate, or Ocean Lodge II: This is the 25-unit building ‘next’ to Ocean Lodge. The market report by Wally Hobson of Hobson Advisors is complete and approved. Now we need to secure the equity financing to go along with the BB&T banking commitment to acquire the property just a few steps from Ocean Lodge. The Seagate’s 25 units to go along with Ocean Lodge’s 14 units give us a decent size project, for an independent that is. Or 39 units x 12 shares each [for now] = 468 shares to sell.
Saratoga Springs Polo continues with the lawyers. Our lawyer had a phone call with the current owner’s lawyer to offer a settlement, a lawsuit or to have the current owners join we three buyers [Duane Gerenser, Mike Connor and myself] on our development LLC that has been formed for some time.
Windham Ski: The venture with the current owners continues on a positive track, and we expect to be in first phase development this spring.
Marina Pointe, Big Bear, CA, is at a stalemate for now. The owner is proceeding ahead with the development of ‘super sites’ that will house 14 to 28 pre-approved condominium units. Our interest is to buy, subject to a number of elements, one or more of the sites for fractional condominium sales.
A comment about getting deals done without a lot of up-front cash, and trading on Star’s reputation of effective sales: As mentioned last month, the deals that were on the table pre-recession have a ton of ‘hair’ on them as the developers had to jump through many and varied hoops to keep control. It’s a delicate world out there. Even though September 2008 is almost a decade ago, the memory is still vibrant in the minds of many, and for good reason.
As California is ‘broke’ and overtaxed, Star has added Marvin Rappaport of Coral Springs, Florida, as Financial VP and Duane Gerenser of Manchester Center, Vermont, as our Northeastern VP of Development. A long overdue welcome to both. This extends Star’s reach to the East Coast. Both Marvin and Duane will work in concert with our Scott Tracy and Chris Cannon for administration and escrow and marketing respectively. There’s that dangling participial at the end of the sentence!
