The Harrison Situation Is Dire
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 10/3/08 @ 11:12 am - Filed Under City Council, Featured
Jason Freier of Hardball Capital is beginning to back away from his original plans for The Harrison:
Jason Freier, Hardball Capital chief executive officer, said Thursday his development group remains “totally committed” to The Harrison project but that changes might be needed for it to happen.
The developers are looking at redesigning the building to have larger, but fewer, condominiums.
Construction has been stalled for months at The Harrison as the developers have failed to sell enough condominiums to persuade banks to lend the necessary money for the project. Freier said the current credit crunch dominating news coverage has been affecting real estate developers for almost a year.“The issue is financing and timing,” he said. “There are some banks, their doors are closed, quite frankly.”
Freier said the market is so tough that he would be willing to consider taking a loan if a bank asked that the developer scale back The Harrison. He said if a bank gave the OK on a smaller project, he would discuss the possibility with city officials. While it would be less investment, he said it would allow the developers to get started on construction.
It doesn’t matter what excuse Freier gives as the truth is this project is nearly dead and something needs to be done to salvage it. We’re at a tipping point for this project and a failure to recognize that could have drastic consequences. City Council President Tom Didier cannot wait until November to address this issue - he needs to call Barry Real Estate to the table now and ask them what can be done to move forward. It wouldn’t hurt if Mayor Henry would convene a roundtable with local banks and Barry Real Estate to try and negotiate some sort of financing that keeps everything on track.
Any more delay could put the entire project in serious jeopardy. The hotel developer’s contract is tied to the rest of the project and the vast majority of financing for the project comes from the hotel - if they walk the project is dead for good. Now isn’t the time for political delays and/or finger-pointing.
We can’t just wait this out and hope it fixes itself - it won’t. For too long the dominant rhetoric was PR spin from the administration and the developer; that if they just had a better marketing plan all would be well. Let’s get realistic and start a frank conversation about where we need to go from here. Public-private partnerships aren’t just about ribbon-cuttings, sometimes you have to show real leadership to avert disaster. Now is the time…
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18 Responses to “The Harrison Situation Is Dire”
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I think the crux really is the need for a better marketing plan, a plan based on the classic 4-Ps definition of marketing. One of the Ps is product and another is price.
Earth girl,
One of the P’s stands for PIG.
Not to beat a worn out phrase, but that you can’t put enough lipstick on this pig. One thing to keep in mind, Fannie Mae provided the majority of mortgage backing for condo sales.
“…sometimes you have to show real leadership to avert disaster.”
“Real leadership” seems to be the cause of more and more disasters nowadays. We should cut our losses and sell the project off as a build-ready lot. When developers finally put shiny new building there, HS supporters can call it a “success.”
Maybe Parkview Hospital can buy a floor and “compete against the private sector” St. Joseph! Sorry people, just a cheap shot by one middle of the road taxpayer.
Let us just admitt the truth this is a dead horse, a pig without lipstick, or any other pharse that comes to mind. Let us just stop the excuses that can be drawn from the air as to why.
Be man/women enough to admitt Fort Wayne is not a condo market, let alone downtown being one. Be man/women enough to say it just does not play here. People will admire those who have the guts to reverse themselves and call an end to the madness.
You can wait five years and you will not sell 64 downtown condos. You would be hard pressed to rent 64 apartments downtown, in a configuration like Harrison Square.
For the elected bobble heads, the public knows it will not work. Even some who thought it would, have lost faith. Many who came to the mikephones and promoted the Condos so much have long moved out of Fort Wayne.
Don’t spend any more time or money. Don’t look like the people in Congress who nearly scream names at each other, then walk on to the foor of congress and then call them “dear friend!” I would respect you more if you called me “jerk” before the media and on the floor of congress!
We all make errors in life and some are big ones. Most great people make them, but what makes them great is owning up to errors, fixing them, and moving on to other sucesses. No one is right 100% of the time.
If we have a binding contract with these out of town clowns then make them build the units. If not, pack it in and let us move on!
Chasing bad money with more money has never worked. This project is one of them!
Maybe your council down there can just pretend they are the United States Congress and stroke ol’ hardball a check. Seems to be all the rage of late.
If there is a binding contract tell them to start building or see us in court! If the contract is not binding-fire everybody involved in putting the so-called deal together including the clowns at Redevelopment Commission. Don Schmidt was so right on this one.
Lockwood - Those of us that pointed out the false information being presented a year and a half ago said that the resultant “contract” as written was TOTALLY UNINFORCEABLE - but no one who could do anything about it would listen - except Don Schmidt, John Shoaff, and Tom Smith! And King Richard, Doc Crawford, Doc Hayhurst, and RINO Sam Talarico are not in position to get “paid back” for their erroneous votes for this BOONDOGGLE. That’s too bad for us taxpayers who ARE going to end up with the bill on this - NOTHING NOT FINANCED BY TAX DOLLARS HAS HAPPENED ON THIS BOONDOGGLE TO THIS DATE!!!! Thanks for your misuse of public trust, guys! Especially down at the Department of Local Finance meeting in Indianapolis, where you convinced Ms. Musgrave to use our Fort Wayne Property Tax Levies to back the nightmare lease/bond issues.
Just when will our elected servants??? use their God-given brains in this city and county? I am waiting - and I am close to going home for eternity - I’m tired of calling out the classic failures and I will not list them - I done it too many times in the past. Fort Wayne - “A Place For Nightmares”
It’s not too late for the City to walk away from housing that nobody wants. Fort Wayne and Allen County are wildly overbuilt with residential housing.
Let’s add an IMAX theater to the retail component of Harrison Square. These theaters are spring up all over, but the closest is in Fishers. More and more general release movies are being distributed in IMAX.
Now THAT might actually bring a few people downtown who wouldn’t otherwise show up there.
Unfortunately if the condos fail then the hotel could walk away as well and the whole deal sinks. Before anyone thinks that sounds good remember we backed these bonds with property tax dollars.
But just for the record the statements by Jason Freier of Hardball Capital were totally disingenuous. He made it sound as if they are considering options. The truth is they’ve already made changes that they haven’t released to the public and the city knows about it as well.
I’m sick and tired of these HS developers trying to manipulate the media to do what they want. You’ve already scaled back the project and changed the entire layout of the project so just come out and admit it already. Stop with the BS propaganda.
You want to know what’s going on? Read this comment from What’s Going Down(town):
Creepy Accounting now that we look at the facts.
Now that everyone has had a chance to digest the entire project; it appears like a familiar tone. We are over extended in our development areas & little money to back up credit to build forward .
Lets just ram an idea..a mad rush to build a massive project without looking at the entire picture of Main Street!
Jeff - What’s this “we backed these bonds with property tax dollars”? It was our past mayor and our past coumon council that asked for the DLGF to OK the use of a property tax backup - I know, because I was there testifing why DLGF should NOT have recommended to their chairman to allow Fort Wayne to do this. I was aware that our past mayor had stated, before his testimony, that Fort Wayne would go ahead with the sale of these bonds even if the DLGF director would not OK the property tax backing. So exactly who was responsible for this unwise action? It sure was not anyone outside the mayor’s office or the common council! And it sure didn’t include me! But you would have been correct in saying “Because of the unwise actions of our city government, we are stuck with paying for this boondoggle”.
John,
I think everyone understood the “we” I was referring to. We’re all on the record, quite emphatically, as opposing this project.
The “we” is our elected representatives…
Well, if I am right one floor has been removed from the project. I said that several months ago..
Now, what will happen is either they walk from the project or somehow sell SHELLS to some front company (with current credit conditions may be highly doubtful) and then it goes down the tube.
What scares me is showhow the city will put more money into this project.
Frankly, we will keep pulling the same “D” and “R” keys and return council members and the mayor to one more term. The Mayor will fire some people and blame it all them. Council members will blame the fired people and the Mayor (that is if you happen to have a “R” next to your name only). Everyone will be happy and vote to return them to office.
We get what we vote for.
…I’m sorry…was that “IS” committed…or SHOULD HAVE BEEN committed???
I keep confusing the two.
;)
B.G.
“but apparently their latest market research shows this to be more desirable than $150,000 one bedroom condos (as those have been eliminated from the plan).”
So if they are removing the one bedrooms does that mean that Tom Henry is off the hook for moving in to his one bedroom with a den that he signed for already?
Whatever happened to all of those enthusiastic young computer geeks that paraded to the podium at the neighborhood hearings on HS? Everyone knows that what was missing downtown were condos and restaurants and nightlife in staid Fort Wayne. $150K must be a bit too much for a studio condo.
There are restaurants and nightclubs downtown. Were these authentic computer geeks? I never went to any of the HS events, so I wouldn’t know. Don’t all the young folks hang out on MySpace nowadays anyway?
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