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Monday, March 05, 2007

Condo Sales Stall

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posted by Bob at Monday, March 05, 2007

4 Comments:

Blogger Bob said...

Putting the 'urban' in suburbia stalls as condo demand slows
Many suburbs aiming to create high-energy, walkable urban villages along the lines of downtown Stillwater or 50th and France in Edina are being forced to rethink their plans.
By David Peterson, Star Tribune
Last update: March 04, 2007 – 9:44 PM

The movement to plant a bit of the city in Twin Cities suburbs is wilting. A chill in the market for high-priced condos has hampered the attempts of suburbs to create or revive traditional village centers, where people can walk from tightly clustered homes to restaurants and parks.
In cities such as Eagan and Roseville, developers have withdrawn their proposals altogether. In others, such as Apple Valley and Minnetonka, they are backing away from upscale condos in favor of apartments, leaving cities with the choice of either changing their vision or starting all over.

Along with the rest of the new-housing industry, "the condo market's in the toilet right now," said John Cox, deputy city administrator in Champlin, where a long-dreamed-of town center project is languishing. "We're not going to buy out apartment buildings, only to put up more apartment buildings."

With millions already invested, not to mention years of angry public hearings, city officials are disheartened.

"This is such a tough process, over so many years, with so much emotion," sighed Danna Elling Schultz, a City Council member in Hastings, where riverfront condos aimed at enlivening a historic downtown are on hold. "I don't want the bottom to fall out now."

Often, huge sums of public money are at stake. Taxpayers across the metro area, for instance, have dished out a million bucks to build a classy brick parking ramp in Anoka to support a high-density mix of shops and condos on the river near downtown.

Robert Kirchner, the city's economic development chief, is convinced it will all happen in time. But for the moment, he says, "All I've got is a ramp and a sales trailer."

Among both developers and residents, there's a lot of support for the ideals behind the projects.

"This will come to all suburbs eventually," said Eric Pedersen, the developer responsible for major portions of Apple Valley's Central Village project. "People want to hang out and mingle, and the suburban 'power center' " -- vast sheets of parking surrounding big-box stores such as Target or Best Buy -- "doesn't provide that."

In Minnetonka, city officials cautiously surveyed nearby residents when the developer of a controversial village center in the Glen Lake area reported recently that he failed to sell a single condo in several months of marketing, and wanted to switch to apartments instead.

The result: 72 hostile reactions, but also 46 expressions of strong support.

"Minnetonka has no place to walk around in," said Chris Pears, who lives in the city and teaches at Minnetonka High School. "I love the fact that Edina has a little 'downtown' with a cinema, where a family can walk around and buy an ice cream. I'd prefer condos, but what I really want is enough activity to upgrade a tired area and bring more nice things in."

Still, the very notion of introducing what Pedersen speaks of as "inner-city densities" to the suburbs draws plenty of resistance on its own, without centering the projects on apartments on top of it.

"Not likely," said planner Jeff Smyser, of Lino Lakes, when asked about the prospect of switching some planned condos to rentals to accelerate that suburb's slow-moving town center project. "Our council didn't want the town center to be primarily rental. An important part of it was that it be owner-occupied."

The pause in what felt a year or two ago like a mad rush to build ambitious town centers is a testament in part to the complexity of creating them at all, said Michael Lander, who runs the Lander Group, a company specializing in urban lofts and condos.

"In the 'burbs, you buy a cornfield, put up some houses or a Home Depot, run a piece of asphalt to it, and you're set," he said. "But we're just now figuring this new stuff out."

Last year a landowner invited Lander to diagnose the state of the highly touted town center project in Ramsey, past Anoka along Hwy. 10. Two years after the plan for that project won a national urban design award from the American Institute of Architects, it's "struggling," he said.

"The master plan was very well done ... with beautiful parks and sidewalks and well-formed spaces," he said. "But it turns out that's very expensive to do. Those things aren't free."

Colleen Carey, founder of the Cornerstone Group and a peer of Lander's, recently received a request from the city of Eagan for someone to take over that city's long-delayed Cedar Grove village center. In November, Cedar Grove lost a developer who decided that even a switch to apartments couldn't make the project work.

Eagan has been planning since the late 1990s to redevelop the site of the aging Cedarvale Mall into something it calls "village character, versus suburban character," with high-quality architecture and subtle signage.

Those things, too, cost money, Carey said. But she admires their spirit.

"Unlike some of my friends in the industry, I like to see cities throw out lofty goals. But as for this project, I don't know what to think. I flipped through it. I know the guys who threw in the towel, and they're smart guys, and if they're saying it doesn't work, it makes me think it's not the right time."

Many argue that the projects will appear eventually, given the demographic realities, which include a generation of baby boomers heading for retirement.

"It's inevitable," said Anoka's Kirchner, but it's also a gradual process. "We were putting up buildings faster than we were getting old."


David Peterson • 612-673-4440 • dapeterson@startribune.com

9:27 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wow! Chuck I hope you don't lose your ass on those condos. Or does a guy like you have the City bail him out under these circumstances?

11:21 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I guess you can go and piss in the corner, shut off the hot water and randomly allow the heat to work and then maybe you slumlords can appreciate them.

1:02 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well I have a tough time repecting a person such as Chuck Repke that has to line his pockets with the taxpayers money. The small businessmen/women that have been chased out of St.Paul owned and operated their businesses through bank loans and mortgages not on TIF and other Gov. funded programs that in the end are paid for by the private homeowners and citizens that recieve nothing back on their dollar other than a condemnation notice when they became to elderly to fight for their rights and the city takes their home through the condemnation policy and turns the property over to one of their local developer friends that in return gives them a kick back in $$ for it.

7:54 PM  

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