The Price of Everything

Monday night was the meeting about the Stanton Northwest Properties development at Lily Point, which is now called the Lily Point development.  About 75 people showed up with dour looks to discuss what could be done about the matter.

It was an interesting and puzzling experience.  The community members appeared to have  pretty much a single position (This is a very  bad idea.  Why is such a proposal being made again, when the collapse of the real estate market and the banking industry had already defeated it once?  Do we have to have that happen again?).  On the other side of the question was the new developer, or at least half of the new developers.  The pair, let's call them Wayne and Anders, which makes them sound like an old comedy team even though they have nothing to say that is funny, sent Anders to represent their interests.  And their interests appear to be money and perhaps quick profits.

I have taken awhile to write about this because I was very conflicted about the meeting, so the blog is going to have to carry my description over two or three days' entries as I try to explain what was so puzzling.  When the original Stanton proposal came up, with its 100 houses costing a million dollars each and its beach club front and its swimming pool and expansive community center and, for all I know, its polo pony fields, one of the things most people had against it was its over-the-topness.  Now, Wayne and Anders have modified the plan and I was struck with how lacking in vision it was.  Thirty-nine houses for starters, maybe a tennis court, a little meeting place, no curbs and sidewalks.  Stanton wanted something grand, which at least befit the locale.  But W and A want something small, 'cottages' they call them, with piddling amenities, but something that will net them some very big bucks by the time they have disposed of the trees and the lots, letting actual builders move in later to assist the lot buyers.

Way too much of the meeting was devoted to Anders telling us how their plans differed from Stanton's, even though they are still operating off Stanton's plans and environmental impact statement because, he assured us, it was 'so much more efficient to do so,' which is to say 'so much cheaper,' because they don't have to start all over in the process of permits and all that.  I have rarely heard someone talk about a project in this particular manner: nothing seemed to be of import to him other than the financial issues, the 'economic viability.'  I have long known the phrase, but rarely run into someone who, at least to me, so clearly represents someone 'who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.' 

The meeting was largely devoted to a lot of technical explanations: what had the County approved, what was the SEPA statement that they had okayed but could be objected to by the public, what property or properties were actually at issue?  Wayne and Anders, it appeared, like a Junior grade Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein, had been trolling around the bottom as the garbage fell out in the housing/bank crisis and had taken up Stanton's interests for lack of a better word, which included ownership of the closest acreage (called, locally, 'the Butler property'), the plans and permits that Stanton had achieved, options on the additional parcels, and a $3 million dollar mortgage that the bank was still holding. 

The garbage turned out to contain a jewel, of course.  But a jewel with a price.  During the evening's discussion, Anders offered to sell their interests to us for $1.5 million (plus the mortgage).  Which might be a very good deal if you were going to put in a lot of houses and reasonably expected to sell them.  What Wayne and Anders plan initially is 39 lots, 10 or so on the bluff facing the ocean, a bunch more with what he called 'peakaboo' views of the ocean, and the remainder back in what would be left of the 'wooded area' after the trees are taken down for the lots, roads, and all that.  The 'cottages' are to be 2,000 square feet, but that may well be only the footprint, as two stories would be possible under the 25 foot height limit: some cottage!

And what that means, if they actually sold them to the Vancouverites who are their target audience, would be a lot of money.  The 1/4 acre lots in front, facing the ocean would be priced at $500,000 each.  That is the lot, not the lot with a house.  Building a house up here would be in the $150-$200/square foot.  Two or three thousand square feet would get you right up to a million dollars for your cottage with land.  And those little wooded lots in the back would run buyers $150,000 each.  Right away, I'm thinking that the ten lots in front are worth five million total and the other 29 lots would have to bring in 6-8 million (conservatively).  That would be a 12 million dollar return on a $1.5 million dollar (current) investment.  A nice day's (or year's) work.

So, what this certainly seemed like was Wayne and Anders' desire to make many quick bucks off some land that they had grabbed onto in the maelstrom.  Not land they cared about particularly, except for the fact that it had those ocean view lots at the front, way high above the ocean so you wouldn't even have to worry about global warming and rising sea levels.  And after all this discussion and explanation, two of our local real estate sales people, people with long experience in Point Roberts, advised Anders that the chance of selling 39 lots like that in any short term--Anders was talking a year or so--or even in anything but a very long term was very unlikely.  Very unlikely. 

So maybe we are looking at Stanton all over?  Except that, this time, the project could move along far enough before it collapsed so that a lot of trees would already have been logged.  It turns out that the Butler property has the bulk of the big trees, and the optioned property has largely already been cleared.  So by developing the Butler property first, the trees will go first.  But, as Anders pointed out to us, it would be much cheaper to develop the optioned property first, but he and Wayne don't own that property: what they own is the Butler property.

So, what's to be said in favor of this project?  Next round.