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Fulton and Sheldon


arcturus

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Is it just me, or does the downtown project pipeline seem to be dramatically slowing down with the end of the relevant tax credits? There seems to be several active projects that are underway that probably received tax credits prior to the programs expiration, but precious little newly being discussed. Seems like the relative tight apartment market downtown should be generating more proposals than what have actually been pitched.

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Thats a good thing. Less empty buildings the better. Theres a large empty building over by GRCC that I think would make great student housing.

Don't even go there... That's one bitter can of worms you just don't want to open. Guy has money and does not seem to care how long stuff sits and rots and looks like "s". Keeler is his little piggybank, along with the garbage dump also known as the Kendall building on Monroe center across from the park. Prices are outrageous on those buildings.

As for the WMCAT building, It's really nice to see those bricks coming down. They were pretty atrocious.

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Don't even go there... That's one bitter can of worms you just don't want to open. Guy has money and does not seem to care how long stuff sits and rots and looks like "s". Keeler is his little piggybank, along with the garbage dump also known as the Kendall building on Monroe center across from the park. Prices are outrageous on those buildings.

As for the WMCAT building, It's really nice to see those bricks coming down. They were pretty atrocious.

Ok that comment got me curious so I did a bit of sleuthing. Wish I didn't but it explains why the empty buildings.

http://www.urbanplanet.org/forums/index.php/topic/42865-land-hoarder-strikes-again/

Wondering just how much better downtown would be absent a few owners.

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  • 3 weeks later...

And your wish is their command:

http://www.grnow.com...=2994&Itemid=81

http://www.616lofts....wn-development/

Looks like the Keeler Building is coming back to life thanks to 616 lofts. It seems like one of downtown's eyesores will soon be rehabbed!

I have been smiling to myself all afternoon because of this. One word comes to mind: "FINALLY!" I think this may be their most significant acquisition yet - yes, bigger than Fulton/Ionia. This little plaza has so much potential.

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One of the three abandoned "must rehab" buildings downtown!

Now if they can just do something with the building SE from Kendal Art School and that one structure by Hop Cat, next to Richmond Stamping.

I just wonder what caused the headcase that owned the building to finally give it up? Couldn't BS the city anymore with lackluster repairs?

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That's pretty remarkable. The last deal was doomed because of the price. Anyone with a calculator should have been able to figure that out. Now, it sounds like it has actually changed hands, so I'm going to keep my fingers crossed. These guys have some projects under their belt that appear to be going well, so here's hoping. Azzar must have come down on the price significantly, or they found a way to squeeze a few extra dollars out of it. Good for them!

And it's the Kendall Building, not the Keeler Building. The Keeler is on North Division, still sitting empty.

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That's pretty remarkable. The last deal was doomed because of the price. Anyone with a calculator should have been able to figure that out. Now, it sounds like it has actually changed hands, so I'm going to keep my fingers crossed. These guys have some projects under their belt that appear to be going well, so here's hoping. Azzar must have come down on the price significantly, or they found a way to squeeze a few extra dollars out of it. Good for them!

I think the City's website usually gets updated before the County's, so if it has been sold, I guess we'll know the sale price soon enough.

https://is.bsasoftware.com/bsa.is/AssessingServices/ServiceAssessingDetails.aspx?dp=41-14-30-157-009&i=1&on=azzar&appid=0&actSn=16&actSna=MONROE+CENTER+ST&actDir=NE&unit=115

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http://www.mlive.com...flyout_business

Im sure we know all know now but it sold for 775,000 and they plan to put 4 million into restoring it

Have they lost their marbles paying Azzar's ransom? As I said the last time this came up, a buyer could have bought most if not all of the Loraine building across Fulton for about the same, and that building is in great shape. Don't know if most of the floors are still for sale, though (at the time, I think it was running about $150k per floor with similar floorplates and architecture). The maths on this Kendall building venture just totally suck. Beyond suck. Beyond wildly wild bad awful terrible, somewhere out into the land of pure fantastical rotten horrible. $5 million for TWELVE apartments plus a rinky-dink 3000 square foot retail (IIRC the floor plates correctly) with no parking, and a 3000sqft office for themselves? What the @#$%^ are they thinking? That's, say, $200k for each apartment PLUS $2.5 million for TWO FLOORS. They must have some sort of magic economics I just can't understand. That, or they enjoy having the most expensive office in all of downtown GR.

Don't get me wrong: I GREATLY appreciate that someone is going to dump money into this thing and fix it. I just don't understand the thought process behind it. At all. It is bat---- nuts. For that price (post restoration), you could have bought a premier downtown GR office building. This is either your tax dollars at work via some tax credit or another, or a developer's first step toward bankruptcy. Best of luck to them, though. They're just totally bonkers (or much, much smarter than I and every other sane person that has looked at the numbers on this pig--Azzar should have been paying someone to take it. Deals like this just encourage the guy..)

UPDATE: Just read the article. Let's just fuel the cynic in me (and you) a bit more: Based on the stated rents, this place will GROSS $153k/yr off the apartments. And they are market rate, meaning taxpayer subsidies seem less likely to add some much-needed financial juice. At an 8% return, that makes them worth about $2 million tops, assuming that they operate with ZERO expenses. That means they need rents of... uh ... $240,000.00 per year with ZERO expenses on floors one and two. Assuming they can do that (which is impossible, of course), and given a 3000 square foot floor plate, they would need to rent for $40 A FOOT. Which. Is. Totally. Impossible. So who the heck is picking up the difference (not to mention paying property tax and other expenses, unless they somehow plan to do magic mystery sauce triple net residential leases with CAM charges). Is someone actually lending money on this deal? More realistic numbers: At $16 a foot, they're looking at around $100k per year on the first two floors. That assumes a true triple net with landlord paying ZERO expenses (property tax, heat, etc). With an insanely generous operating cost ratio on the residential (40% expenses), they're at $91k on the residential. They net out around $191k per year. That's about a 3.8 percent return, assuming life is perfect. On a very, very risky venture. Good luck with that. These guys need a new lawyer, a new broker, or a new manager, or some combination of the above. Unless, of course, they have some sort of really good, super crazy federal and state subsidy picking up most of the renovation cost, which of course would just tick me off, since that means my tax dollars in effect just fed Azzar's bottom-feeder bank account. And it would have to be one heck of a tax credit. /rant

If I botched the numbers up, someone feel free to call me out. It is a little late, after all. To clarify, using even optimistic projections, they would only have $1.6 million to spend on renovations at an 8% return. Where is the rest of the money coming from? I'm sure these guys must have done their homework, but it baffles me how it could work, with the numbers apparently so far out into total fantasyland. Cross your fingers and say a little prayer for these guys. They need anything they can get on this deal.

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I have to believe that when these projects are announced that the rehab costs are inflated. I suspect so that the developer can include his profit for doing the project into the total cost. this is a similar scenario to the project that was just announced near purple east. ~130 units for 36 million dollars. comes out to about 250k per unit, which to me seems ridiculous for a rental. even with tax credits it seems like it would be impossible to make any money. if you are building in a 30% profit margin, which you could do if you were developing the thing yourself, and write that off, then your overhead just decreased by a third. (actually 2/3s because you wrote a third off). of course this is just my speculation because I have zero experience in this.

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Here are a couple assumptions I make about this project based on the numbers:

-I am confident that, other than the purchase price, the numbers we are seeing in the press are grossly inflated.

-$100 to $125 per square foot is a decent renovation number to do a top rate job. 12 apartments averaging 1,200 square feet each x $125 sf=$1.8 Million

-$50-$75 per sf for commercial is also a decent number. 3,000 sf x $75=$225,000

-Purchase Price = $775,000

-Sub-total = $2,800,000

-25% in soft costs, legal, contingencies, etc = $700,000

-Total = $3,500,000

The developer will most likely, from sources such as "whatever they are calling brownfield tax credits these days," Historic Preservation Credits, etc, receive about a 30% equity bump for the project. This comes to about $1,050,000 and bring their actual development costs to $2,450,000.

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