The units below are of Faherenheit. Do the price per sq ft tell a story? Other than prices remain flat, I dont think they do. Just my opinion.

Unit Number Bd/Ba Close Date
Unit # 512 Loft 11/21/2007
Unit # 603 1+Den 7/25/2007
Unit # 311 Loft 6/5/2007
Unit # 708 Loft 4/27/2007 (builder unit, not resale)
Unit # 303 2 2.00 2/28/2007
Unit # 310 Loft 2/23/2007
Unit # 301 1 1.50 12/26/2006 (builder unit, not resale)
Unit # 305 2 2.00 10/19/2006
Unit # 704 2 2.00 10/5/2006
Unit # 514 Loft 9/20/2006
Unit # 501 Loft 9/14/2006
Unit # 504 Loft 7/18/2006
Unit # 609 Loft 6/16/2006

Unit Number Sold Price
Unit # 512 $380,000
Unit # 603 $505,000
Unit # 311 $340,000
Unit # 708 $411,100 (builder unit, not resale)
Unit # 303 $505,000
Unit # 310 $370,000
Unit # 301 $561,400 (builder unit, not resale)
Unit # 305 $521,900
Unit # 704 $797,900
Unit # 514 $632,000
Unit # 501 $535,000
Unit # 504 $578,900
Unit # 609 $625,000

Unit Number Sq. Ft.
Unit # 512 730
Unit # 603 1027
Unit # 311 768
Unit # 708 764 (builder unit, not resale)
Unit # 303 1060
Unit # 310 764
Unit # 301 1284 (builder unit, not resale)
Unit # 305 1060
Unit # 704 1217
Unit # 514 1272
Unit # 501 996
Unit # 504 1060
Unit # 609 1276

Unit Number $ / Sq Ft
Unit # 512 $520.55
Unit # 603 $491.72
Unit # 311 $442.71
Unit # 708 $538.09 (builder unit, not resale)
Unit # 303 $476.42
Unit # 310 $484.29
Unit # 301 $437.23 (builder unit, not resale)
Unit # 305 $492.36
Unit # 704 $655.63
Unit # 514 $496.86
Unit # 501 $537.15
Unit # 504 $546.13
Unit # 609 $489.81

I don't know what these numbers say exactly. The building has had one sale and one unsuccessful listing since the credit markets collapsed in August 2007.

Price per square foot is one measure of comparison but isn't really useful when comparing a 730 sf unit to a unit that is significantly larger or smaller.

The HOA's are horrendous at Parkloft in relation to the level of service. To be fair, a portion ($88 per month) is being used to fund the Construction Defect lawsuit. Still way too high. Blame the HOA Board for the past 2 years.

In real terms of buying power, $200 per month equates to a loss of about $30,000 (using 7% and a 30 year term). Not fatal but still not a great selling point.

That was the point I was making. Prices have been flat since we closed with the builder. Those of us that live in our units, and plan to, for a while, will be fine when the markets sort out all the bad loans. Some people are going to be able to make a ton of money on this downturn. I will tell you that I think every unit from floor 4 down, maybe less the corner unit, has only one parking space, even if it is a 2 bedroom. Big negative.

From The Daily Transcript
 

Some downtown developers renting units at their condominiums
By THOR KAMBAN BIBERMAN, The Daily Transcript
Wednesday, March 26, 2008


Developers of three downtown condominiums who began their sales three or four years ago have elected to rent out at least some of their remaining units until the sales market improves.
Smart Corner at 1080 Park Blvd. consists of a 19-story, 301-unit condominium and a 125,000-square-foot office building with the San Diego Housing Commission taking 75,000 square feet.
Negotiations are ongoing with another non-profit user that would take much of the remaining office space.
Both buildings offer ground floor retail space and are separated by the San Diego Trolley, including the trolley station at Park and C Street.
Ground floor retail tenants include Starbuck's Subway, 7-Eleven, and Maui Wowie among others.
A survey of the County Recorder's Office show 53 units have been sold in the 3 1/2 years since sales started in August 2004.

Smart Corner

Sherman Harmer, Urban Housing Partners principal, the co-developer of Smart Corner along with Lankford & Associates, Canyon Johnson Urban Funds, J&T Consulting and Avion Development, said 40 of the project's units are being rented to tenants who have the option to buy.
"This is just an interim step ... These are just six-month leases," said Harmer adding that the units are primarily targeted to first-time homebuyers. "We're waiting for a better mortgage market."
Harmer said the rents range from $1,500 to $2,700 per month.
"This is pretty close to a mortgage," he added.
The condominiums are priced from $225,000 to $980,000 for units ranging from 450 to about 1,750 square feet.
As for why it has taken so long for the units to sell, there is no one answer.
Early on, concerns were raised about the location near City College as well as the impact of having a trolley running through the middle of the project.
Harmer, who said double-paned glass in the units and dampeners in the structure keep noise and vibration out, said the project's location with its own trolley stop and near City College is a plus.
A Smart Corner Web site boasts that the project "embodies the best principles of smart growth and transit oriented development," but as Raye Scott of the Scott Finn & Associates team of Prudential California Realty noted, it hasn't always been easy to keep the sales going.
"Their timing was bad. The market was cooling down by the middle of the decade," Scott said. "Also, some people might believe having a trolley going through the project might be a nice feature, but not everyone would agree," Scott said.
Patricia Leone, broker/owner of Centre City Properties downtown also said Smart Corner was a victim of timing.
"It took a little bit longer to complete construction (in the summer of last year) and the slowdown had started well before then," Leone said.
Leone does say she likes the design with the trolley coming through, and both Leone and Scott said Smart Corner and most of the other downtown projects will fare very well once the mortgage markets pick up and the economy settles.
While Smart Corner's sales have been sluggish, they have gone significantly quicker at Park Terrace at 206 Park Blvd. where 150 sales have been recorded at a 220-unit condominium.
Alan Nevin of MarketPointe Realty Advisors says this project by Intracorp. San Diego is faring very well.
While calls to officials at Park Terrace were not returned this week, Nevin said about 50 units were for rent, but he has no doubt these units will be sold at a future date.
"They're in great shape...," Nevin said, adding that most of the rentals are on one-year leases. He said the rents for the 50 units in that program range from $2,200 to $2,500 per month "and they rented very quickly."
The complex consists of two buildings; an eight-story structure with 80 units and a 14-story building with 140 units.
The Park Terrace units range from 390 to 1,214 square feet with studios to two-bedroom floor plans. The prices ranged from $230,000 for the studio to $869,000 for a two-bedroom unit with the best views, according to MarketPointe.
Park Terrace has also been busy leasing its ground floor retail. Earlier this winter, Massage Envy has a 10-year, $1.66 million lease on 4,369 square Feet.
Another sizable downtown condominium project with a rental program is Atria, a Carlyle Group development at 101 Market St.
This was actually a condominium conversion project; that 149-unit development had an even 100 escrows recorded as of this week.
Nevin estimated that Atria, which went back to renting some of its units about a year ago, has between 40 and 50 rentals. Carlyle Group officials could not be reached for comment this week.
Atria has one- to three-bedroom floor plans ranging from 586 to 1,496 square feet. The prices ranged from $340,000 to $789,000.
Prudential California's Scott, who believes Atria could have dropped its prices earlier, predicts each of these developments will sell out as fewer and fewer new condominium projects are added to the market.
During the 1990s recession, the 320-unit CityFront Terrace condominium on Harbor Drive went to a rental program while waiting for the market to improve.
The market eventually did, the units sold and individual condominiums are now being marketed for resale.
While Scott couldn't recall any other developers who are renting out their condominium units, she said there is hardly a building downtown where at least some condominium owners aren't trying to rent out their units until the for-sale market improves.
When asked how long it will be before the developers and condominium owners can go back to selling their units, Scott had two answers.
"On the optimistic side a year to 18 months. On the pessimistic side, two to three years. I always see the glass as half full. I think we'll come out sooner," Scott said.
Scott added there haven't been as many foreclosures of properties downtown as one might think.
"We're seeing a slowdown with these, and even when we see these properties go to a short sale, people are not buying at 40 cents on the dollar," Scott said. "They are at 2006 prices, so they are not giving these away."

^^^ I am not sold on Smart Corner at all! My hang-up is the floor plans and size. Too small. And, they advertise one bedrooms that really are no one bedrooms. 3/4 opague walls without doors and no closet does not make a bedroom!

This article just shows where we are at in terms of market cycles. It is comparing these projects to Cityfront Terrace, who couldn't give their units away during the 1990's. Once the market turned around, that building turned into one of the prime downtown buildings (I'm not a big fan of it though)

Biggest Hotel on Coast Planned


1,929 rooms seen for downtown S.D. site
By Jeanette Steele
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

March 28, 2008

San Diego will be home to the West Coast's largest hotel if the Marriott Convention Hotel at Ballpark Village – now proposed to have 1,929 rooms – becomes a reality.
Graphic:


Marriott hotels downtown
The hotel, first proposed last summer, was set to be the biggest in San Diego County with 1,650 rooms. Now, the downtown property is positioned to be Marriott's flagship convention destination on the Pacific.

But it also could create more traffic and parking headaches for people who live in the East Village, downtown's fastest-growing residential area.

At least one hotel consultant is puzzled by Marriott's timing as tourism experts are downgrading their projections because of the deteriorating national economy. Besides this behemoth project, at least 5,000 hotel rooms are in the development pipeline for downtown San Diego.

Marriott may be spurred on by competition from Gaylord Entertainment, which is angling to build a 1,500-to 2,000-room hotel and convention center on Chula Vista's bayfront.

Learn more
The developer and the city's downtown redevelopment agency are hosting a community discussion of Marriott's project in Ballpark Village on April 14 from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Omni Hotel San Diego. For more information, call (619) 235-2200.

West Coast hotels
by the numbers

The five largest hotels on the West Coast, ranked by number of rooms:

1,908: Hilton San Francisco

1,625: Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego

1,573: Hilton Anaheim

1,498: San Francisco Marriott

1,362: San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina

SOURCE: MeetingNews Summer 2007 Meeting Guide


“Marriott's strategy is to be the biggest kid on block,” said La Jolla hotel consultant Jerry Morrison. “They are expanding in all markets beyond where other brands would normally expand, in terms of how many hotels you put in the same market under the same flag.”

Marriott operates four hotels downtown and is developing this and two others in the city center.

A San Diego Convention Center spokesman said Marriott's move does not compete with the center's hopes for expansion. In fact, it may help San Diego attract lucrative mega-meetings, instead of losing them to other cities.

One example, said convention center Vice President Steven Johnson, is San Diego Comic-Con International, the high-profile pop-culture convention.

“They are bursting at the seams here now,” Johnson said.

The extra exhibit space at the proposed Marriott – and at the 1,200-room Hilton under construction east of the center – might allow San Diego to keep Comic-Con here after its contract is up in 2012.

More hotel rooms downtown play a role in attracting conventions.

Tracey Adams, national sales manager at San Diego's PRA Destination Management, said that if an 8,000-person convention books in San Diego, the attendees might be spread over four or five hotels. Las Vegas' mega-hotels, with 3,000 rooms and up, can accommodate that convention in one or two hotels.



Advertisement“We'd be able to compete more effectively with cities like Las Vegas,” Adams said.
For the average San Diegan, the upshot would be more hotel-room taxes flowing into the city's coffers and possibly more competitive room prices when splurging on a weekend getaway downtown.

The latest Marriott is being proposed by JMI Realty, the real estate company of Padres owner John Moores. JMI is developing a five-block area east of Petco Park called Ballpark Village.

A master plan for Ballpark Village was approved by the city in 2005, and it includes a hotel at the site. But JMI Realty will have to gain approval for the specifics from the city's downtown redevelopment agency.

The early proposal was for 1,650 hotel rooms and 60 condos in two 487-foot towers, with 175,000 square feet of meeting space. The latest proposal calls for 1,929 rooms in 500-foot towers and 216,000 square feet of meeting space.

To Claudette Cooper, homeowners association president at ICON condominiums, the proposed hotel translates into an influx of new traffic in her neighborhood.

ICON, which opened early last year, is on J Street between 10th and 11th avenues. Cooper said that finding street parking on Padres game nights is like doing battle. She dreads how it will be with thousands of additional visitors in the mix.

Blocking ICON's views of the bay is another concern.

“We need to be careful how it is designed so it doesn't decrease values by walling off views and increasing congestion,” Cooper said.






I'll try to post some renderings I've seen, but I can't find any right now, but it basically two fairly slender twin towers...Exactly what we DON'T need is twin towers, but while they're not at all ugly, they're nothing at all special. It'll definiltely add some great depth to our plateau skyline, and it's really an exciting new development!

Though some views will be blocked I cant see how Icon residents are not urging for something like this to bring life to the area. The Icon is on the verge of no-man's land in my opinion. The area could really use this. All sides of the ball park are awesome except for the lots to the East, and from personal experience 12 and Imperial is just a scary place in general.

I can't see the graphic damnit!

Hard Rock Hotel
 

Anyone notice that the Hard Rock Hotel has ramped up advertising for condo-hotel sales again? I thought that they were basically sold out months ago.

the graphic is only a map of marriotts current and proposed developments
you can view it on the union-tribunes site @ http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniont...mages/park.gif

seriously, as an outsider ive gotta say from the map, is this building really in the way of the airport? seems like from its southern location they could build one tall tower instead of 2 smaller ones (make a height limit exception, like thats gonna happen tho)

I agree with you completely!!

This building is SE enough to be out of the radius of where the height restriction is, unfortunately our local government can be very hard-headed and people in this community freak out and raise lawsuits whenever anyone proposes doing something out of the ordinary

I think this would be a prime location to challenge the height limit. I have been wondering why no developer has tried yet, but I am sure part or all of the reason is they don't want to get tangled-up in costly legal challenges.

We just had a bunch of drama with this Sun Road project that went over it's heigh limit and it was a big, expensive, long legal mess

So, I guess we will have to live with a plateau skyline that has a ton of 500ft buildings :( :( :( :( :(

other than the short height, I do hope it gets built. It seems like the area east of Petco has stalled, hopefully this project will foster growth and help get the new library out of the ground!!

As an ICON resident I have no problem with the hotel. I do not know why this woman, whom i pay an absurd amount every month to represent me, would say this. It is exciting to live on the frontier of the urban renaissance, people like her and her suburban NIMBY mentality need to stay in Poway. She is probably one or the 'Zoners who have weekend homes in my building, I swear they make up about half of the place. I am really excited about the new law school going in around the corner, that will be a big boost to the neighborhood, a much larger one than either a hotel or a library will produce.

law school?

Yeah but wasn't that clearly violating the height limit?

The Thomas Jefferson School of Law, currently located off San Diego Avenue near Old Town, will be relocating downtown in East Village. It's expected to open around 2010 and, yes, should provide a good boost to that part of town.

It'll be located at 11th and Island Avenue.

A friend of mine works there and he said that many people bailed and the last minute. I'm assuming this would have something to do with the current economic downturn.

since there's a thread of water shortages on the city discussions forum...

does san diego/california have any plans to deal with this looming problem?

i know there was a desalination plant proposed for carlsbad, but i think it got shot down?