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Originally Posted by The ATX
I would just like to understand his thought process behind spending many millions of dollars on prime development sites and never attempting to develop them or flip them (as far as I know.) I think 99 Trinity is the only large WCC project that ever had a building permit filed, and that was several years ago. It's almost like he's a hoarder.
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Using a hard money lender on the 99 Trinity site was a red flag in and of itself. That makes zero sense for what was clearly becoming a long-term hold. For someone who was buying up property like crazy, it never added up that he couldn’t scrape together any financing for actual construction, especially given the booming development curve. It’s obviously an opportunistic time for development in downtown Austin right now, so I never understood what he was waiting for? Even if he didn’t develop the lots himself, he could have cashed in for his investors by unloading the land or doing joint ventures. Clearly the holding costs - in the case of 99 Trinity and possibly others - were starting to bleed cash.
Then the bright idea was to be a late entrant to coworking with NowSpace. I’m not sure if anyone’s noticed, but NowSpace banners have become just as ubiquitous as the WCC flyers around town. Money laundering seems quite possible. The FBI doesn’t mess around.