Posted Mar 12, 2011, 2:39 PM
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Location: B3K Halifax, NS
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Buyers back for Bedford condos
Developer: Markets now allow for home purchases
By CHRIS LAMBIE Business Editor
Sat, Mar 12 - 4:54 AM
Quote:
At the height of the recession, developer John Greenough returned deposits to people buying into his $38-million Bedford condominium project.
The head of Provident Developments, which just started construction on the two-building, 78-condo venture called Dockside Waterfront Drive, said Friday that he had already taken deposits on about 75 per cent of the units when the economy fell apart two years ago.
"We had these people who — they were not putting their life savings into it by any means — but they had a substantial amount of money that they were taking out of their savings accounts, and they relied on the stock market and that all fell apart," Greenough said.
"Luckily, we hadn’t started. So we gave them all back their deposits."
There was no point in keeping their money, he said.
"We’d get them back; we were sure of it. And we did get a lot of them back."
The would-be buyers had "lost considerable amounts of money, I was sure, at the time," he said. "Now I think the market’s come back for them and that’s probably why they’re back."
That tactic appears to have worked in the development where condo prices range from about $300,000 to $700,000.
"Last time I was talking with the agents, we were somewhere between 80 and 84 per cent sold," Greenough said.
The project, comprised of five- and six-storey buildings, is slated to be completed in the spring of 2012.
"We have cranes up and we’re pouring concrete," Greenough said.
And while he was excited last year about the idea of harnessing heat from a Bedford sewage treatment plant to help warm the residential and commercial project, Greenough said he’s decided not to go ahead with the scheme this time around.
He had talked to the city about buying thermal energy harvested from sewage, which can be 12 C or warmer. The concept involves running either a series of coils or discs directly through the sewage to warm water that can be brought up to hotter temperatures using heat pumps.
"We explored that actually quite a bit and it became very, very complicated at the end," Greenough said.
Due to potential problems, he decided to take a pass on the technology this time and go with individual heat pumps.
"I’d like somebody else to be first to show me that it works great," he said.
He’s got plans to erect some public art near the waterfront project. "I always felt that the province never had its share of statues, big bronze statues."
"We’re sort of looking at a number of things like maybe people of the world."
While everything appears to be going along swimmingly now, in 2004, or what Colin MacLean of the Waterfront Development Corp. Ltd. calls "back in the mists of time," Greenough launched a $28-million lawsuit against the provincial Crown corporation that owns huge swaths of prime real estate on the Halifax, Dartmouth and Bedford waterfronts. The case never made it to court and Greenough got his wish. His company now owns, rather than leases, the land where Provident is now building.
"They own that land and what we’ve arranged is that the land around it is an easement that they’ve granted to us," MacLean said Friday. "So we’ll take care of the public spaces and amenities."
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