March 2009

Convert West Palm Beach condos into hotel for Palm Beach County convention center

By JENNIFER SORENTRUE

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Monday, March 16, 2009

WEST PALM BEACH - Palm Beach County has spent more than four years trying to build a hotel next to its downtown convention center.

Now, a local real estate consultant wants to sell county commissioners a nearby condo building that has already been constructed.

The fledgling CityPlace South Tower, justblocks from the convention center on Okeechobee Boulevard, could be transformed into a hotel with up to 600 rooms, according to a proposal by Christina Morrison Pearce.

Like many downtown condos, the developer has had a difficult time getting buyers to close on their units. As of last week, CityPlace South Tower had sold 38 of its 420 units, according to property records.

County managers say Pearce’s proposal is not a “viable” option for the county, which is facing its worst budget crunch in decades. But Pearce, an Atlantis-based commercial real estate consultant, said today that she met with the building’s developer, The Related Group, earlier this month to discuss the idea.

“This building is sitting there and it could somehow be used for this convention center,” Pearce said.

The cost to the county could total as much as $108 million, although an exact figure won’t be available until the two sides sign a confidentiality agreement, according to Pearce’s proposal.

That’s a much higher price than the county faced under its previous attempt to build a hotel next to the convention center. The most recent proposal had called for the county to pay $46.1 million to build a parking garage, although the county was also providing the land and other incentives.

In a statement released today, The Related Group said it had no involvement in Pearce’s proposal.

“The only discussion we’ve had with this broker is her interest to purchase multiple units, and nothing more,” the developer said. “If the county feels that converting our property into a hotel is the right answer for the convention center, then I’m sure they will approach us directly.”

The idea of converting the building into a hotel has been proposed by several other people, the developer said. The interior of the building and its amenity deck were designed by global hotel design firm Hirsch Bedner Associates, known for its work with the Mandarin Oriental hotels in Miami, Washington and New York.

Assistant County Administrator Shannon LaRocque said it could cost a hotel company millions to remodel the building.

“The No. 1 issue is dollars and cents,” she said. “You got to have a hotel partner, and it has got to work financially.”

The county has spent more than four years working on a plan to build a hotel next to its convention center. Tourism officials say an adjacent hotel is critical to stemming the heavy losses the convention center continues to take for lack of business.

Last year, commissioners voted to scrap a deal with developer Ocean Properties to build a 400-room hotel and 104 condo units next to the convention center, and instead start looking for a new builder. In January, federal prosecutors cited ex-County Commissioner Mary McCarty’s cozy relationship with Ocean executives as one of numerous grounds for filing a corruption case against her.

County administrators plan to ask commissioners to sign off on a request for proposals for the hotel project in about 60 days.

Staff writer Jeff Ostrowski contributed to this story.

The Commercial Collapse of 2009 Could Dwarf the Sub-Prime Mortgage in Florida Along With a World Crisis

A warning from three experts and the predictions from a great spiritual master from India. The pundits are telling us that there is a global crisis coming to us in stages. The next stage will be the collapse of 09. We are going to see it around March of this year. The first feeling of it will come when we see more retail chains go belly up. Let me put it all together, back in 2008 we saw the closings of Star Bucks, Home Depot, Linens & Things and The Sharper Image. Now when we look at the retail sector nobody is going to rent and take all these vacant stores.

Occupancy of the buildings in the real estate sector will be difficult after the failures of Merrill Lynch, Bear Sterns and Wachovia. We hear the announcements of three hundred and fifty thousand layoffs here and fifty thousand there. Commercial real estate is collapsing and will dwarf the sub-prime problem because everything is leveraged.

We are at the doorstep or walking into a depression right now. The key is the combination of a collapsing equity market, a collapsing real-estate market and a collapsing commodity market. Its extremely rare that those three trends are now occurring together and the last time this happened was during the great depression.

In the worst case scenario we can back off but people better realize that the worst case scenario can actually happen an economic 9/11 the likes of which we have never seen. By the year 2015 you could see gold at eight thousand dollars on ounce and why do people buy gold? Because the value of money won’t be worth the paper it is printed on.

The worst case scenario would turn our shopping centers and pedestrian promenades into “ghost malls” and our cities would be like “Dodge City” with uncontrollable gangs competing for territory, motorcycle marauders, not enough police or Federalies just like in Mexico where the rich people will have to live in fortresses with armed guards because the gated communities will not be safe. With so much criminality we could see gangs like we have never seen before. When people have nothing left to lose and they have lost everything, they lose it and with a descending society with the high school graduation rate under fifty percent in major cities we have more ignorant people functionally illiterate, whacked out on drugs, hillbilly heroin, meth, you name it and they have nothing to lose. Some cities may become like Calcutta with pick pockets, petty thieves and hookers.

With the stimulus package you can give a guy some extra cash and tell him to go out and spend but the business man or the consumer knows the difference between standing in front of an electric fan and a windy day. He knows that one of them is artificial and limited and the other is a major climate change so when he gets the check or he sees the temporary up-kick in sales he’s not going to do anything about it because he knows it can not be replicated tomorrow.

It is so irresponsible to tell anyone to go out, take this money and spend it. This is the worst possible advice for the individual consumer right now. It might be good for the economy and certain businesses but it would be irresponsible for a consumer who is trying to raise cash to pay down debt. They won’t do it because they too see prices are going down and the longer they wait the cheaper things will get. Consumers need to raise their cash levels and prices need to get cheap enough so that people feel compelled to buy. The only way out of this is deflation. We have to go through the process and pain of deflation in order for the economic cycle to bring back a recovery.

In every nation we see troubled times that were foretold by the masters, economic crises, wars, famine, civil strife incurable diseases and cataclysmic disasters. Because of the growing economic crisis there is a rising sense of helplessness and fear in this developing chaos. What could have caused these afflictions to come among us? The ancient Egyptians were stricken by calamities, misfortune and plagues for having disregarded the Divine Will as was written in the scriptures which is not unlike our situation. We tend to brush off any suggestion that such biblical occurrences couldn’t happen in modern times, but this is not true. We have these calamities and plagues among us now and most of us thoughtlessly think we could not have caused these disasters through our own transgressions and that it is probably a coincidence or a twist of fate. This is no coincidence.

The spiritual master gives us some critical advice. There is a great crisis coming, as we have never seen. It is such a crisis that’s going to batter this country. There is too much emphasis on spending and not enough in lowering taxes. What will people do when the false economy collapses and millions are unemployed. Do not live in blissful oblivion, uninformed of the imminent crisis. The financial system of the world is changing but with the good karma America has she will be better off than what the rest of the world will go through. But she will still suffer wide-spread misery and changes. You are used to the good things in life and you won’t like it when you are forced to live simply. After being rich its not easy to be poor. This change is going to deeply affect us and you have no idea how it will over the years. Never in our history will there be such a contrast between poverty and riches as it will visit our country and there will be such a difference in our standard of living.

How can an individual meet the global crisis? The right way is to adopt a plan of high thinking and plain living. Many will be rudely surprised if immediate radical changes in living habits are not made. In ways you can’t imagine things will change around you. We have luxuries, clothing and food that people of other countries don’t have. Now is the best time to adjust to a course of simple living.

1. Choose an adequate living place that is not larger than you really need or more than you can afford.
2. Choose an area where living expenses and taxes are sensible.
3. If you can sew make your own clothes.
4. If possible grow your own food and vegetables.
5. Have a few chickens to have your own eggs.
6. Eliminate a gardener and work the garden yourself to save money.
7. Enjoy an uncomplicated life and keep life simple.

Regardless of where you live and work purchase inexpensive clothes and leave out luxuries. Buy only the things you really need and save money regularly. Instead of thinking how to spend money think of ways to conserve. Soon you may learn to do without so don’t be wasteful. Exercising self control will enable you to save. Heed the warning of the masters and spare yourself much grief. You will not be spared if you waste money on luxuries. Do not borrow or use credit cards. Pay cash as you go and do not buy if you have no cash. Keep your assets in cash or federally protected accounts.