Citizen Will

Wed 6 Dec 2006

4 Responses to “Downtown Development: RAM’s VP Cummings’ Smackdown”

1. Fred Black says:

   December 6, 2006 at 1:07 pm

   Will, note that he said he negotiated in good faith an put forth a best and final offer (BAFO) that didn’t include these things. Why didn’t the people who blessed the BAFO speak up?
2. Administrator says:

   December 6, 2006 at 1:48 pm

   Fred, good point. Note he does acknowledge they discussed these issues – they just couldn’t come to an agreement. RAM is going to make a boatload of bucks on this deal – it’s really a steal. Nickel and diming the affordable housing folks doesn’t make sense. It’s on the town for negotiating a building design that it appears NC State wouldn’t accept.
3. Antawn Smith says:

   December 6, 2006 at 3:32 pm

   Only 3 counsel members and the mayor were in on the negotiations. So unless there was an active back-n-forth dialogue it is quite likely that most of the counsel was not privy to lots of important information.

   Further many extremely important details need to be worked out and are unknown by anyone at this point. My suspicion is that fewer yes votes will fall on the final vote in Feb…. but at least the developer was told on record what was missing.

   Without knowing what the fees will be (will there be a gym, a rec room, jacuzzi? etc how will the grounds be kept etc…) it is very easy to imagine fees that would make the affordable units unaffordable.
4. Mark P says:

   January 2, 2007 at 4:00 pm

   I am not real keen on the price tag of this whole deal and I would like to see better energy efficiency requirements.

   From Will’s homework on the documents, it sounds like Lot 5 would appraise in the neighborhood of $6-8M and it would be sold to the developer at $272,571 in today’s dollars (see *).

   Antawn raises a great point on the fees. A realtor friend was telling me this past weekend that Duke Power charges all of its homeowners around Lake James over $250/month just to maintain the common areas (mostly grass cutting – no pool or fitness facilities).

   *Using http://www.halfhill.com/inflation.html and the average inflation of the last 50 years