Bank financing is finally in
place for the long-awaited Rainbow employee housing development, ostensibly
ending months of delays and speculation the project was dead.
According to project manager
Bill Hayes, the financing means it’s full steam ahead for construction this
spring.
“The money is now committed
for the rest of the project,” he said this week.
“We have new money into the
project and that has really allowed us to really start planning and executing
the work.”
There has been little to no
physical construction done on site for more than a year now, despite promises
Whistler residents would be moving in throughout 2008. Hayes attributes the
delay to the complexity of the project and the need for Rainbow’s developers to
shop around and get the best financing deal at the banks.
“Until you have financing in
place you can’t really make future commitments of any extent,” he said.
At the same time as the
financing deal was sealed with the Royal Bank of Canada, a separate deal
unfolded in which two of the five Rainbow partners sold to a third party.
Hayes would not comment on
that third party other than to say that the principal of the firm is a senior
investment banker with development experience in affordable housing.
“That person has experience
and financial resources and will be a good asset to the Rainbow team,” said
Hayes.
Two well-known and longtime
locals are still actively involved in Rainbow — Rod Nadeau and Ann Chiasson.
The sale, however, puts an
end to more than a decade-long partnership with five separate people, some from
Whistler and the others from the Lower Mainland.
Local developer Don Wensley
was one of the two partners to sell.
That wasn’t his first choice.
“I was prepared to stay in,
if I was in charge of the project,” he said.
While it looked for a short
time like that could happen, ultimately the decision was made to buy him out.
He said his cheque arrived on
Tuesday.
Wensley has no hard feelings
about the buy out and, in fact, he believes the new investor is the best thing
to happen to Rainbow, given some of the issues that existed between the
partners.
“Despite a few disagreements
and harsh words — that’s part of business — I wish them well and I hope they’re
very successful,” he said.
“The new investor, I believe,
will give this thing direction and focus and I also think their engineer Bill
Hayes is just about the best person that they could have as an inside
consulting engineer on the project.”
The biggest challenge now,
said Hayes, is getting the manpower and equipment mobilized on the project in
the coming weeks. The construction industry in Whistler is booming as the
resort readies for the 2010 Games. Major housing developments underway are the
250-home athletes’ village and Cressey’s upscale townhouse development at the
entrance to White Gold, not to mention the millions of dollars in individual
home and hotel renovations and municipal work on the go.
“Getting a commitment on the
construction resources is our biggest challenge and we’re taking steps to try
and lock in the resources right now,” said Hayes.
“The resources that we have
been planning to use have been hanging in with us with the expectation that we
would get financing.”
Discussions are also back on
with two local building companies — Vision Pacific and Glacier Greek
Construction, which has an ongoing project at the athletes’ village.
Hayes also said the
municipality is being very proactive in helping the development cross the many
hurdles involved in developing a neighbourhood subdivision from scratch.
“(They’re) really being very
proactive to help us get the development going,” he said. “It’s quite
unprecedented in my view.”
Rainbow became a political
hot potato in the last election, with most councillors campaigning on the
project. During the first two years of its term, however, council struggled
with the project, in a tug of war with developers as both sides hammered out
the details. Final approval of the bylaws came in June 2007 but work never
resumed on site.
That’s not for a lack of the
political will, said Councillor Ralph Forsyth, who has been outspoken in his
support of the project and his worry that it may not come together.
He was not aware of the
latest developments when contacted this week.
“I’m super excited,” he said.
“I hope they put it together.”
He was not surprised to hear
of the good working relationship between Rainbow’s developers and municipal
staff.
“We told the staff ‘clear
your desks, make this happen, there’s nothing more important.’”
Marla Zucht, general manager
of the Whistler Housing Authority, met with Hayes last week for an update.
“It sounds like they’re
putting all the pieces back in place, which is great,” said Zucht. “It’s
encouraging and I think we all probably take it with a grain of salt here —
we’ll believe it when we see it. Nevertheless, I want to be optimistic.”
The interest in the project
is definitely still there from Whistler residents, hoping for a chance to buy a
little resort real estate at non-market prices.
“People, I think, are waiting
with baited breath to see what’s going to happen,” added Zucht.
The master waitlist for
employee housing sits at 635 separate applications. Almost half of those
applicants are on a separate waitlist for the Rainbow development — 231 for
duplexes and 170 for single-family homes.
Those registered for duplexes
have been pre-approved for mortgages between $320,000 to $400,000 while those
on the single-family home list have been pre-approved for a minimum mortgage of
$400,000.
The number of people
pre-approved drops dramatically above the half million-dollar mark.
Hayes said: “We’re going to
focus on delivering the best product that we can for a price that we know is in
the range of the people on the waitlist.”
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