Thursday, September 6, 2007

Broken Top. A stalking horse, all the way.

I hope none of the residents of BT are poker players, because I think they're being bluffed, and not even a particularly good bluff. Let the SOB buy it, and try to develop it. Let the city and state shut down his plans, I wouldn't even hire a lawyer. Let him take it bankrupt, and then the good people of Broken Top can buy it for half the price. On second thought, hire a lawyer only make sure that he keeps it at "A" status, and let him stew.

Somebody tell me how he has even a 1% chance of succeeding at redeveloping, when he basically has just about everyone against him, including equally (as the Bulletin calls them this morning "Old Guard") powerful developers, the government agencies, the residents, and most of the public.? They bought it, let them lose it.
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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Duncan,

I have written this ad-nauseum, just the other day I was calling on your bluff that Brenneke was that smart.

I think the real issue here, is now its official outsiders beware, first it was Kuratek ( Juniper Ridge aka UBS BANK ), and now Brenneke, via Bauhofer.

I completely agree, just let the thing stew. Did anyone here go to the court hearing at 9am on tuesday?

September 6, 2007 at 11:36:00 AM PDT
Anonymous said...

Three million has been put in that is un-accounted for to date. Brenneke wants another 9 mil, so 12 mil total, not to destroy the subdivision. He got it from Bauhofer for $6M, not bad 100% return for just threatening people! It's also postulated that to date no real money has ever changed hands, thus given the missing $3M that may have been used to payoff Bauhofer. This is going to be cute if the BT owners fall through, as the Brenneke GANG would owe a lot of people a lot of money.
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Members may get Broken Top
Several hurdles must be cleared before club's sale becomes final
By David Fisher / The Bulletin
Published: September 06. 2007 5:00AM PST

The Seattle-based trusts that own Bend’s Broken Top Club intend to sell the club to a group of club members this fall, the trusts’ attorney told a Deschutes County judge Wednesday, a factor that could end months of legal wrangling over the club’s future.

If the deal goes through.

The owners’ Portland attorney, Susan Eggum, was adamant during a court hearing Wednesday that it would.

“They are going to become the owners now, your honor,” Eggum told Deschutes County Circuit Court Judge Alta Brady in a telephone conference appearance, insisting that real estate attorneys for both sides have scheduled “a daylong meeting” to negotiate a deal.

“This case is over.”

That would be good news, if it’s true, the club members’ attorney, Lisa Kaner, said. But Kaner said the owners have refused to turn over key documents, including information on what has happened to the $3 million a group of members chipped in last year to buy the exclusive golf club. And the two groups, so far, also are far apart on a price, even though a mechanism for setting it is spelled out in a contract signed last year.

“What we’re trying to find out is what is the financial status of the club?” Kaner told Brady, pleading for the judge to order the release of information. “… They have stonewalled us on virtually everything.”

And the meeting?

“I have no meeting set up with Paul Taylor (the owners’ real estate attorney). That’s the first I’ve heard of it,” the club members’ Portland attorney, Stephen Janik, said after the hearing, adding that he would look forward to a meeting once his side has enough information to do its due diligence.

Taylor would say only that he has been retained by the club’s owners and it’s early in the negotiating process.

Struggles over the club’s ownership, which erupted in January after an entity controlled by a trust to benefit Seattle developer Paul Brenneke’s daughters bought the club’s controlling limited liability company, carries more at stake than just a simple transfer of control.

Brenneke’s brother, Tom Brenneke, has announced plans to knock down the exclusive golf course’s clubhouse if he can gain control of it himself. In its place, Brenneke says he wants to build a 208-unit, 333,000-square-foot building that would also include a new clubhouse, restaurant and spa for the members, along with a fully equipped athletic facility.

Tom Brenneke also wants to build 88 “villa” units around the club’s tennis courts and 18th fairway.

On the other side of the fence, the eight club members who have sued to force a sale to a larger group of club members who have indicated that they intend to keep the club what it is today — an exclusive private club with a clubhouse and a private restaurant, and a golf course that meanders among the surrounding homes of the Broken Top subdivision. That lawsuit brought the two sides to the Deschutes County courthouse Wednesday. The outcome of the ownership struggle — along with any battles at City Hall that Brenneke would have to win in order to build his vision — could mean the difference between the southeastern edge of Bend staying the way it is, or sprouting significant new high-end developments.

The lawsuit centers around an agreement that former owners Don Bauhofer and John Lietz made in 2006 to transfer the club to a group of “convertible equity members.” The eight members who filed the lawsuit are part of this group.

According to the terms, Bauhofer and Lietz agreed to transfer the club to the members once 300 of them agreed to chip in up to $55,000 apiece for their convertible equity memberships. Existing club members bought in for considerably less than that amount because they were credited for fees already paid.

After nearly 150 members agreed and wrote checks, Bauhofer and Lietz agreed to give them up to 10 years to complete the deal, while promising to maintain the club as a “Class A” golf facility in the meantime.

Shortly after the first convertible equity members signed their transfer agreements, Bauhofer and Lietz sold the club’s holding entity, Broken Top Partners LLC, to an entity controlled by Paul Brenneke’s family’s trusts.

Eight of the convertible equity members filed their legal action about a month after that Jan. 3 sale, saying that the convertible equity agreement traveled with the club — which would mean that the new owner is bound by its provisions. The legal filing was later converted to a full-blown lawsuit after attempts to schedule a mediation session fell through.

On Wednesday, Eggum, an attorney with the Portland firm Cosgrave, Vergeer, Kester LLP, asked Brady to throw the case out of court, partly because not all of the current equity members have signed onto it; partly because the transfer agreement between the club and the equity members requires arbitration before any court actions can be filed; and partly because, she said, the equity members have formally stated their intent to buy the club by Oct. 24 under a clause that allows them to pay for the difference between what has already been invested and what the investment amount would be with 300 members.

Brady refused to toss the case, instead ordering both sides to get ready for her ruling on Kaner’s request for documents, and for a hearing set for Monday at 8:45 a.m. to determine whether a formal injunction should be issued to keep the owners from raising the club’s membership dues while the case is argued.

A full hearing on Eggum’s request to dismiss the case also is set for Sept. 19.

A temporary restraining order already has been issued, barring the club from raising its monthly membership dues from $595 a month to $1,095 a month.

The equity members sank $3 million into the club last year, Kaner said. A clause in the agreement with Bauhofer and Lietz required the club’s owners to use it only for capital improvements on the Tom Weiskopf and Jay Morrish-designed golf course. About $200,000 of the fund was spent last year on work approved by a member advisory committee before Bauhofer and Lietz sold it, Kaner said, but an accounting has not been provided for the rest.

The amount of the remaining check the equity members will have to write also is dependent upon two bits of information, which Kaner also requested Brady to order released: The number of equity memberships needed to reach 300, and the amount invested by the last equity members to sign up to this point. According to the contract, the number of memberships left to sell, multiplied by the amount of the last member’s buy-in amount, will dictate the final payment.

According to Kaner, members believe they will need to write a check for about $8.58 million under that formula. But the two sides, she said, are about $780,000 apart.

Tom Brenneke has said he has already reached an agreement with the current owners, his brother’s family’s trusts, to buy the club for $12 million.

Neither Brenneke returned calls to their offices or cell phones Wednesday.

September 6, 2007 at 12:01:00 PM PDT
Anonymous said...

Bend was sold to national REITS.

Bend was sold to out of town 'investors'.

Now you BITCHES no longer control your government.

If you had a fucking way to know in this city how campaign contributions were paid you would know that city/county council is owned by out of state interest.

Thus enjoy your new town, a little desert town of 75K completely owned by out of state boss-hoggs.

Out of town investors own the PR firms who are their spokesmen. The city council isn't even smart enough by definition to articulate the goal of their owners. Thus they have to be supplied with PR firms ( DVA), the best part of this is the CITY has to finance the support of the outside to opposed the outside. This should shut the insiders up, having to pay to opposed the outside ownership.

Best made a lot of money, attracted outsiders to buy desert land, sold everything to national REITS. Now Bend is 100% owned by out of state interests and the politicians are 100% owned and controlled by out of state interests. This is common in the US senate, but very uncommon in 75k population towns.

The fault lays with every BEND speculator that sold this miserable town.

September 7, 2007 at 8:09:00 AM PDT
Anonymous said...

Old guard, developers take sides on Juniper
By Peter Sachs / The Bulletin
Published: September 06. 2007 5:00AM PST

The Bend City Council was forced Wednesday night to acknowledge a 450-signature petition from longtime Bend residents concerned about the process behind the city’s 1,500-acre Juniper Ridge development.

[ 1500 acres bought from county for one dollar, and city expects to sell the land to suckers for $1.6M/acre, cost was 0.06 cents/acre. ]

After an hour of discussion and debate, the council took no action, but later voted to look into hiring a public relations firm to handle Juniper Ridge.

[ 450 of the oldest, best folks who love Bend, were told to go FUCK THEMSELVES, and reminded them that they had long ago SOLD oregon to national REITS, who now owned the political class of Bend ]

Petitions in hand, former mayors Oran Teater and Bob Woodward were the only people at the meeting to speak in direct opposition to the city’s current plans on Juniper Ridge.

[ Nobody ever testifys against development in Bend hearings, they're 80% occupied by developers, that take opponents to the corner and physically threaten their lives. Bend is a MOB town. ]


“These were not gathered on the steps of Wal-Mart,” Teater said. “They were gathered by concerned citizens of this community that have been giving back for 20, 30 years.”

[ These people were NOT the white-trash that the whore city-judge and cops can bully with dog-off-leash tickets, .... These people are the people who who built Bend before the post 2000 REITS arrived ]

Both of the master developers spearheading the Juniper Ridge project, Ray Kuratek and Jeff Holzman, spoke at the meeting as well.

[ Ray Kuratek is owned by UBS bank, one of the largest banks in the world, based in switzerland. UBS owns Bend, and long ago became the banker. Thus Kuratek is in effect the custodian of Bend ]

“I’ve never seen a large project like this where the developer and the investor made so little for themselves and the city kept so much of the profits, and I think that’s great,” Holzman said.

[ NOT a fucking dime to date has been made selling anything. What has been done is 100's of secret documents promising anchors like Les Schwab free MILLIONS of tax-payer dollars ]

Though the council did not take any formal action, several councilors recognized the significance of the petitions and offered their ideas for confronting the situation.

[ The council has to talk to their UBS handlers and be told what to do, and that requires a few days. ]

“Probably the largest blunder and the reason we’re having this conversation tonight is I think the city has done a really bad job communicating to the people of Bend the pros and cons,” Councilor Mark Capell said.

[ The largest blunder is that Juniper Ridge was an ill conceived project in the first placed. Created by Ray Kuratek, and out of town hustler from California who had been ran out of town for destroying cultural landmarks. He's a UBS hatchet man at large. ]

Councilor Peter Gramlich acknowledged the weight of the nine former mayors who signed the petition, and while that gave him pause, he too stayed in favor of the development.

[ Old Timers don't mean shit. Bend was sold to International Investors. You old-timers don't mean shit to anyone. Welcome to the new post 2000 Bend Oregon ]

“I have to respect that, when people of that stature and knowledge and experience in Bend say that they’re concerned and we need to slow down,” Gramlich said. “Those words are resonating with me as proper and something I could agree with.”

[ The Juniper Ridge project was done on fast-track from day one always in secret. Even the Bend Chamber of Commerce opposed the illegal secrecy that violates ALL State Laws. ]


But on the flip side, councilors Linda Johnson and Jim Clinton asserted the symbolic importance of moving forward on the project.

[ Linda & Jim know who butters their bread, and its NOT the fucking Bend electorate. ]

“None of the greatest accomplishments that man has pursued were ever achieved by playing it safe and small,” Johnson said.

[ Nobody ever got rich working for the little white-trash, or old-time trash, these days if your politically motivated get connected with an International Bank, and in a few years you will become a US Senator. ]

She and Councilor Bill Friedman vouched for hiring a public relations firm to put a positive spin on Juniper Ridge.

[ UBS bank has their PR firm of choice, satellite office in Bend called "DVA", these people are the spokespeople for the owners of Bend, and thus will represent the 'investors' goals, of course the BILL for telling the citizens what to think will be passed to the taxpayer. ]


“I’m recommending that the city engage a firm to assist us with communicating this information quickly and effectively,” Johnson said.

[ Fast-Track, we're losing control, light is on the political cock-roaches, please DVA tell us what to think, here is your retainer, don't worry about MONEY we write the checks, we'll expect to get the money back in the form of campaign contributions. ]

The council voted 5-2 to look into hiring a public relations firm.

Friedman urged detractors of the project to wait until the formal development agreement is released.

[ Just like DUBYA, shut-up and wait until the war is over ]

Capell acknowledged that while he expected that document to come out by now, it may be several more weeks until it is complete.

“We had actually hoped to have it finished by now, and we’re just working out the details,” he said outside of the meeting.

[ To date everything the city-council has ever done WRT Juniper Ridge has been secret. Oregon open-meeting laws forbid secrecy, but the City of Bend has no oversight, as Salem Oregon seems to care less about eastern oregon. ]

September 7, 2007 at 8:41:00 AM PDT
J. Parker said...

How are things looking for you now?

August 19, 2009 at 11:35:00 PM PDT

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