Monday, May 21, 2012

The dead and the never born.

"Central Oregon Resorts Struggle." Bulletin, 5/20/12.

Well, that's one way of putting it.

Really, if you think about it, there are only two kinds of destination resorts since 2002. Those that who died aborning and those that were never born.

Three resorts actually had some building, though only a small fraction of what they planned. Two of them, Tetherow and Pronghorn, have been foreclosed on. Brasada Ranch did a little construction, but has been sold off. If you'll notice the dates, these resorts had the fortune (good or bad?) of starting a year or two earlier than the following:

The Metolian, Ponderosa, Remington Ranch, Crossing Trails, Hidden Canyon, which never got off the ground.

It was nuts to think they could build this many resorts, this many fancy units. It was nuts for the local officials to believe the hotel units would ever be built. It was nuts to end up with 30 golf courses -- despite the fact that most of the golf courses for the above resorts weren't even built!

So what else is new?

Well, the reason I'm writing this post is that I vowed to never let comments like the following go unchallenged:

"Few could have guessed in the mid-2000s what sort of devastation the end of the decade would bring to the housing market, not just in Central Oregon but around the world."

I suppose it's an improvement that they say "Few could have guessed...." instead of "No one could have guessed..." but the sentiment is the same. In fact, the whole slant of the article is that the resorts were "victims" of negative "psychology."

I'll just keep pointing out, a bunch of us did actually see this coming. It wasn't bad luck which caused this collapse.

No, it was bad planning.

Notice that the Bulletin says the problem is the "housing market." Wait. I thought these were "destination resorts" not subdivisions?

But we all know that's exactly what they were....

By the way, nothing could have been better for my business than to have these resorts succeed. Being in downtown Bend, I can't tell you the number of times a customer has told me they are staying at Sunriver, Black Butte, or Eagle Crest. These are the prime type of customers for a downtown tourist zone.

So....maybe one more resort, maybe with the same numbers of completed units as the above 9 resorts -- that would have been great....

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

On a GOOD NOTE the FaceBOOK
Scam has IMPLODED.

Nobody is sticking to the their gun's and all of wall-street is going to pull their fingers from the dike,

Stupid money didn't come forward, prior to the public offering FB had been trading as high as $34 in the private market, as FB had been unloading its stock since 2004.

So they finally dumped it on the market and all the assholes had to buy the stock, and today as many people who can sell did sell. Anybody that BOUGHT at IPO got Bend-FUCKED(tm).

Couldn't happen to a better company.

Looks like BONO (U2) will not have to worry about being a billionaire.

Interesting now is who will buy the bitch? The majority want to sell. This squeeze is going be cool to watch. Now its a poker game. Everybody wants to fold, and the only people that can't are the employees vested in at 4 years or 6 months, ... all else will be best to sell ASAP.

FB will be the TULIP-MANIA of our times, or least as stupid as the AOL-TIMER-WARNER deal.

H. Bruce Miller said...

"It wasn't bad luck which caused this collapse. No, it was bad planning."

Not to mention delusional "positive" thinking and sheer f##king stupidity.

Anonymous said...

THANKS HBM

Yes, this delusional positive thinking.

Sheer stupidty, by the fucking bucket.

You all can piss on these beer-guys, but remember, its pretty fucking cheap to get a 5-10 barrel system and brew beer in a warehouse, and hard fucking work, its a min-wage gig.

But that is as good as it gets for REAL in Bend future economy.

So be it welcome to DEPRESSION-101.

Bullshit walks and money talks and the Positive Thinkers who are up their nose in their own shit, ... Simply die for no other reason than those who smell the shit move on before they suffocate.

H. Bruce Miller said...

"I can't tell you the number of times a customer has told me they are staying at Sunriver, Black Butte, or Eagle Crest."

But those are true destination resorts that attract large numbers of tourists. The more modern type of destination "resort" (Pronghorn, Tetherow, Brasada etc.) is just a golf course subdivision out in the sagebrush that attracts few tourists, and doesn't really try to attract them.