I waved Dianne Kyte, a realtor with Coldwell Banker South Metro, over to my corner office at GBM yesterday morning to ask her for an update on the status of the residential condo building at The Crossing where she lives. She confirmed that Highland Bank has taken over ownership of it from the developer, Mendota Homes. (The bank foreclosed on the property 6 months ago.)
Dianne has the listing for the seven unoccupied finished units (street address: 101 St Olaf Avenue N). And yes, the prices have been slashed. (continued)
Unit 202 (which we had planned to buy) had been originally listed for $350,000+. It’s now listed for $199,000. Highland is pursuing the sale of the remaining 35. There are 55 total in the building.
Brian O’Connell, Northfield’s Community Development Director, confirmed via email that he and the bank are currently in discussions about improving the condition of the property and site maintenance for it. I neglected to ask him how those discussions relate to the City’s discussions with PiperJaffray (TIF note) that I blogged about in early May, but I’ll follow up with him on Monday about it.
For more background on this, see all the blog posts here tagged The Crossing.
Griff, you’ve mentioned several times that The Crossing was foreclosed upon, but isn’t that kind of misleading? The occupied units are owned/mortgaged by the individual owners, not by Mendota Homes. According to Rice County GIS, Mendota Homes still owns the undeveloped land and the commercial building.
So, that it mind, I think it would be more accurate to say that the unsold condo units were foreclosed upon, not The Crossing as a whole.
Anyway, good to see the prices coming down to something much more reasonable. It’s a beautiful building, despite its troubles, and it would be good to see the area more occupied.
Sean, I intended for the phrases “ownership of it” and “the property” to refer to the “residential condo building” which I cited in the previous sentence.
But I can see how it could be misinterpreted. Thanks for clarification.
It’s not just the unsold condo units that Highland now owns, tho. All the common areas of the residential unit, too, ie, garage, hallways, property immediately surrounding the building, etc.
Brian O’Connell, Nfld community development director, wrote via email re: who does the clean up, Highland or PiperJaffray:
Highland Bank is foreclosing on Phase II of The Crossing (commercial condos) according to Joel Walinksi’s report in the Aug. 7 Friday Memo:
I’m surprised to hear anyone is even talking about Phase II. I guess it’s a good thing, though I’m more eager to see the commercial building completed at 2nd and Hwy 3 than another residential building. It seems rather optimistic to think there’s going to be a big hunger for more luxury condos in the next ten or fifteen years.
Sean, Phase II is the currently built commercial condo building… occupied by 3 or 4 businesses. Phase III is planned second residential building that, as you say, won’t be built for a long time.
Ah, that definitely makes more sense.
I was running over at The Crossing tonight and was surprised to see that the sidewalks were never completed between the two buildings that were built and 2nd Street.
Now I know you’ve been complaining for ages about the state of the undeveloped land (I’m feeling more in agreement now), but it seems really problematic to be selling downtown condos without a connection to the downtown sidewalk network.
Griff: are you sure about your Phase II statement? I had always understood that Phase I was the first residential and first business building, and that Phase II was the second set of residential and business buildings at the southern end of the property.
The Friday memo is not completely clear on this, but I believe Phase II mentioned (now moving into foreclosure with the bank) would be the land where the next two buildings were supposed to be sited.
Kiffi, I think you’re right, now that I look at some of the documents. This one says there is:
Phase I residential
Phase I commercial
Phase I restaurant
Phase II residential
Phase III commercial
as does this document.
So it appears that Highland, like you said, is just foreclosing on the land associated with the Phase II residential. My bad!
Griff : yeah, well… it WAS your ‘bad’, and the same is true for the lack of attention to detail in your Charter Commission thread, IMO.
Your obvious ongoing angst with the accuracy of the City’s website is getting in the way of accurate reporting, IMO, also.
Sorry to be irritated; Am I supposed to say “My bad” for that?
In the [Sept. 18 Friday Memo][1], Brian O’Connnell wrote:
[1]: http://www.ci.northfield.mn.us/assets/0/091809-JW.pdf
The Crossing and Highland Bank are back on the Council agenda tonight, pages 20-23 of the packet.