Just a few months after steel began to rise at The Savoy, the developer that’s heading up several projects in the city has apparently run into unspecified “economic difficulties.”
The Savoy doesn’t look all that different in recent weeks (above, left) than it did in July (below, right), or really even in February (below, left). Dornoch also is the developer on projects along East Cherry Street and the mixed-used arts project on Hamilton Street.
Pelissier also said he’s working with representat
ives to discuss acquiring Lot B and how to transfer the property, so the city, Parking Authority and Redevelopment Agency could work on a parking deck and consider the rest for a residential component of what was once proposed as The Westbury. If Dornoch does not decide to move forward, he said, the agency will choose a new developer. Dornoch has spent at least $6 million in the past two years acquiring 10 properties along Main Street for The Westbury, according to propertyshark.com.
Dornoch also has projects in Asbury Park, as well as Plainfield, where a senior center is scheduled for completion next October, according to a local blogger.
Rahway wouldn’t be the first town to hit a roadblock in this economy, as this Star-Ledger story indicated: The developer of a $100-million project with 320 apartments and an office and retail component in downtown Somerville can’t even get construction funding.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, steel continues to rise in downtown Morristown for a project with price ranges of $400,000 to $2.2 million. Officials claim to have half of its 73 units sold with occupancy expected by the end of next year, according to this report in the Daily Record.
Hey where can we find out what they found at the savoy? bones? indian arrow heads? i figure that when they built the downtown over the years that there was stuff(bones,indian artifacts..ect)were dug up and not recorded or taken. if stuff was found over the years,what was recorded and where can we see the stuff? that would be kool to see. 🙂
No word on the Skyview mortgage freeze Mark? I heard there are gonna turn the rest of the buildings into rentals.
Anon – see the comment in the Oct 15 post about arts center
Wouldn’t it make sense to finish the project and rent out the remaining units until things get better? At least the money they put in so far wouldn’t go down the Rahway river…
Builders don’t sit on a pile of cash to build their projects. They are like most Americans and do everything on credit. There is no credit being offered in the market today. Banks are hoarding money. The last place they want to lend to is a developer building high end condos in Rahway, NJ. You can’t pay the laborers without money. You can’t buy more steel without money. No money = no progress. That thing is gonna sit for a while and be a terrible eyesore.They should use taxpayer money to tear it down, make a nice green park and wait 5-10 years when things turnaround and try again.It will just be a blight on the area. Terrible that Lucianos has to deal with that thing sitting outside its environs.
How is the builder going to pay back the RRA? No one seems to be addressing this.
Don’t forget that easy money played a part in the rebirth of the first Hoboken and Jersey City. I remember the renovations happening block-by-block with individual owners or small-scale investors until around 2000-2002 when the big boys piled on with Hudson Tea, Maxwell Place, and other high-profile massive projects. The builders had such easy access to money that it made sense to throw up a project and let it sit until filled, whether a rental or a condo building. Not the case anymore. Skyview must have obtained the green light on the tail end of the easy credit wave. The Savoy situation is a shame because unlike Skyview it’s in scale with the city.On a side note, does anyone know what happened to the lofts near the train station? They all abruptly vanished from the MLS a few months back.
“They should use taxpayer money to tear it down, make a nice green park and wait 5-10 years when things turnaround and try again.”Ditto! If it’s not going up, it’s gotta come down. The last thing Rahway’s downtown needs is a steel skeleton rusting away for the next 5 years.
Agreed. Otherwise you end up with an Esperanza (spanish for “albatross”) dogging the Asbury Park skyline for decades. A finished yet unoccupied building is much better for aesthetics than steel girders rusting in the cold November rain… (insert Slash guitar solo)Easy credit means a builder can complete a project purely on spec and wait for buyers to outbid each other using subprime loans. Tight credit means projects don’t get started or lose funding before completion. The first Hoboken and JC major projects had buckets of cheap money for completing their construction and waiting for buyers. Not so true for Rahway’s Savoy, Somerville’s planned development, etc.
speaking of Asbury Park, they tore down the old steel skeleton and had plans for a building with style and substance. Crash goes the market, now they want to put up a building that looks like a Passaic housing project! Maybe we would be better off with a riverside park….