A "LANDMARK" in So Many Ways...
(this just couldn't wait until after Christmas...sorry.)
Around the end of October I got a call from a longtime friend, exasperation in the voice I knew well. We'd not spoken in many months (par for our course) and all I knew was that my friend had moved into an excellent mid-century highrise building overlooking the downtown of a fair city in the west, Phoenix.
In the last several years as the stock market has remained stagnant and investors scoured the land for underpriced real estate to bolster their sagging portfolios, Phoenix has become the best-known undervalued find in the country. Hence all of Phoenix's real-estate--undervalued or not--has been descended upon by the ravenous investor class turning, flipping and renovating property after property, essentially terraforming the otherwise dusty laid-back town into a California boomtown rival just as thick with smog and money as Silicone Valley or LA. Nice if you are already rich, sucky if you were just hoping to live out your days in relative warmth and anonymity, but I digress...
The seventeen-story LANDMARK (eighteen if you count the sub-floor parking level), has sat on the corner of Central and Camelback for a very long time and needing--like all of Phoenix for decades--a bodylift. In 2004 after receiving only a facelift it was reintroduced to the public as "a luxury high rise living experience." It was on that basis that my friend, in mid-2005, became a resident.
That friend, whose name shall remain "Anon", had a story to tell. Tuning in to the anxiety of this voice on the phone I settled down to listen--and listen --for several hours--about the metamorphosis of a charming 17-story (eighteen if you count the sub-floor parking level) highrise apartment into a Sci-Fi horror condo conversion replete with (or without--as the qualifier suits the issue) running water, fire-alarms, jammed elevators (including one from which my friend had to crawl out mid-floor), lead and asbestos-filled clouds, twenty-four hour construction, air-conditioning that failed on 113-degree days, management replaced with overtly menacing construction foremen and crews, personal bodily threats (including slashed tires and keyed vehicles), run-arounds from city inspectors whose reports seemed to vanish (and that was just the one about urine and feces in the hallways), and daily visits from police responding to resident complaints of all of the above...and did I mention that this seems to be a Carlyle holding?
Let me repeat--Carlyle, or Carlisle--as in the Bush-owned Carlyle Group--holding. The documents are on file as "Carlisle/Landmark on Central LP," at the city Real Estate commission's office. Carlisle's address is listed as Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC.
Huh...imagine that.
What we want to know, dear reader, is how does a corporation as vast and supposedly professional as this allow such shoddy, dangerous and incredibly poor practice go about in an INHABITED 17-STORY (eighteen if you count...oh, never mind) METROPOLITAN CITY BUILDING?
Anyone think of fire? What do you think the lawsuit for a high-rise 5-alarm fire in Phoenix's Central Corridor would have cost? In lives? In losses? In PUBLICITY?
Anybody? Anybody?
We'll keep you posted...
(UPDATE 12-19-05) The city has officially declared that new buyers -- paying up to $300K per unit -- can't move in because the LANDMARK presents "...serious life safety issues..." (quote). Those buyers were promised November 1 move-ins. LANDMARK is still marketing like mad and not telling potential buyers the truth...
(UPDATE 12-21-05) From my source, Anon--
Around the end of October I got a call from a longtime friend, exasperation in the voice I knew well. We'd not spoken in many months (par for our course) and all I knew was that my friend had moved into an excellent mid-century highrise building overlooking the downtown of a fair city in the west, Phoenix.
In the last several years as the stock market has remained stagnant and investors scoured the land for underpriced real estate to bolster their sagging portfolios, Phoenix has become the best-known undervalued find in the country. Hence all of Phoenix's real-estate--undervalued or not--has been descended upon by the ravenous investor class turning, flipping and renovating property after property, essentially terraforming the otherwise dusty laid-back town into a California boomtown rival just as thick with smog and money as Silicone Valley or LA. Nice if you are already rich, sucky if you were just hoping to live out your days in relative warmth and anonymity, but I digress...
The seventeen-story LANDMARK (eighteen if you count the sub-floor parking level), has sat on the corner of Central and Camelback for a very long time and needing--like all of Phoenix for decades--a bodylift. In 2004 after receiving only a facelift it was reintroduced to the public as "a luxury high rise living experience." It was on that basis that my friend, in mid-2005, became a resident.
That friend, whose name shall remain "Anon", had a story to tell. Tuning in to the anxiety of this voice on the phone I settled down to listen--and listen --for several hours--about the metamorphosis of a charming 17-story (eighteen if you count the sub-floor parking level) highrise apartment into a Sci-Fi horror condo conversion replete with (or without--as the qualifier suits the issue) running water, fire-alarms, jammed elevators (including one from which my friend had to crawl out mid-floor), lead and asbestos-filled clouds, twenty-four hour construction, air-conditioning that failed on 113-degree days, management replaced with overtly menacing construction foremen and crews, personal bodily threats (including slashed tires and keyed vehicles), run-arounds from city inspectors whose reports seemed to vanish (and that was just the one about urine and feces in the hallways), and daily visits from police responding to resident complaints of all of the above...and did I mention that this seems to be a Carlyle holding?
Let me repeat--Carlyle, or Carlisle--as in the Bush-owned Carlyle Group--holding. The documents are on file as "Carlisle/Landmark on Central LP," at the city Real Estate commission's office. Carlisle's address is listed as Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC.
Huh...imagine that.
What we want to know, dear reader, is how does a corporation as vast and supposedly professional as this allow such shoddy, dangerous and incredibly poor practice go about in an INHABITED 17-STORY (eighteen if you count...oh, never mind) METROPOLITAN CITY BUILDING?
Anyone think of fire? What do you think the lawsuit for a high-rise 5-alarm fire in Phoenix's Central Corridor would have cost? In lives? In losses? In PUBLICITY?
Anybody? Anybody?
We'll keep you posted...
(UPDATE 12-19-05) The city has officially declared that new buyers -- paying up to $300K per unit -- can't move in because the LANDMARK presents "...serious life safety issues..." (quote). Those buyers were promised November 1 move-ins. LANDMARK is still marketing like mad and not telling potential buyers the truth...
(UPDATE 12-21-05) From my source, Anon--
"Re: the comment posted about the "finished floor", that is the one (name deleted) lives on. There's been no heat or A/C for weeks. The heat in the hallway on that floor is set on 90 degrees. There are periodic floods on the floor, still.
In the last days, Landmark has been ordered to do ALL wiring in the building over. Not just the new stuff, NONE of it is up to standard. Everything they have done to "improve" to date -- new air compressors, blowers in each apt., must be REDONE. This means ripping out walls again, etc. Plus, the county is all over them for not following asbestos procedures now.
Buyer beware. But, the buyers are just in it for greed; 90% of them plan NOT to live in the mess themselves, but to sublet to unsuspecting renters. So some of these "buyer beware" idiots just might find themselves on the other end of the situation some day.
People tend not to "get" this story unless they know me (and therefore know I'm credible), or think it is just an exaggeration. They'd never believe how bad it really was."
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