The Windsor Hotel Again Arrives on the Discussion Front Burner

Your Weber County Forum blogmeister indulges in a little cathartic nit-picking

Ace Reporter Schwebke again brings up the subject of the Windsor Hotel this morning, with another Std-Ex Business Section story discussing the present dilemma. This morning's story however actually adds little to what has been earlier reported, which is essentially this:

1) Ogden Properties, the developer, still fails and refuses to perform its contractual obligations and complete the project according to the terms agreed in the original Development and Grant Agreements;
2) Now that the structure has been stripped to the brick and effectively gutted, the 25th Street Historic District is stuck with a commercially unusable building smack dab in the center of the district;
3) The developer has proposed demolishing the building as a "plan B" option;
4) Ready, willing and able "backup" buyers aren't exactly flying out of the woodwork.

Without going into a tedious rehash of the series of blunders that led to the current city/developer stalemate, we'll nevertheless tangentially nit-pick a little bit. First we'll take a couple of potshots at the accuracy of Mr. Schwebke's reporting:

1) Once again, Mr. Schwebke continues to mischaracterise the circumstances which led to the council's rejection of Boss Godfrey's proposed Historic 25th Street District zoning ordinance. Here are Schwebke's words from this morning's Std-Ex story:

Ogden Properties has abandoned its plans to renovate the hotel because the city council has refused to amend a height restriction ordinance to enable the addition of a fourth-floor penthouse.

As everyone who has even been casually following this story knows, the council's chief objection to the proposed ordinance amendment was its overbreadth. Rather than drafting a narrow ordinance aimed at creating a zoning variance affecting the single Windsor Hotel project only, Godfrey instead overreached, and stubbornly sought an increase in building height limits which would have affected the entire Historic 25th Street Historic District. Hopefully Mr. Schwebke will write this down so he doesn't repeat this aggravating mistake.

2) Again referring to Mr. Schwebke's morning text, we find this technical inaccuracy:

The company [Ogden Properties] has asked the city, which provided $288,000 in incentives last year to assist with renovation costs, to buy the hotel back.

If Ogden City were to buy the property from Ogden Properties, it wouldn't actually be"buying it back." According to our recollection, Ogden Properties and the original owner, Ruben Villalobos, were the buyers and sellers in the sale transaction; and Ogden City wasn't a party to that transaction at all. Neither Ogden City nor the Ogden RDA ever held title to the property either, so far as we know. If Ogden City were to be dumb enough to buy this property, it would be merely taking it off Ogden Properties' hands; that's all.

3) Lastly we'll snarkily comment that the current predicament provides even more evidence supporting the conservative proposition that city governments, especially those governed by the likes of Boss Godfrey, shouldn't meddle in what ought to be entirely private real estate transactions. For that we'll refer back to one of of our earlier WCF articles, published around the time of the Windsor sale transaction, from which we extract this text:

Notably, the new owners are reportedly a little foggy about the prospective use of their newly-acquired downtown property. They'll hopefully know more, once they've consulted with their architect and engineers.
Oddly, they're opting to turn a rent-generating property into a vacant one. That's their prerogative as property owners though, we guess.
Still we wonder if it might not have made more economic sense for these young and eager new property owners to have formulated their plans BEFORE they kicked out their paying tenants. [...]
As for the outgoing former property owner Villalobos, we suppose it was easier to just cut and run, with Boss Godfrey and his henchmen breathing down his neck.

As our readers will recall, the Windsor's previous owner, Mr. Vallalobos, already had his own plans for refurbishment of his Windsor Hotel property; but his 6-month projected timeframe wasn't good enough for Boss Godfrey. Instead of waiting for Villalobos to put together his own plans and financing for a Windsor remodeling, Godfrey issued an ultimatum, and forced Villalobos out:

Ruben Villalobos, the previous owner of the hotel, said the sale closed June 4, but declined to share the purchase price. According to Weber County property records, the hotel and the 0.12 acres it sits on are valued at $286,319.
Villalobos said he wanted to convert the building into an upscale dwelling when he originally bought it in 2004, but it wasn’t feasible at that time because there were many unsold residential units at the Union Square development on the other side of the street.
The Union Square units are all sold now, he said, and property values in the area have gone up. He said he is disappointed he couldn’t fix it himself.
“The city gave me an ultimatum, either sell it or clean it up,” Villalobos said. “I wanted to renovate it myself, but I guess the city wanted to get it done right away.”
He said he was about six months away from securing the necessary funding to clean and fix up the building.
“My plans were to keep it historical and make a bed & breakfast-type place,” Villalobos said.

Using our 20/20 hindsight, we can't but help speculate how much better Ogden City's situation would have been at this point, if Boss Godfrey had just kept his grubby mitts off the Windsor Hotel.

Nice work, Boss Godfrey! It's another fine mess you've gotten us into.

Comments, anyone?