Major Condo Projects Slowing Down


After five years of huge lavish condominium projects from Philadelphia to Tampa Bay Florida, a bit of a roadblock in development has been hit. Due to problems in financing, and the inability to market endless supplies of condos, some over $2-million, many developers and common citizens are asking to take stock of the situation.
Major condominium projects in Philadelphia have been put on hold recently. A 30-story condominium slated for the Philadelphia, Penna. Waterfront, the Marina View Towers, is not going to be started, at least immediately. The project had been expected to cost $119 million, involving 197 units, with prices up to $2 million per apartment.
Other big condo projects, such as the 33-story Ten Rittenhouse Square and a 31-story tower nearby are still scheduled to go ahead. Some builders expect the market to maintain speed and even recover, since they doubt that interest rates are going up. Other problems are that concrete and drywall costs are going up, and there have been huge increases in the price of copper wiring.
Also, in Philadelphia’s Old City neighborhood, a $40-million condominium project was canceled. This project also had units ranging from $400,000 studio apartments, to 3-bedroom penthouse apartments at over $2-million. Projects continuing to be built, include Donald Trump’s 45-story tower on the waterfront, Trump Tower Philadelphia.
Condo projects have also been canceled in South Florida, including in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, and in Palm Beach County. These include 1390 Brickall Bay, and ICE in Miami, Las Olas in Ft. Lauderdale, and Promenade in Palm Beach.
Add to that the Mangrove Cay project in St. Petersburg Florida, on Tampa Bay. A high-rise skeleton has been abandoned, after disturbing the mangrove swamps and other precious denizens of the environment.
On the Tampa side of the bay, there is the Trump Tower, where a lot of dirt has been pushed around but nothing is built, no bank seems to want to invest in it. Another big project near a former ship repair plant was started but never built. The area, projected in computer drawings as a waterside paradise, is a not cleaned up former industrial zone, which disappeared in the clouds of globalization.
This doesn’t mean that condominiums are bad, and are not often very beautiful. There is however, a need to have integrated development of industrial zones, parks, transportation, housing, low income housing and shopping in towns. Too often projects are built on the “gated communities” and “defensible space” model, where there is little outside small zones of development.
In other areas, builders are still anxious to build condominiums, but encounter opposition from local officials. There seems to be an underlying nervousness about gentrifying whole areas of downtowns, where enclosed space, gated communities and huge hi-rises dominate areas otherwise suffering from urban decay.
In St. Petersburg, Florida, a five-story luxury condo complex has been proposed, known as Dunedin Marina View complex. This would be constructed after several smaller buildings were demolished. City officials feared that the 60-foot tall complex would not fit in with the surrounding park, and buildings in the area. City officials complained that the development looked boxy and overwhelming, over the small shops and restaurants of downtown St. Petersburg.
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