Resort at Copper Point is latest victim of global recession
March 4, 2009 by Bev Duthie
Filed under Business, Headlines, Homes, Local news
Photo: CVNews
The Resort at Copper Point has become the latest victim of the global recession. On Sunday, March 1, 2009 the resort sent a receivership notice to its owners reading: “We are disappointed to advise you that our refinancing efforts to enable resumption of construction of the Copper Point Resort have failed.”
For most of last year construction was delayed at the Resort, billed to be “like no other in the Columbia Valley” and “the only resort that will be able to offer a full service vacation experience to our owners.” However, the promised March 2008 opening did not happen. On September 8, 2008 the construction update said:
Construction is progressing steadily, building A is leading the way with building B and the commercial area following. The current opening date is December 2008. However, in December, construction seemed to be halted and very little activity was seen at the site.
On Friday, February 20, 2009 two Calgary residents launched a class action lawsuit due to the delays in construction. The residents are requesting their deposit money returned. A representative of the resort, Rose-Marie Regitnig, the general manager of the company, stated the extension is allowed if the company is faced with any uncontrollable events like construction problems.
People with deposits on suites at the resort were promised in a letter sent on January 28, 2009 that the project would be completed by July 31 this year. Issues, including the “business failure of the general contractor” were stated as the reasons behind the delay. This delay was too much for the two owners who started the class action lawsuit.
The development team, listed on the Resort’s web site is listed as consisting of: “five partners including Hank Swartout (former CEO of Precision Drilling Income Trust), Keith MacPhail (CEO of Bonavista Energy Trust), Grant Fagerheim (President and CEO of Kereco Energy Ltd.), Dean Forbes (Resort Developer) and Ron Mason (Entrepreneur and Visionary).”
Now that receivership documents have been filed, the owner’s will be in an even more frustrating situation and the Valley will need to watch for further fall-out from this economic climate.
Please feel free to comment below.
It is very unfortunate that events like this have to happen, but in the light of the current economic climate, it is not surprising.
We have heard a lot of things from many different sources about this and it’s difficult to find truth in most of it. We do know that these were Alberta developers that meant well and wouldn’t have begun the project if they knew it would end up in failure.
We will continue to update this story as more information becomes available.
One can’t help thinking that if this project was more genuinely useful to society that it might have succeeded. Do we really need more pricey ‘golf-ghettos’? for the wealthy? What about the small contractors who aren’t getting paid and can’t afford lawyers? There is no mention of this in your article, only talk of the wealthy investors.
We mentioned in our previous comments that there were things we had heard, the contractors not getting paid was part of that. We could not verify any of that information and hope that some of those people will come forward.
I was a worker at this site. After the initial shut down in Dec. we were assured it would start again soon. I stuck around in the area due to the promise of further experience in my trade. The date was bumped back in 2 week intervals until I heard that the site would not reopen. This is especially hard for me as I have a young family and was just looking for a nice place to live with good jobs. I really thought I had found that here. Turns out that the climate of this area soured so quickly we didn’t have time to leave. Guess it’s time to pound the pavement and mow some lawns for the summer.
Greed is what happened to the Valley, there will be no return on deposits as the lending group will get paid first and also very sorry for the trades men who will get zip.
The deposits are held by a private entity and therefore the partners could not use them for their building costs. They will be paid.
Swartout and McPhail will look after themselves. It’s the sub-trades and suppliers, that are owed over seven million dollars collectively, who will suffer. Unfortunately, contracts mean nothing anymore.
Can’t these people file mechanics liens to secure what’s owed to them instead of letting the lenders go first? If rights are asserted, don’t subcontractor claims and unpaid wages take precedence over just about everything?
I do not believe this has anything to do with the economic climate and i wish news agencies would look into the real problems rather than blaming the economy, its no wonder our economy is sinking when all you ever hear is negative reporting from the so called professional news industry. The problems on this site are numerous staring from the owners lack of concern to pay sub-contractors to the Construction Management team that did not seem to care about normal protocal like written instructions, contracts or anything that would allow them to track costs on the project. When you run a project of this size without paperwork you run the risk of it failing. As far as i know the project was 80 % sold and probaby around 80 – 90 % completed , I dont know if the owners who paid there deposits were pulling out, But i think if the bank were happy with the progress on the job they would not have pulled there funding. The economy may play a part but not enough to shut the site down.
how i understood it, one of the reasons for the major delays was that the roofing company messed up the entire roof and that added another two to three month delay as they had to remove and rebuild the whole structure. As an investor i still believed it was a sound project as the 86% sales had already covered construction costs. They would have opened with all construction costs paid at 86% sales. Maybe the two purchasers that wanted their money back were more desperate for cash than the rest of us and started this domino effect. I am happy leaving my deposit there. I believe in the valley and it’s surrounds. The project is nearly finished. Rarely does a project like this ever finish on time except China.
I understand Hank is now building a 10 million dollar home in Aspen Estates in calgary, i have no direct connection to the project in Inveremere.
I know what its like to get screwed by others, Hank truely does know better, i hope for his sake as well as the Calgary business community he does the right thing and work for a solution to this