A large, empty plot of cleaned-up riverfront property near I-75 could soon be in the hands of a self-described "visionary developer."
"A visionary developer by nature has to look beyond the facts as they stand right now," said Michael Drew Shaw, a former local radio and television broadcaster. "Not that you can ignore the facts, but you can't listen to the economics of the day and move anything forward."
Mr. Shaw, 62, is the momentum behind Riverview Toledo LLC. He is hoping to overcome earlier setbacks on a pair of high-profile projects to put an eye-catching commercial and residential project on 37.1 acres near Toledo's border with Rossford.
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080616/NEWS16/897809...
BULLSHIT ALERT!
The housing bubble is over, chum. The Second Act in the housing crash isn't even happening yet -- the Alt-A mortgage crashes from 2009 to 2011. And the incredible weaknesses in our commercial loans are going to come to light.
I warn Toledoans now that this guy Shaw is only too likely to be fishing after financing from the city. The city itself is on the hook for TENS OF MILLIONS of dollars of losses for covering bonds based up downtown housing projects that (naturally) didn't succeed.
Other cities are finding themselves loaded up with overbuilt condo developments. There's no need for Toledo to load up similarly.
The Blockade article has a good one:
«Years ago, this property at 1968 Miami Street was used for waste ponds by Libbey-Owens-Ford Co. as part of its glass manufacturing operations.
Now the former brownfield site has finished undergoing environmental remediation, and it has been capped with no less than 2 1/2-feet of dirt through a $3 million Clean Ohio Fund grant administered by the city of Toledo.»
2.5ft of dirt can be eroded off in patches in 10 years. Giving these sites caps of dirt is a howl. People who buy into these brownfields are only looking for toxic exposure down the road. But what the hey, right? You can just flip the condo on some other fool by then.