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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121028811193679127.html?mod=todays_us_nonsub_marketplaceReal-Estate Drop Has a Green Lining
As Home and Resort Development Cools,
Conservationists Snap Up More Land
By JIM CARLTON
May 9, 2008; Page B1
There's a green lining to the real-estate cloud: Developers are dropping plans to build on some choice pieces of land and instead are selling it for such uses as public parks and nature preserves.
One of the big beneficiaries is Trust for Public Land, a San Francisco nonprofit group that specializes in buying land for conservation. The Trust often struggled during property-boom years to find sellers among land owners near urban centers. Now, U.S. property owners from Massachusetts to Hawaii are flocking to it.
One of the latest examples involves a five-mile stretch of Hawaiian beach. Last summer, a unit of Los Angeles-based Oaktree Capital Management LP was negotiating with a hotel chain to build a mega-resort development along Oahu's fabled North Shore. Its plan for as many as five new hotels with up to 3,500 rooms and condominium units had been one of the most intensely opposed in Hawaii in years.
But a deal to develop the 858-acre property, which includes the well-known Turtle Bay Resort, languished. Last June, the company missed a $687,500 payment on a $283 million loan it obtained in 2005 from a group of lenders headed by a unit of Credit Suisse Group, according to court records. Credit Suisse in December filed suit in Hawaii Circuit Court, seeking foreclosure on the property for that and other alleged breaches.
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