Most everyone, I believe is familiar with Klein Group's presentation. The update given at the Tower 1 meeting (held in Tower 3 lounge last week) is that there are 128 units signed in the AP development with the bulk of them in AP3, the June 15 date for discounted commission is coming up quickly, and, since the original presentation by Klein Group, the price per buildable foot in the downtown core has risen by about 3%. Klein Group now has just over 25% of the units signed to Listing Agreements. He has also received inquiries from additional qualified potential purchasers of the site who are aware that there may be an assembly in process.
However, some serious antagonism arose between owners. That was the reason for the earlier posting requesting that people in APAC remember that other owners are not enemies and that avoiding harsh words is important to maintain a warm atmosphere in the buildings, whether or not the assembly is successful.
Apparently, the APOG Steering Committee distributed a document so many (but not all) owners detailing their issues. It urged owners to refrain from signing Listing Agreement with Klein and instead join their group's demands. Some non-APOG owners that were present expressed their view that the statements in the Steering Committee's message were misleading, false and designed to panic owners.
Unfortunately, the message did not come on Mr. Wilson's letterhead so doubt remained.
Members of the APOG Steering Committee asserted that their demands must be met or they would prevent any sale transaction from going through. They further responded by insisting that everything in the message came from their attorney, Ed Wilson, and that they had been meeting weekly with him for several months.
Eugen Klein pointed out that 35 other attorney had reviewed the agreement and given responses to their owner-clients in 24-48 hours with all approving the Listing Agreement except for 3 attorneys who expressed concern about the length of the Listing Agreement. Nevertheless, the clients of those 3 attorneys signed the Listing Agreement based on their assessment of the size and complexity of the transaction and the need to work with 477 owners in the different towers.
When member of the APOG Steering Committee accused Klein Group of failing to negotiate with their attorney, Eugen pointed out that he had yet to receive anything in writing to respond to. He had heard from Mr. Wilson in one email to set up a meeting and had met with him once for about 20 minutes. He stated that clarification of matters in the contract were no problem to discuss and work through, but modification of the structure/business model of the Listing Agreement were not open to negotiation.
He urged everyone who was a member of APOG to make sure that they received their legal advice directly from Mr. Wilson so that there would be no mistake about what was being suggested on their behalf.
Without having any of the demands in writing, there is no way to assess the impact of the (to be) requested modifications to the Listing Agreement. From APAC's point of view, if the draft project modifications have been distributed, it would be helpful to see whether or not the APOG Steering Committee's demands are reasonable, whether or not they address issues for all owners, and whether or not their demands are focused on their own interests rather than on the interests of the APOG collective members.
The original Owner's panel included individuals with most of the different classes of stakeholders: resident ownership, investor ownership, commercial ownership, and multiple unit owners with participants from each tower.
If anyone has interests in the transaction that we have not yet covered or discussed, please let us know and we will do our best to clarify matters. Let's continue to work together to move this project forward. Clear analysis and straightforward speech can go a long way to rebuilding trust among the owners.
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