How much Tax Revenue is the city losing out on the slow construction of the office building...

Didn't College Station give Don "MILLIONS" for infrastructure improvements for that site...

By cancelling the Hotel/Conference Center and now that the office building is still several months away...

Did Don Adams "hoodwink" College Station...

http://www.theeagle.com/stories/020506/local_20060205013.php




[This message has been edited by I Believe (edited 2/5/2006 10:37p).]

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A faulty foundation also has been rumored, but Simms said there is no evidence of such a problem. City workers have inspected and signed off on the foundation, he said.

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Is the Eagle getting its information from Texags?!?

They cancelled the hotel/conference center that was going to be built where Albertson's is across from campus?

No... this was an old project where the conference center/hotel was going to be built off Copperfield and University Dr. by Don Adam's building.

Yea, and the Don Adam hotel/convention/art center fiasco came after a failed attempt to put a hotel/convention center in the wolf pen creek corridor.

The city's 0 for 2 so far...

I'm waiting to see how the northgate location is going to implode. Three strikes and your out should apply to more than baseball...

As of now the tax rolls have Adam`s building and land at $4.94 million. The information is "live" and subject to change.

At this tax value the building should generate approximately $130-140K in tax revenue annually...that's a total figure for all taxing entities.

C of CS would receive around $25K of that I think....this is off the top of my head.

Lance Simms with the city building department says total costs are approximately... what....$26MM? In fairness, it is difficult to tax full cost since the market value for an unfinished building like that would be a fraction of the cost. At the same time, should the tax roll value be higher or not? I don't know.

All the above presented without knowledge of TIF district provisions, if any.

The building was intended to be the headquarters for his FAB empire. FAB was then bought out by CitiBank, the need for a FAB headquarters went way, and I find it strangely coincidental that said building now all of a sudden has "issues" that have put a skidding halt to its completion. Very coincidental.

I've heard yarns about sloping floors, granite that Mr Adam didn't like, etc., but....gimme a break. Granite does not take that long to quarry and ship, and "all" floors slope to some degree.

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Is the Eagle getting its information from Texags?!?

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Wouldnt be the first time

Should we be expecting a fire soon?

LOL at AGnCS.

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The building was intended to be the headquarters for his FAB empire. FAB was then bought out by CitiBank, the need for a FAB headquarters went way, and I find it strangely coincidental that said building now all of a sudden has "issues" that have put a skidding halt to its completion. Very coincidental.

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Correct me if im wrong, but it dosent sound like there is anything illegal about this.

If you'll take the time to re-read my posts and those of others, I don't think anybody said this was illegal. No...Mr Adam is much too smart for that. Unethical, perhaps, but not illegal. Blight on the cityscape? Most definetly.

I don;'t know Don Adam, but I'll bet you that he doesn't want a blight on the skyline of College Station with his name on it. I expect he'll finish his building.

Think back to English IV in high school. The poem "Ozymandes" by Percy Shelley (1792-1822).

It tells of a traveler who finds "two vast and trunkless legs of stone" in a barren desert. On the pedestal where what little is left of the statue are written these words:

"My name is Ozymandis, king of kings; look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair."

And surrounding this is nothing but "lone and level sands" as far as the eye can see.

Imagine a would-have-been office tower sitting and decaying in a field for generation after generation. And best yet it being build bass-ackwards in that the top floors are build first. Instant urban legend.

Of course, this is college station. Somehow the white men in suits will find a way for us poor dumb taxpayers to bail this one out.

The skeleton of the Woodbine Bldg stood for a lot of years before TAMUS finally bought it and finished it.

The granite is being imported and can take months to be quarried and shipped to another location to be finished and more months still to be shipped to B/CS and installed on the building. In the construction business it is a general rule to finish from the top down so that you work your way out of a clean space. With the top closed in there will not be any damage to the interior of the lower floors as they are not finished. You can bet Mr. Adams sale of FAB to CitiBank included some type of lease on the space he intended to use for FAB. This being the case he does not need to be in any hurry to finish the building.

The building where TAMU system HQ is located (behind the Hilton) set unfinished for years until TAMUS bought it and finished out the skeleton.

Maybe they could sell this unfinished monster to the University-I hear t.u. is building a mega-hotel and conference center in the middle of Austin at the same time TAMU is wanting to get out of the hotel business.

Texans seem to be very fond of building office buildings with no tenants and shopping centers with no stores.

Is this true in other states?

How about other countries?

Just FYI - I was out at Miramont earlier and the subject of the office building came up.

We were told by the head guy out there that all of the rumors were just that. The fact is that the marble/granite from the inside was harvested in South America, shipped to Europe to be cut, and shipped back to the US to be used on the building.

Things were rolling along fine for a while, but the vein of stone they were quarrying ran out before they had enough to finish the project. Adam was approached with a similar color, but in his eyes it didn't match perfectly. His answer was to remove all of the "old" stone and replace it with this new batch so that everything would match and flow perfectly. From what we were told, this pushed the project back nearly a year. After touring Miramont and seeing his vision and eye for detail, this doesn't surprise me one bit.

I'm guessing Adam Corp. is privately held, otherwise this fanatical eye for detail would have resulted in a coup long ago...

[This message has been edited by Ag2k1 (edited 2/9/2006 3:04p).]

How many years did it take to complete his mansion? Don Adam doesn't get in a hurry to build stuff (although Miramont has progressed nicely)

Let's face it...Adams "hosed" them. Amazed they couldn't see that coming.

Like him or not, he is an astute business man. He probably left citibank high and dry like he did to College Station.

I mean, who wouldn't jump on the chance to work out a deal where the city agreed to pay for all the streets, water trunk line and sewer lines to my building and surrounding development - especially if there's a clause in the development agreement that gets me out of the agreement once the budget reaches a set amount and gets out of hand.

All he had to do is sit back and watch the project escalade in cost as they added more and more to that hotel/convention/arts center complex.

He probably knew that if Romei was involved it was going to be over budget in no time.