$325K FOR A 50-ACRE TEXAS CITY PARK? “BP is staring at a $650,000 penalty for unauthorized land disposal of hazardous waste. . . . The penalty is not yet final but will probably come before the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in October, an agency spokeswoman said. Half of the proposed $650,000 fine requires BP to buy a minimum of 50 acres of contiguous property in and around Texas City and make it suitable for park land. The company will be required to preserve the entire property in perpetuity as a park and nature preserve.” [Hair Balls]
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What’s in the Swamplot inbox? More fun news and comments about Royce Builders and mortgage-y sidekick Hammersmith Financial:
According to a source all sales was finally let go yesterday. . . . Subdivisions have been completely stone cold. In addition, Hammersmith finished up last Friday. Between both, lots of shredding going on. The remainder of Royce is in the Hammersmith offices as well. Also, many who may be interested, [Royce Chief Operating Officer James] Hunter’s last day was a week ago Friday.
For any buyers out there who feel the have been defrauded by Royce, all they need to do is contact the Consumer Fraud Division at 713-755-5836. This is the DA’s office and there is the possibility that criminal charges may be filed if Royce knowingly defrauded consumers, but they MUST make the call.
A little bit more on the shredding:
BAYTOWN MOSQUITO REPORT, IN LANDINGS PER MINUTE “. . . while Baytonians might feel like the mosquitoes are out in droves, Director of the Baytown Health Department, Mike Lester, said what we’re really seeing is a return to ‘normal.’ ‘For the last couple of years we’ve been really fortunate that the weather has been good to us,’ he said. ‘Even though people might think it’s bad right now, the pest rate is between five and 20 landings per minute, which is average for this time of year.’ Lester explained that there are generally three peak ‘hatch-outs’ during the 11-month Gulf Coast mosquito season: May, August and November. During those months, mosquitoes hatch and mature, infesting Baytonian air for a few weeks before they give way to the next generation of larvae.” Why isn’t this kind of report a regular feature? [Baytown Sun]
ROYCE BUILDERS WATCH “They have been moving the remaining 11 [employees] down to the first floor. . . . They told them it has to be done this week. Also, they were seen moving stuff out of the building and loading box trucks. Only two remaining project managers and one remaining sales counselor have been spotted.” [Swamplot Inbox; previously]
GRAVE CONCERNS FOR REGENT SQUARE The College Memorial Park Cemetery once stretched across the entire block bounded by Dunlavy, W. Clay, Gross, and W. Dallas. Portions of the Allen House Apartments were built on former cemetery land that was sold in the 1960s. So what will the developers of Regent Square do? “In a statement, the company vice president said his group has created a site excavation action plan which includes continual archeological monitoring. So far, there is no documentation showing that the graves exist, but all parties agree that remains need to be preserved. The biggest goal is to restore the entire cemetery to what it use to be.” [11 News]
What caused last week’s big implosion over at Royce Builders? And what’s happening now? A Swamplot informant tries to clue us in with this rich, extended view of the company’s problems:
Fact #1: Lavish spending by all of the Speers. At any given time one of two Bentley’s, Ferrari, Escalade or sports cars belonging to the family would be parked at the office. Shawn Speer and his wife Shonna were known for bragging about their lavish spending. Certainly, if you’re making money spend it, but when times are tight they were the only ones still spending money like water.
Fact #2: Example: Shonna told another employee about $30,000 shopping spree to New York and only a purse and few other items were on that steep tab.
Fact #3: As employees were crying and leaving Shonna and her best friend and manager Nicki K. were talking about moving forward with their new clothing line. This conversation opened up speculation that monies had been moved to accounts in Nikki’s name for this purpose.
Oh yes . . . there’s more!
OFF-MAP JOGGING IN GLEANNLOCH FARMS Another lost jogger, rescued by iPhone. But what happens when Google Maps fail? “Every time I am in Houston I am filled with renewed trepidation over the in-laws neighborhood. It’s lovely, of course, but it’s also a Houston suburbs’ subdivision. Despite having visited numerous times over the course of the past three and a half years, I am remarkably unable to maintain any sense of cardinal directions or relative location once we enter the sprawling land of pale-red-and-cream houses in well-manicured cul-de-sacs with nice names.”
Another report on that Royce Builders sales meeting earlier this week:
I was in attendance at the infamous “Forget the Rumors and sell, sell, sell! [meeting.] We all thought the meeting was called to thank a dedicated and hard working group of sales people. Never once did the Speers humble themselves to utter a thank you for any contributions. We were asked to continue to sell the inventory, but they could not tell us where we would close the home nor how we would get paid. They had Countrywide Sr. Loan Officer Shawna Oakley present because we were told that all the sales on the books at been transferred to her. This did not make a bit of sense because the homes still have liens. We were told the bank was in control out of one side of the mouth and then told that they were trying to find another Title Co. It is no secret that Stewart Title out on Bay Area Blvd. is up to their ears in legals.
We all felt that the Speers should have just told everyone goodbye. The building is basically empty, there are 2 construction workers, 1 accounting person, 1 hr per son and the poor girl answering all the dirty calls and giving callers the runaround. Hats off to Fox’s Mr. Carey for trying . . . to report the truth about Royce Homes.
How did that sales meeting go this morning at beleaguered Royce Builders? Just peachy, reports a reader:
John Speer was not in attendance, but Shawn and [Shonna Speer] were there. They will be running things. There are no project managers, only two construction managers, no VP of Sales, nothing. Corporate is down to 20 employees total. The sales staff was told not to listen to all the negative rumors, and most of the informaiton is all heresay and rumor. They were told they could sell from their assigned community and any other out there. Shawn assured them they would do their best to get the money form the banks when a home closed to pay the salesperson. (The HUD never shows commission due a salesperson, so I cannot imagine how they will get the salespeople paid.) He also addressed the question of Stewart [Title] not closing several deals in the past weeks due t new liens. Shawn again said that was rumor. He told them that was the case in only one closing, and it was for a $25.00 landscaper bill. That bill was also placed on the wrong home. (Yeah right!)
The salesperson I spoke with is currently looking for another job, as are everyone else I have either talked to or gotten word from. Why they would think that anoyone would give Royce a contract, and God forbid ernest money, is beyond me.
Meanwhile, over at the Houston Association of Realtors:
HAR discussed the Royce situation in their board meeting yesterday and decided to e-mail their Realtors. They basically informed the Realtors of the situation so they would not get caught in the middle of a huge problem.
- Royce Builders Death Spiral: Juicy Details! [Swamplot]
- We Have Layoffs: Heads Roll at Royce Builders [Swamplot]
- The Rumors Circling Around Royce Builders [Swamplot]
Photo of Royce Builders offices at 7850 N. Sam Houston Pkwy. West: Stewart Title
Some brand-new houses sold by Lennar Homes will be very convenient to the new Grand Parkway!
Robert A. Hudson, a Spring developer who partnered with Lennar on the project, said builders knew the highway might come through the subdivision.
“We are not up there on a daily basis to make sure that the builders make it clear to everybody else,” he said.
Plans for the Grand Parkway have been on the books for 25 years, but only 28 of its proposed 185 miles have been built. Environmental and neighborhood groups have opposed the project.
It would include 11 segments traversing seven counties. The 12.1-mile Segment F2 would cut directly through the Lakes of Avalon Village, a subdivision with several hundred homes located on FM 2920 just west of Kuykendahl Road.
About 60 homes are in the right-of-way and would have to be demolished to make way for the parkway once construction began, [executive director of the Grand Parkway Association David] Gornet said.
Talk about offering transportation options! But it’s not just Lennar . . . J. Patrick Homes also is selling models in the Lakes of Avalon Village subdivision.
But hurry! The subdivision is in “close out”!
After the jump: pics of a Lennar Homes model for sale in this quaint little village in Spring!
Royce Builders now has “about 60″ employees — down from 220 earlier this year, reports the Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff, who managed to get company president John Speer on the phone:
Speer said Royce is working with its lenders to complete homes that already have been started. It is also negotiating with vendors who have liens against the company.
Royce has between 60 and 80 homes that are under construction and will be completed, Speer said. Another 70 or 80 that have been contracted but not yet started are unlikely to be built.
Meanwhile, a tipster tells us that Royce
fired ALL of the project managers and construciton managers yesterday. The corporate phones are not being answered. Hammersmith mortgage, their in-house lender, was closed for good yesterday. The Stewart Title office branch in their corporate office was also closed yesterday.
. . . and adds this colorful story:
One of the PM’s (project managers) was holding a meeting yesterday with his staff of sales people and construction. This was in one of the neighborhoods he manages. He was telling the staff NOT to listen to the rumors and keep slling as usual. He got a phone call on his company cell and left the meeting for several minutes. When he returned, he informed the staff he had been fired and they are on their own.
More Royce rubbernecking . . . after the jump!
Sharp-witted observers, start your metaphors! Residents of the Park Memorial condos — who’ve been racing to sell their condo complex before any of the units start dropping into the parking garage that sits beneath them — have a new problem. City officials, terrified of a not-merely-figurative condo-market collapse, slapped bright orange notices on all the doors of the Memorial Dr. complex yesterday, notifying all 108 residents that they will need to permanently vacate their homes by September 15th.
The order came after a city inspector and an independent inspector both confirmed that the concrete parking garage structure underneath some of the condo units is in immediate danger of collapse. In late July, the city had warned residents that the garage “may experience catastrophic failure at any time.â€
After the jump, a couple more photos of the condo campus . . . from the listing for a recent sale.
It sure is hard to keep up with all the rumors being floated about Houston-based Royce Builders over at the Implode-Explode forums. Has Royce Homes declared bankruptcy? Have recent Royce homebuyers in SouthFork been having problems with undiscovered liens? Were company parties truly that wild? Are layoffs imminent? Is Royce about to move its offices to a more . . . uh, residential setting?
An abortive news report by Fox 26 Reporter Isiah Carey, scheduled to air last Friday, doesn’t appear to have cleared up any of the questions. The Fox 26 news site reported that Carey was threatened with arrest by a Royce employee — identified by some posters on the Implode-Explode forums as VP Shawn Speer, son of company president John Speer. It’s likely the threats didn’t end there, however: the story has since mysteriously disappeared from the station’s website.
As one poster on the forum angrily suggests, it’s all probably just a big misunderstanding:
Just like the analogy of a run on a bank, things like this can become a self-fulfilling prophecy when too many people buy into it and effectively give up – blowing off walks or closings, and otherwise just flat not doing their job. Did you not get paid today? If these things I have read posted are truly your beliefs, at least resign and stop being paid for nothing…
- Royce Homes – Houston-based home builder [The Home Builder Implode-o-Meter, via Swamplot Inbox]
- Royce Builders in Trouble? [Implode-Explode Forums]
- Is Royce Builders Suffering Financially? [MyFox Houston]
Photo of SouthFork Information Center: Royce Homes
A tipster has provided Swamplot with the actual address of the Houston office of Obra Homes, a homebuilder that’s been making itself rather scarce these days:
They are located at 9186 Katy Freeway on the 2nd floor of the Flagstone Lending Group building. As soon as you walk up the stairs, the door in front of you is their office.
Is this office location really that much of a secret? The street address, at least, is mentioned on at least one easily Googled website.
On the other hand, the huge Obra Homes showroom on 290 has closed forever, and the homebuilder appears to have vanished from the the office building on 290 that bears its name. An attorney representing the company told Fox 26 reporter Randy Wallace late last month that Obra has a phone number, but no location.
You can’t even get into the company’s website without a password. But . . . thanks to the Internet Wayback Machine, the “Our Commitment” statement proudly displayed on the Obra Homes site as recently as last year is still available:
CANDLEWOOD GLEN: RENO OR DEMO? Near Northwest residents ask City Council for help with the squalid Candlewood Glen and Candlelight Trails complexes. “A sign posted at the entrance to the complex would suggest there were plans to reopen the buildings under a new name. They would be called Palm Terrace, and phase one was scheduled for construction during the summer of 2008. But it’s now August, and there is no sign of construction.” [11 News, previously in Swamplot]