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High-End Real Estate Woes

Utah's posh Promontory Club is in bankruptcy.

On Monday the three entities that make up the Promontory Club agreed to be debtors in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, three days after a number of the club's creditors filed an "involuntary petition" to force them to.

Francis Najafi, CEO of Promontory developer Pivotal Group, said in a statement: "This decision ... to file a bankruptcy action was in contravention of pleas for continued negotiation. However, now that we are in the involuntary bankruptcy venue against our wishes, we will make every effort to utilize the venue to achieve our goal of protection of the interests of (Promontory) members, employees and the community." [more]

update

Creditors for the Promontory Club near Park City, Utah, are trying to force the upscale, gated golf community into bankruptcy.

An "involuntary petition" was filed in bankruptcy court Friday, about two weeks after a Utah judge said the club would likely seek bankruptcy protection if it couldn't find funding to solve its financial woes.

The club, suffering from stagnant home sales, owes international banker Credit Suisse about $280 million, but it was a handful of other banks with smaller claims that filed the paperwork Friday. [more]

DON'T TAKE ADVANTAGE OF LEGAL LOOPHOLE

Here's something you probably never heard a western rancher say: "Government is a wonderful thing."

But that might be precisely what they're saying down in the coffee shops and saloons in Idaho and Wyoming because they could be thinking the federal government has accidentally given them the opportunity to shoot as many wolves as they can for the next 30 days with no consequences.

To this, I say: Don't even think about it. [more]

WHY SOME AREN'T WORTH REPEATING

This is another of what's becoming a long series of posts highlighting insightful comments by the readers of NewWest.Net. This time, though, before reading them, here's a comment of my own, a comment on comments.

I welcome any comment, even those critical of me or NewWest.Net, but some comments are definitely more effective than others.

To read them all, click on the Comments Worth Repeating Chronology [more]

second amendment

This came in just as I was posting the last story. I asked N.W. Clayton, communications director of Utah's gun rights group Gun Owners of Utah (GoUtah!) to comment on the recent Supreme Court hearings concerning the Heller Case in Washington, D.C. GoUtah! bills itself as "Utah’s Uncompromising, Independent Gun Rights Network." It's motto is, "No Compromise! No Retreat! No Surrender! Not Now! Not Ever!" Obviously a group which takes the "shall not be infringed" end of the Second Amendment seriously. Seeing as I believe the Second Amendment guarantees me the right--excuse me, spells out my obligation--to purchase and keep antitank weapons (as if I had that kind of money), I find myself in agreement with GoUtah! As far as their statement goes, I got much more than I bargained for. Here it is in its entirety:

In chapter 11 of Abbey's Road [1979, Penguin Books, New York], Edward Abbey writes: "The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy. If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military. The hired servants of our rulers. Only the government - and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws." [more]

credit suisse sues

Promontory, the gated golf community in Park City, Utah, may soon file for bankruptcy if it can't broker a deal to sell to its primary lender Credit Suisse or find additional financing.

The development, owned by Pivotal Group out of Phoenix, is suffering from stagnant home sales (they run upwards of $5 million) and announced in a January press release that it had reached an agreement in principle on the sale of the Promontory operating and development companies to Credit Suisse.

But a deal was never finalized, and Credit Suisse has sued the entities that make up Promontory claiming the club has not fulfilled obligations to the lender. [more]

HERE, WE CAN REALLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE

During a bout of insomnia last night, I watched CNBC to see if any of the talking financial heads thought my retirement funds might stop disappearing, and there it was. Perhaps the biggest environmental, wildlife habitat and water quality problem we don't like to discuss. Yes, it's touchy, but that has never stopped me, so why start now.

We all need to stop buying fool's gold. [more]

TURN ONE DOLLAR INTO THREE

Sad but true, you're going to see a lot of these type of stories in future years, articles about concerned citizens and companies stepping up to undo irresponsible if not illegal environmental damage. Witness The Orvis Company teaming up with local conservationists to restore illegally channelized Teton Creek near Driggs, Idaho.

In addition to dishing out a $30,000 challenge grant, the premier supplier of quality fly fishing and other sporting gear has featured Friends of the Teton River (FTR), a local watershed nonprofit trying to restore Yellowstone cutthroat habitat on Teton Creek, in a full page in its spring and summer fishing catalogs and prominently on its website.

James Hathaway, Communications and Conservation Manager at Orvis, told NewWest.Net that the Teton Creek project is part of the company's normal policy of donating 5 percent of its profits to conservation efforts. [more]

GIVE US A MEANINGFUL, VETO-PROOF BILL

Last November, I wrote about mining law reform being a no brainer and that the U.S. House of Representatives had just passed a bill spiking the most uncivilized sections of the 135-year-old law. The House bill ends the archaic policy of giving way our public land to mining conglomerates with billions in assets and actually makes them pay royalties for taking public resources, like everybody else does.

Now, the Senate is working on its version of mining law reform, and newly elected Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) is in a position to be the leader in correcting a century-old injustice and getting the Mining Law of 1872 off the books. [more]

New West Book Review

Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land
By Amy Irvine
North Point Press
361 pages, $25

Utah native Amy Irvine's first book Trespass: Living At The Edge of The Promised Land is an unusual hybrid that combines memoir, natural history, Western history, anthropology, and an examination of the Mormon religion. Irvine, who now lives in Colorado, writes with authority about all of these subjects, though sometimes the transitions between so many topics within a particular chapter can be dizzying. Luckily, her clear, detailed prose will help ground readers as they try to keep up with the leaps of her fertile mind.

Irvine will appear tonight in Park City at Dolly's Bookstore (6 p.m.), March 1 in Moab at Back of Beyond Books (7 p.m.), March 8 in Santa Fe at Garcia Street Books (4:30 p.m.), and March 18 in Denver at the LoDo Tattered Cover (7:30 p.m.), as well as in other regional bookstores. [more]

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