Heritage Inn Pays $15 Million

The Telluride Watch
Published:6/16/06
By Christopher Pike

A major hospitality corporation acquired the financially beleaguered Fairway Pines Planned Unit Development on June 6 for $15 million. The last minute sale saved the Fairway Pines owners from imminent action on June 12 by the Ouray County Board of Commissioners to rescind the preliminary plan and plat.

To the relief of members of the Fairway Pines Homeowners Association and county officials, the purchase brought an end to a succession of failed sale negotiations, lot foreclosures and at least four extensions of revocation proceedings involving the PUD and Ouray County.

H.T. Heritage Inn and Suites of Kansas City, Inc. and H.T. Heritage Inn of Erie, LLC, based out of Henderson, Nev., purchased Fairway Pines Gold Partners Ltd. and The Pines Development Group, LLC, from James A. Willey and the James A. Willey Living Trust. Willey was the managing partner of The Pines Development Group along with Brad Frank.

Heritage has extensive holdings in hotel and motel franchises, including Hilton's Hampton Inns and Marriot's Residence Inns, Holiday Inns Express and Comfort Inns. The corporation is led by Gary Tharaldson, named among Forbes magazine's list of America's 400 richest people.

The Fairway Pines acquisition includes an 18-hole golf course on Log Hill Mesa, northwest of Ridgway, and 65 lots in Filings 5 and 6, which have not received final approval, in part due to the development's
failure to build a clubhouse. Fifteen of those lots were already undergoing bank foreclosure proceedings at the time of the sale.

"The money (from the foreclosure purchases) has been spent and taken care of," said Fairway Pines HOA president Bob Mehl on Monday.

Fairway Pines had been struggling to find a buyer since 2004, when potential purchaser D.L. Day Jr. withdrew from a deal. Centrex Destination Properties entered into negotiations with The Pines Development Group in March of 2005, after asking for and receiving a postponement of the PUD revocation process by the county, to May 2006. Centrex pulled out after two months, only to reengage soon thereafter.

The county again agreed to postpone the revocation process this past March to allow an unidentified buyer, now known as Heritage, time to consummate a purchase contract.

Had the sale to Heritage not gone through, the BOCC would have made a determination to declare "null and void" the development, resulting in a acres, according to County Attorney Mary Daganhart.

Representatives for Heritage were not in attendance at Monday's BOCC meeting, prompting speculation from some of the approximately 45 Fairway Pines HOA members in attendance as to whether the new owner will begin construction of the upscale clubhouse complex, build a hotel or both. The clubhouse remains a key requirement in the 1994 plat agreement that has yet to be fulfilled, much to the consternation of HOA members.

"It surprises me that they are not here," said Fairway Pines resident Shelly Stevens. "We need something that would tie in development of the clubhouse. That's the bottom line for everyone here. We have new owners but no timeline."

The BOCC continued the hearing to July 24 to enable a representative from Heritage to appear and discuss a timeline for the clubhouse. "It's a little out of the ordinary that we did not receive a letter from them," said Daganhart. "July 24 is a reasonable date to appear and give a thumbnail sketch."