Ogden Development Stymied by National Economy

The national economic slowdown is starting to reach into our local Utah economy. Several headlines over the last several days show that commercial development is entering a state of suspended animation as lending tightens and project viability is drawn into question:

• The Ogden River Renniasance Project, a vision of Gadi Lesham's, is now on hold as the funding source for the project is now in bankruptcy. Gadi used his Cover All flooring business to fund his developments. Subcontractors in the housing business are very slow right now. This is an example of how the national housing crunch is affecting us here despite our own relatively resilient local housing market.
• The Ice Tower, proposed for the corner of 25th and Kiesel, is back to the drawing board as sufficient funds have not been collected to move forward with the project this year. The ice tower is a great idea, we just need the right economics to get it built. It may be a few more years before its done.
• The Aston Square site, brainchild of Stuart Reid, is now in the hands of Property Reserve Inc. This is not a bad thing since Property Reserve Inc. has a great track record in downtown and owns much of the surrounding land. Apparently, the housing bust affected sales to the point that the project could not be financed.

As the national commercial real estate bust gets underway, we will see the same thing that happened to residential start to happen to commercial property. Look for recent speculative investments in commercial space to foreclose. There is a lot of vacant office space everywhere in Utah.