|
Now just for older folks who are retired, and this is also a building product or building type
<br />that’s very suitable for young couples, younger people who just, you know, started working and
<br />couldn’t afford to spend the money on a single family home, and besides they’re busy. They
<br />really don’t have time to care for the gardens and taking care of the front yard and so on. So a
<br />town home actually is a very good product for, in terms of the profiles for the residents, okay?
<br />And this is something I wanted to try to distinguish between my project and Mr. Boschetti’s.
<br />You know, it’s just two different types, not just in terms of scale or size, but also the profile of
<br />the residents is very, very different. Now town homes in most likelihood they are occupied by
<br />owners, and not just like apartment building you rent out, okay? I’m not saying they cannot be
<br />rented out but most likely. And town house projects actually started to get very popular, I’m
<br />talking about in a suburban area, not just in central, big cities now. Gee, after World War II a lot
<br />of houses being built in suburban areas. And then in the sixties or so, in fact the time that I
<br />started my business, a lot of the town homes and also called garden, garden apartments actually.
<br />But they’re all similar. What they have is that they have their own backyards; it’s very
<br />important, but not big, big enough for them to do something. And then you don’t have to care
<br />about the front, basically, because the road and the swimming pool, the public areas, the
<br />common areas are normally managed and taken care of by an association. They don’t have to
<br />worry about it. So this type of development is -, they’re just everywhere. So I want to make
<br />sure that the neighbors, you know, surrounding this neighborhood who have concern know that
<br />this actually is real similar to their own house, except that they are closer to each other and they
<br />have the same profile in terms of people who are living in there. Now I understand the concern
<br />where everytime you have a change, okay, people would be concerned about noise, about traffic,
<br />and perhaps other things too, but that they’ve been adequately addressed in the Director’s report.
<br />Now in terms of, and also the other one is the value of their homes which I wanted to address a
<br />little bit. Maybe I should do that first. There’s one letter from one of the neighbors who is an
<br />appraiser, you know, and has claimed that, you know, from his experience when you have a
<br />mixture of housing then their housing value would go down. Okay? I agree and disagree
<br />because this kind of answers this yes or no, depending on what kind of mix. There are good
<br />mixes and there are bad mixes. Now I’m going to cite two extreme examples just for
<br />demonstration only. If this project couldn’t be built a high rise, let’s say six, seven stories or
<br />more, public housing project right next to all these single family homes, then I would say yes,
<br />perhaps it would affect the single family home value next to it. Now another extreme is our
<br />famous Mr. Trump builds a Trump Tower there. Okay? A 20-story building and the two-
<br />bedroom units all cost a million dollars and up, now that increases the value of all the single
<br />family homes surrounding it. Right? Of course, these are two extreme examples, okay? Now,
<br />but for town homes they’re affordable in a sense because the lot is smaller and the buildings are
<br />smaller, the structure, the living area. Now in terms of the value of these town homes is we’re
<br />going to be dictated by the current building cost, the land value, and all the soft costs that add up.
<br />That would be the cost of the value of these, the new town homes. Now on a per square foot
<br />basis because these are smaller homes, it’s going to be substantially higher than all the
<br />comparable single family homes surrounding it. The old ones, most of them are very old, by the
<br />way. So from my experience when you have a new project, a nicely executed project and when
<br />you do an appraisal using, you know, comparable values, it will actually affect upward the
<br />surrounding buildings because the cost per square foot of living area will be higher. It has to be
<br />higher because it’s newly built, right? So like I said, no, I do agree with the neighbors’s concern
<br />4
<br /> EXHIBIT C
<br />
<br />
|