The Union Bay Improvement District Board and the V.P. of Kensington Island Properties aka Union Bay Estates, Brian McMahon developed a close relationship in 2005. Each subsequent board (except Molstad’s)were flunkies to KIP and catered to his bullshit.
In 2010, 2 trustees were elected who weren’t KIP flunkies and were questioning the actions of the board. In Jan. 2011, the Chair Alan de Jersey, trustees, David Godfrey and Denis Royer and the administrator locked out the electorate claiming there was a mob atmosphere at the Dec. 2010 meeting (false).
We were locked out from Jan. 2011 through April 2011, when Godfrey and Royer lost their reelection. de Jersey didn’t have the backbone to attend a meeting when he was not backed up so he sent a whiny resignation letter for the very first meeting.
This is the important part. While we were locked out, Trustee Denis Royer negotiated a Water Infrastructure Agreement with KIP without the knowledge of Trustee Bruce Livesey and Trustee Clive Goldswain. Chair de Jersey, Trustee David Godfrey and the Admin were all aware of the negotiations and only advised Livesey and Goldswain when they were presented with a draft of the document in March 2011. They knew they were going to lose the election and gave the developer everything he wanted weeks before the election in April 2011.
They touted the agreement as a $1.9 Million gift to the community. (Figures have ranged from $1.4 to $1.9). Remember this is 2011.
New Board. Chair Carol Molstad, Trustees: Eve Gaudreau, Bruce Livesey, Alan Webb, Anne Alcock. Admin resigns. Everyone knew the WIA was a lousy agreement but Molstad stated it was a legal agreement and UBID must abide by it. Trustee Goldswain had advised it wasn’t a gift – it was a loan.
Agreement due to expire Dec. 31, 2014. Since 2011 KIP has made no effort to provide UBID with the required documents. McMahon pretty well disappeared for a few years. Molstad Board start planning for future without KIP. Purchase 20 acre property near Langley Lake that KIP’s own consultants identified as the ideal location providing pressure up the hill for future build.
Sept. 2014 McMahon makes an informal request to UBID for an extension to the Water Infrastructure Agreement in spite of the fact there has been zero progress since 2011. UBID denied and agreement expire Dec. 31, 2014. UBID lawyers provide KIP with letter confirming the agreement is dead.
Landowners David Godfrey (former trustee), Peter Jacques, Glenn Loxam started campaigning on behalf of McMahon/KIP and circulate a petition demanding UBID give KIP an extension. Finally, former Trustee David Godfrey admitted the $1.9 Million gift in the agreement was actually an interest free loan. Only took him from 2011 to 2015 to come clean.
Former Trustee David Godfrey presented the petition to the UBID Board threatening legal action if demands are not met. I’d like to add something at this point because I wasn’t aware of it at the time and I imagine a lot of people weren’t. David Godfrey took on the role of KIP representative in at least mid 2015 and never once disclosed that fact to the landowners.
Godfrey led people to believe he was just another landowner with the same concerns when in fact he was acting on behalf of the f*cking developer.
Fall of 2015 McMahon scurries down to his Liberal buddies crying the blues claiming UBID refuses to negotiate with him, and gets Minister Fassbender appointed as a “Facilitator” to bring the two parties together.
Dec. 1, 2015, meeting in Victoria to negotiate. Present on behalf of UBID was Administrator Kevin Douville, and negotiators retained in June 2015, Hew McConnell and Stephen Kelliher of Kelliher and Turner in Victoria. Present for Kensington Island Properties was Brian McMahon and Mark Lewis from Borden Ladner Gervais – ya the same firm that represents that pos thief Mark Jurisich. McMahon gets in a snit and declares he has an agreement and ends the meeting – McMahon lies about this at his March 2016 meeting.
March 2016, David Godfrey sends invitations out to landowners to attend a KIP meeting to find out what’s really going on. McMahon tells multiple lies including about Chair Molstad, the meeting in Dec. 2015, etc. The same poor me bullshit he’s been spewing for years and these dumb hillbillies lapped it up.
Another election coming up April 2016, and Peter Jacques and Glenn Loxam are running for trustee and proudly sit with McMahon at the AGM and give KIP’s vision their full support during their speeches. They are elected. Board is: Chair, Carol Molstad, Trustees Eve Gaudreau, Alan Webb, Peter Jacques and Glenn Loxam.
Mere weeks after being sworn in as Trustees, Jacques and Loxam meet, without the knowledge of the UBID Board, alone with Brian McMahon and return with a written offer from McMahon.
Molstad, Gaudreau and Webb resign as trustees from the board as a result of the actions by Jacques and Loxam. Union Bay is without a functioning Board. Administrator Kevin Douville keeps the office running.
That’s it for now. Hadn’t planned on a lengthy post. Will add to it tomorrow.
This is more KIP shit.
Usually, when brokers find a buyer for a property listed via a court-ordered sale, they announce the court date to allow other parties to submit any competing offers they may have. Those offers are then presented to the court at the hearing and the judge approves one of the offers.
The sale of Richmond’s Versante Hotel was far more dramatic, according to Hart Buck and Jennifer Darling, two Vancouver-based commercial real estate brokers with Colliers who have been involved in numerous court-ordered sales.
The Versante Hotel is a 100-room luxury boutique hotel rising 14 storeys at 8499 Bridgeport Road in Richmond, not too far from Vancouver International Airport. Part of a three-tower mixed-use development called the International Trade Centre, the hotel opened in 2021 and was a finalist for two BC Hotel Association awards in 2023.
The Versante Hotel was first listed for sale in April 2024, as first revealed by Storeys, after a foreclosure proceeding was initiated against it in January 2024 by Fox Island Development Ltd. and Advanced Venture Holdings Co. Ltd. pertaining to a loan agreement the two sides entered into in June 2021. The foreclosure was granted by the Supreme Court of British Columbia on February 29, 2024, at which point the outstanding debt was at $79.7 million, with interest still accruing thereafter.
The Versante Hotel was then listed by Avison Young for $98 million. However, no sale was secured; the lenders became concerned then-owner — Mo Yeung “Michael” Ching, through his real estate company Sunwins — was interfering with the sales process, and had the foreclosure proceeding converted into a receivership proceeding earlier this year, giving the lenders more control. The property was then re-listed by Buck and Darling alongside Colliers’ Toronto-based hotels team on an unpriced basis.
By late July, 68 parties showed interest by signing confidentiality agreements and 11 progressed to the point of touring the property. Two ultimately made offers and one of them was chosen by the lender and receiver. However, that buyer, which has not been disclosed in court documents, later pulled their offer on August 18, citing the Cowichan Tribes ruling that introduced uncertainty around land ownership and has become a hot-button topic in recent weeks.
However, two more offers were found, one of which was a $48 million bid from a company named Citation Property Holdings Ltd., which court documents state is an affiliate of Hong Kong-based private credit investment management firm Pacific Aegis Capital Management. That bid was set to be presented to the court on October 24, but the drama began the day before — the last call for bids.
“They stood up part-way through the morning of submissions and said ‘I have a bank draft, I have an offer with me I’d like to submit,’ Darling, who witnessed the drama first-hand, told Western Investor. “Justice Fitzpatrick came back at the end of the day and said ‘Okay, if you’re still interested, be here tomorrow, we’re going to go to a live auction.’”
The last-minute bidder was Silverport Properties Ltd., which did show some interest prior to the court date and indeed showed up to bid against Citation in a live auction that saw the two sides — the brokers took a backseat and became spectators at this point — go back and forth approximately eight times with incremental increases ranging from $100,000 to $500,000 verbally, like in the movies.
“The process was formally over when Madame Justice Fitzpatrick looked at the new bidder and said, ‘Are you prepared to bid again?’ That bidder said, ‘My last was my final, I’m not increasing my bid,’ and that was that,” said Buck.
Silverport’s refusal to raise its bid paved the way for Citation to buy the property.
The live auction lasted less than 10 minutes. In his forty years of experience, the only other time Buck has seen a live auction was about 30 years ago in Nanaimo.
“It’s something we very infrequently see,” said Darling. “It’s something the lawyers were all excited about because it was definitely more exciting than what our normal process is with sealed bids and envelopes going up. … A lot of very experienced insolvency lawyers in that room had never seen it happen either. … Even we can be surprised sometimes.”
The final sale price for the Versante Hotel was $51.5 million, still significantly less than the outstanding debt but 7 per cent above the original bid presented to the court.
The transaction is set to close on December 10.
allthingsunionbay 