Did you know that there was a 58 story Ritz-Carlton being built in downtown Vancouver? Well if you did a few days ago Vancouver-based developer Holborn Group told buyers who’d bought condominiums in the $500-million project that it was being canceled.

To get financing, you need a certain amount of presales – and because we didn’t have enough units sold, financing didn’t turn out the way we wanted,”

Holborn had sold 62 of 123 condos in the project which was to feature a 20-storey luxury hotel topped by 40 storeys of condos. Your can read the full story after the jump.

VANCOUVER — A luxury tower that was to bring the Ritz-Carlton name to Vancouver has been cancelled, leaving a yawning downtown pit as a symbol of a wider real-estate collapse and raising questions about the developer’s ability to complete other projects in the city.

Vancouver-based developer Holborn Group yesterday told buyers who’d bought condominiums in the $500-million project that it was being cancelled. “To get financing, you need a certain amount of presales – and because we didn’t have enough units sold, financing didn’t turn out the way we wanted,” Holborn president Joo Kim Tiah said yesterday.

Holborn had sold 62 of 123 condos in the project, which was to feature a 20-storey luxury hotel topped by 40 storeys of condos. Those sales didn’t meet the threshold of 75 the company, and potential lenders, were looking for, so the project was put on ice.

The project had been rumoured to be in trouble since at least this past October. As other projects were shelved or delayed, the high-profile Olympic athletes village staggered from one financial crisis to the next and lenders battened down the hatches, it seemed increasingly unlikely that the hotel would proceed.

The hotel company that was to put its high-end brand on the project was not an equity participant and so will not take a financial hit from it being canceled, a spokeswoman said. Nor was Ritz-Carlton caught off guard by the news.

“We have been aware for some time that the owner was not going to be able to go ahead with the project because of financing difficulties,” said Vivian Deuschl, a spokeswoman for Ritz-Carlton. “This is not uncommon in this climate.”

A Ritz-Carlton project in Toronto remains on track, Ms. Deuschl said. The homes in the now-cancelled luxury tower “set a high-water mark” for pricing in Vancouver, said Bob Rennie, whose firm was marketing the condominiums, which rang in at prices ranging from $1.4-million to nearly $30-million, or an average $2,300 per square foot.

[The Globe and Mail]

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