News
Lofts Residents Battling Developers Over Mold
From The Business Journal of Portland
October 8, 1999 print edition
Real Estate INDUSTRY WRAPUPS
Brian J. Back
Trusting that art mimics life, the owners of Pearl Lofts Condominiums are billing the mold and fungus problems in their 27-unit building as "The Big Pearl Cover-up," a major new exhibit in the Pearl District.
The exhibit's most critical audience would have been Multnomah County Circuit Court, where a complaint was filed last week against developer Pat Prendergast, a joint venture between Aspen Pearl Limited Partnership and Urban Homes Inc., Walsh Construction Co. and architect Tim Merrill. All 25 members of the Pearl Lofts Condominiums Association filed the suit after Prendergast and Walsh Construction allegedly declined to sign an agreement preserving residents' warranty claims.
But Prendergast agreed to meet with the association this week, after pressure from its most lethal weapon, Keith Peters. A loft owner since August 1994, Peters works as a corporate communications guru for Nike Inc.
In other words, he knows how to get the word out.
"They want us to stop our little PR machine," said Alisan Peters, Keith's wife.
With a calculated media blitz involving press releases, a public exhibit, a lampoon-style newsletter and web page with photos and legal updates, what a well-oiled machine it was.
"A couple members of the association have gone off in an odd direction," Prendergast said. "It's frustrating to get maligned when you haven't ever been in the loop. Maligning is not going to get those windows fixed. All we want to do is help them resolve the problem."
The problem: serious dry rot, mold and fungus beneath 140 defective windows in the 5-year-old building. Loft owners say that wood in the walls can be crumbled by hand. When John Lamb of Western Architectural Consultants inspected the building this past spring and summer, his "moisture meter" was bleeping off the map.
Prendergast said in recent years, no one from the association has ever contacted his office or Weather Shield Manufacturers Inc., which makes the windows in question. With another rainy season around the bend, residents are irritated. An actual court date would have been over a year away.
That's a lot of time to jog the PR machine.
Though Prendergast and Walsh Construction initially declined to sign a tolling agreement, Merrill (the architect) offered his Hancock without reservation. Then why was he listed as a defendant in the lawsuit?
"That's what I'd like to know," he said. "Maybe it's the sort of thing where you cast a wider net to see what you can catch."
The biggest fish might be Prendergast, who, according to Merrill, stepped over architectural specs and tried a different window product from Weather Shield Manufacturers Inc. "I don't know if it was a bad run or a bad window design," Merrill said.
In the scope of Pearl District's recent renaissance, Pearl Lofts was one of the first new buildings to offer for-sale residential units.
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