Two years after a high-profile sales event, Baja project stuck in red tape, slow market

Donald Trump’s decision to lend his name to a lavish coastal condo-hotel project in Baja California brought worldwide visibility to the region’s unprecedented building boom.

A sign, now tattered but shown in its better days, displayed a photo of Donald Trump and touted the development south of Tijuana.
But two years after a San Diego sales event that drew hundreds of would-be purchasers, the planned three-tower Trump Ocean Resort has yet to break ground and development has slowed along the Tijuana-Ensenada strip known as the Gold Coast.

A 10-mile drive from the border, a half-dozen workers poured concrete into a trench yesterday. Orange fencing surrounded a large deep hole. A wind-tattered billboard displaying a giant photograph of Trump rose over the 17-acre site overlooking the Coronado Islands.

Tijuana officials say the developer received a land use permit in 2005, allowing 526 units to be built on the property that juts out into the Pacific Ocean at Punta Bandera. But the developer has yet to receive a construction permit from Tijuana’s Urban Development Department, the key city agency that gives the go-ahead for new projects.

“Going through the files, we can’t find an application,” said director Miguel Angel Zavala.

Trump’s Los Angeles-based partner, Irongate, said the much-publicized project is moving forward, despite delays, and that they are in the final stages of presenting documents to City Hall. Tijuana’s Municipal Planning Institute, which conducts initial reviews and submits recommendations to the Urban Development Department, received plans earlier this month, the developer said.

So far, U.S. buyers make up more than 90 percent of the project’s clientele, said Carlos Palafox, director of development for Irongate. To date, 167 units have been pre-sold in the first tower, which will have 232 units on 26 stories and is scheduled to open at the end of 2009, about six months behind initial projections, Palafox said.
Last year in Rosarito Beach, building models of the Trump Ocean Resort were displayed for prospective buyers in a sales office.
About 40 percent of the space has been spoken for in the second 26-story tower.

read more at [signonsandiego.com]