Podcast Extra - The Paradise Ridge Story
Summary
Paradise Ridge is a Maui condo development that took 28 years, 3 families, and 2 Salisburys to build. June 2023 will close the Paradise Ridge chapter. In this podcast extra, learn about the Paradise Ridge story and how it evolved.
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Full Episode Transcription
Welcome to my life as a Landlord, where we untangle all things housing and educate the
curious. If you're looking for some entertainment with some honest, awkward conversations, you've
come to the right show. I'm your host, Dr. Jennifer Salisbury. This is my life as a landlord. Welcome to it.
Hello. Hello and welcome. Welcome to this podcast extra number two. This is the Paradise Ridge
story. Every once in a while, I really enjoy not having a numbered episode thrown in. I think it's kind
of cool that at some point you're going to get a notification on either Apple podcast or Spotify that, hey,
my life as a Landlord has published a new episode, and it's not on Saturday. It can happen at any time,
and you have no idea. And I think this is kind of cool. So welcome to my life as a landlord. This is a
podcast extra. I do these every once in a while that are very special. The first podcast extra I did is called
who is this lady? Because I just jumped right into the lessons, and I had some people ask me going, well,
who are you? Tell us about you. So the first extra was about me. The second extra is about a project that
Mike and I have been working on for a very long time called Paradise Ridge. And this podcast extra is
the Paradise Ridge story. I hope a few owners are listening, and I'm proud to tell you about it. Okay, so
let's get to it. Paradise Ridge is the name of a condo project in Kihei, Maui, south Maui that Michael
bought the property in 1995 and he bought it using Seller Finance. The seller was a canuck. Mike is a
canuck and now he's a dual citizen. But he was using Seller Finance and we were about to complete the
build. In fact this week we're actually closing on the second half of units and we're about to be done with
the build and completely depart the site which feels amazing but it's 28 years in the making. Mike bought
the property in 1995. I asked him, I said why on earth did you buy this property? I mean it's got beautiful
sweeping views. It's in Kihei, which if anybody has been to Maui and you know the South Maui area it's
right by Kama Ole three beach, right by the small boat ramp. We share a driveway with Hale kama Ole
right next to Maui. Kama Ole, lots of Hawaiian words but it's beautiful. You can watch the whales jump.
And he said that when he went up to the property in 1995 that he just fell in love with the view. He fell in
love with it. Unfortunately what happened was he had no idea the complexity of development on Maui.
It. Especially so close to the beach. And that is where we start spinning this story. So it's two acres in a
bit on mostly rock, which it's on a rock ridge. Mike named it Paradise Ridge because of the rock ridge.
And it's a fill in project, meaning there are neighbors on all sides, meaning there were lots and lots of not
happy people when we were building it. And Michael had no idea of what's called coastal zone
management. Now, in the US. This is a federal mandate where you have coastal zone management,
meaning it's a special management area or known as an SMA permit, in order to do any development that
close to the coastline. Now, Canada has something similar. There are some different federal regulations,
or provincial, depending on where you are. But just know as a developer that there are different
regulations as you get close to streams or riparian areas or things like that. In Canada. Very similar in the
US. With coastline. Mike had no idea about permitting on Maui, and this was originally supposed to be a
much higher density build. He had originally started off with a 60 unit build. It ended up being 32 units
in eight fourplexes. And so it's a multifamily build with a pool, a hot tub, waterfall feature, pool house.
When you're creating a condominium, these are condominiums, they're not rentals. So they are sold to
individual unit owners with an associate. So in the US. It's called a homeowners association. In Canada,
it's called estrata, exactly the same thing where there's an overarching group that you pay fees into every
month, it's the exact same thing. So where we are right now, the association has been formed, a board
has been elected. I am the vice president of the board. Yay, for me, which I'm actually really proud of
because I've got quite a bit of history on this property, as you can tell. But the reporting requirements,
when you do condos, whether you're in the US or Canada, they're almost identical. Where you've got to
do a declaration, you've got to do a public report, you've got to publish certain things very, very similar
when you're creating a condo document of some kind or a strata, however you want to call it. But along
the way, since 1995, there were multiple iterations of the plans. What started off as 60 units became 50.
And as I mentioned, it ended up 32, eight, fourplexes. So in 2003, partners basically bought the property
from Michael and he was going to lose it. And he ended up figuring out how were we going to support
this, how are we going to support this development? That there was a lot of money already sunk into the
property, trying to get it developed, trying to get the special management area permit. And the money
was just going out, out. And the only way to get any money back was by fully building it out and selling
the units, which was a very long journey looking ahead over 28 years. And so what ended up
happening was building permits were ready to go in 2005, 2006. They had financing lined up and they
were starting to be ready to build. When, if you remember, in 2006 and seven, the recession, the global
recession was on the horizon and the financing got pulled and the property. Went up for sale. Which
means all of the permits and everything that had been done to date would not transfer. It would have just
been sold for the dirt itself, which of course at that point was almost entirely unimproved. They had
installed one water line in 2006 and that was it. It sat there for ten years through the recession. All of the
interested buyers were not able to close. And for those of you who've listened to my podcast on
immigration, you'll know that Mike and I got married in 2006. And that was right when the property was
for sale and the recession was hitting and it was an absolute economic meltdown. And in 2016, ten years
later, when immigration, all of Mike's immigration items were completely resolved, he just really wanted
to build out Paradise Ridge. He wanted to build this out and he said, you know what, we can do this. Let's
return to Maui and begin again. Basically lick our wounds and figure out how we're going to do this. But
at that point the permits had expired. Obviously from 2005, 2006, many of the engineers had moved on
or retired. The Special Management Area permit was still open. Thankfully that was very important that
that was still kept open. And we began to figure out how we were going to not only do the retaining
walls, but also the site work. In 2018 I came on full time basically to keep notes, to keep the log of the
Paradise Ridge log. And in 2018 we finally figured out the retaining walls. But to make the retaining
walls work, the site would have to be raised 5ft. Now it's a very steep site if you've ever seen it, it climbs.
And remember, this is a rock ridge. And so there's many aspects to the site that are very unique, that's
one of them. But to make the retaining walls work on both the north and the south side of the property,
we had to amend the Special Management Area Permit. And that required going directly in front of the
Maui Planning Commission and requesting this amendment. And if they had not approved that in
September of 2018, the property would have stopped. We would have abandoned the project and once
again it would have gone up for sale at a huge loss. But that was reality once that SMA amendment was
approved. I remember, remember looking at Mike and a couple of our other consultants and saying, okay
guys, this is the time that you start to take notes. This is the time that we have to start keeping a project
log because it has now become official. 1s And you could hear crickets. It's like that everybody's
pointing at each other, but they don't want to point at themselves. And I look at them and I said, okay, I
guess paradise ridge just hired me full time, because I have to make sure that somebody is logging the
details of this project for the entirety of the build. And incidentally, here I am, almost five years later, I'm
on log number 20. Yeah, wow. But keeping that log, I'm analytical. I know all the insurance policies, I
know all the permits. I understand how this all works together. I understand, and I have an amazing
memory, which is a blessing and a curse. But in all of this, my skill set was the perfect complement to
what paradise ridge needed. And I just happened to be involved at the right place at the right time, which,
here we go. And so move forward. In 2019, we had finally gotten the walls figured out. We got the
utilities down to south kihei road, through the hale kamole driveway. The 2020, the site utilities were in
even with the COVID lockdowns, which was really interesting because construction was considered an
essential service. But you weren't allowed to travel unless you had a letter from your employer to travel
around maui that said that you were in fact employed by the company. And there were checkpoints set up
around maui to stop people from traveling because of COVID And so mike and I and all our subs,
everybody, all our employees, they all had these letters in their vehicles. If they were ever to have gotten
stopped, which some of them did, and they have to show them and say, we are in fact employed by this
company, and we are building paradise ridge, and we're on our way to work or from work or whatever.
So we finally figured out site utilities. I remember we started figuring out 2s the budgeting. We had to
figure out all the budgeting. And this was as everybody was going into this COVID lockdown. And it
was absolutely I wasn't even sure how we were going to do it because it was either we stop and take a
loss and not build anything and just sell with the utilities in, or we take a chance and we try to get some
financing with Mike as the contractor. Originally, Mike was not going to be the contractor, but that's
exactly what ended up happening. And thankfully, we had an amazing lender that looked at our skill set,
both Mike and I, plus our consultants, and said, you know what? You guys can do it. And with the equity
in the ground already, I mean, there was a lot of stuff that had already been paid for. They lent us the
money to go vertical, and in November of 2020, we ended up pulling building permits for the very first
time to go vertical. And I remember the first slab of Building Seven right in front of the gate. 1s We were
forming up this slab wearing steel toed boots, long pants, wearing masks, and hard hats. Even though we
were outside, everybody had to be masked up at all times, and we were getting ready to pour concrete,
and it was just absolutely amazing. And I remember looking at this going, how on earth are we going to
end up pouring all of these concrete slabs and then we have to build the buildings? And it just seemed
like it would never end. And we were already two years plus after I had come on full time in the middle
of COVID But here we are. So phase one closed the first half. The first half of the units, buildings
five, six, seven, and eight closed in March of 2023. And phase two is about to close here in June of 2023.
Probably some units will straggle into July. So here let's talk about some lessons learned. And then if
you want to Google, if you want to creep us on Google Maps, I'd be happy to give you the address, and
you can see what you can find on Google Maps and stuff. But here's some lessons learned. Okay?
Development on Maui, and just lessons learned in general. Number one, when an expert makes a
recommendation, it's not a suggestion. When an expert makes a recommendation, it is not a suggestion.
Many times I was recommended to hire an expert from another expert, and that includes vibration
engineer, when we made the walls, waterproofing engineers, geotechnical, and especially a fair housing
consultant. And there were many other people that I'm not mentioning, but those are the ones that were
specifically told to me and said, look, you might consider hiring this, which meant you need to find one
and hire them. And I did. Number two, the labor crunch. The original budget included self performing. 1s
A lot and then COVID hit, and nobody had thought that people were going to get paid more to sit at
home than to work. So watch your assumptions in your plans and your budgets, because we assumed that
the labor market would be readily available with skilled workers, and that was absolutely not the case.
We got through it, but it was difficult. So watch your assumptions. Number three. Number one thing that
people say with Mike and I’s, we can't believe you got through Paradise Ridge and you're still married.
So number three, I can tell you be careful doing big projects with your spouse. They're very tough. But at
the end of the day, you each have each other's back and you can laugh about it. And it's not funny yet
because we're still at the bitter end of it, but very soon I will be able to laugh. I'm laughing about it now.
But it has been a battle, it has been really difficult. And it's what we call the grind. Monday through
Saturday, we're working six days a week, and then Sunday we basically sleep in and sit comatose and
then go to shopping and reset lunches and grind some more and just grind the whole way and get the
build done. But it's got us finished, which is. Crazy. Okay, let me give you some info on where this is. So
our the website at the moment, it may change, but the website at the moment is Paradiseridgemaue.com
and the physical address is 2757 South Kihei Road. And once again we share a driveway with Hale
kamalay by Camo Ole three So if you're local to the area and you know the Cam Three beach, it's tucked
away. There's no sign on South Kihei Road as of the date of this recording, so you would not ever know
it's there. But if you look up and you see a beautiful blue gate with a whale tail jumping out, that's
Paradise Ridge. And there's many more stories I know we'll tell. It has been my pleasure, my honor, and I
am so pleased that I was able to employ and empower so many amazing, wonderful people. All our subs,
our vendors, our employees. Was it all perfect? Of course not. Is it perfect even now? Of course not. But
is there passion and perseverance to make sure that Paradise Ridge is as good as it can be for the life of
the entire property? Absolutely. And Mike and I both have done the absolute best we can to set the entire
neighborhood up with this amazing new community. And as the board is learning more and more of my
stories and more of my history with this, it is my pleasure to educate them on the battles that have been
overcome and the history that has been done and some of the craziness that Maui development involves.
But that's it. I mean, there's more to it, there's a lot more to it, but people want to know what's Paradise
Ridge? Paradise Ridge is a condo development that Mike and I were crazy enough to actually make it
happen. And now we have about to be 32 incredible condo owners in South Maui who have this
incredible view property that will be there probably. It will probably outlive both Mike and I, which is
pretty incredible. Anyway, thanks for listening. Stay tuned for Saturday for the next numbered episode.
This has been a great podcast extra. Thanks.
Thank you for joining us this week. To view the complete show notes and all the links mentioned
in today's episode, visit our website at www.mylifeasalandlord.com.
If you're looking for educational resources for getting into real estate investing, becoming a
landlord, or even a better tenant, then I have a page on my website to get you started looking for a
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www.mylifeasalandlord.com. Thank you again for joining me, Dr. Jennifer Salisbury, in this
episode of My Life as A Landlord. I'll see you next time.