Not Our Town Center

The truth about Celebration- One SO often missed while reading (you ALL read them, right?) the many Declarations and Recorded Documents and Such, is that the really iconic photogenic, Celebration, the one stuffed with highly touted architectural masterpieces, the views of the lake, the margaritas and vente-lattes, the area which made you CONVINCED you wanted to live RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW, in NO way belongs to you, Celebration Homeowner, HOA fees payer, and concerned citizen that you are. THAT Celebration belongs, FEE SIMPLE, to Lexin Capital, a For-Profit Private Equity firm, which purchased it from Disney in 2004.

CROA has no say, no votes, no equity, in the real estate donut in the center of OUR Celebration.

OUR Celebration is a series of tandem ”villages”, with no commercial areas except a small Home/Business District. We are but a SUBDIVISION. Our relationship with Lexin owned Celebration Town Center might be described as symbiotic on any given day. Parasitic on others.

The looming Towers of the Cesar Pelli designed AMC Theater glow warmly in the night sky, keeping up an illusion that ALL IS WELL in Town Center, despite ten-plus years of darkened screens and empty lobbies. Lexin has been content to collect significant income from AMC, all the while either never actively CONSIDERING qualified replacements, or perhaps unable to SECURE a tenant which might satisfy the stringent underwriting requirements of a LENDER. (Should Lexin need to refinance their significant Town Center debt in, SAY, for example, the next year. Back of a VERY big envelope, my all-in-estimation of annual costs to commandeer this architecturally significant white elephant add up to $500,000. To start. Change my mind.

Town Center has 163,000 leasable square feet, making the AMC Theater a numerically important part of Lexin’s Big Picture, vis-a-vis Town Center. Securing CROA as a tenant would certainly be a coup for Lexin, after all the HOA is not about to default, rather our HOA might just let the frog water simmer as unexpected expenses rise like scum to the top. This is business as usual in a For Profit Corporation. CROA is most definitely NOT a for-profit-entity.

Why NOT selecting ANY Business Partner for an HOA Amenity is debatable, theres a plethora of history available which would support NOT selecting Lexin.

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