The White Cliffs condominium development in Plymouth, with its recently completed townhouses overlooking both a golf course and the ocean, appears to many to be the picture of serenity. But just a few years ago, the most recent developers had a decidedly different opinion of the property.

“It looked like the bombings in Beirut,” said Lynn B. Pedersen, vice president and director of marketing for Newton-based Northland Residential Corp., which recently completed construction of the last of the new units at the complex. “That’s what most people could relate to back then, because that was the news of the day.”

Pederson described a scene of half-finished townhouse units that had fallen into a state of disrepair and were affecting both property values and morale of residents at the 300-plus unit complex. Today, in contrast, she says residents couldn’t be more proud of where they live. The turnaround, she said, began back in 1991 and has been a long time in the making.

“The development was started in the 1980s with a firm that had done many successful developments in Florida,” Pedersen said. “They designed a community that had everything from a clubhouse to a golf course. They created a whole living environment.

“Unfortunately, they did it in a time period when the industry was beginning to enter a rough period,” she said of the original developers, Cape Side Assoc. “The found themselves in financial trouble over an extended period of time. They just sunk in too much money when the market downturned.”

Nine years ago, with Cape Side Assoc. facing bankruptcy and their clubhouse suffering from a lack of upkeep, unit owners in the White Cliffs condominium association took control of the building and eventually remodeled it completely.

After acquiring the country club, Pedersen said, the association faced a bigger challenge as Cape Side officially declared bankruptcy and left several buildings only partially constructed. After discussions, the association decided to buy the property themselves and sell the development rights to another builder.

“They had a very astute board,” she said. “They already had the permits and approvals to build the new units, but they decided to take their time and look at what they really wanted for the complex.”

Original plans called for the 300-unit complex to eventually contain an additional 104 units. The association, however, decided that adding that many units would make the development too dense and affect the quality of life, so it eventually scaled back the plans to call for just 51 new units. It was also decided that a number of parcels slated for townhouses would be sold and used for single-family construction.

“With a condo association, it’s a tough balancing act, getting the right amount of money from a company to develop the property while maintaining just the right amount of development,” Pedersen said.

Rallying Residents
After looking at proposals from various companies, the White Cliffs association in 1996 selected Northland to complete construction.

“The [original] project got left with 20 units in three separate buildings under construction,” Pedersen said. “They basically sat there for eight or 10 years as a shell that was not finished.

“Two of the buildings sat side by side on the 12th hole,” she continued. “They had just stopped construction and let it go. No one had really done anything with it. They were both infested with birds and whatever else.”

Work on the original three buildings was completed about two years ago, and the units were sold. Another 44 townhouses were built from 1997 to the present, with all but four having an oceanfront setting. Unlike the previous designs, the new units feature first-floor master suites to meet residents’ requests.

“We just completed the last home,” Pedersen said, adding that all of the units have been sold. Sales of new units at the complex have been steady since the final phase of development was restarted in the late 1990s, with an average of 15 to 20 units selling each year.

“When we started the project, there were a lot of resales taking place. People wanted to move out,” Pedersen said. “It took a while for the community to gain confidence in the development again, but I’d say the property values probably went up 10 percent the first year we started redevelopment.”

“The residents really rallied around the idea of purchasing the development rights,” said David Mastroianni, general manager of the White Cliffs Community Association. “They overwhelmingly supported the position and the vision of the board of governors. It’s almost unprecedented for an association to do this, but they wanted to control their own destiny.

“If they hadn’t taken control, another developer would have purchased the development rights from the FDIC and had another 50 or 60 units crammed in here, but [the board] took control,” Mastroianni continued. “They knew where they were going, and they got there.”

He added that in order to obtain a loan to buy the development rights and maintain that loan until they sold the development rights, the association approved an increase in monthly fees to cover the costs.

“With the buildings standing there unfinished, there was this perception that the whole project had gone under, and they weren’t going to allow that to happen,” he said.

The units developed after the White Cliffs association took control of the property sold for an average of $350,000, compared to sales in the low $100,000 range prior to that time. In all, sales of units developed by Northland totaled about $12 million, Pedersen said.

“It’s really extraordinary what they were able to do,” Pedersen said of the condo association. “They started out by taking back their clubhouse and then they took back the rest of the site.”

The White Cliffs community features two- and three-bedroom townhouses, many situated along an 18-hole, par 62 Gary Player-designed golf course. The community also has four tennis courts, an Olympic-sized indoor/outdoor swimming pool and health club.

In addition to the completed turnaround at White Cliffs, Northland is also involved in other projects that have had similar experiences, as turnaround properties have become a major piece of the company’s business. In Acton, Northland worked on the Arbors development after the original developers were unable to complete the project. The company built and sold the last 36 units of a 60-unit project more than two years ago.

“We were working on the Arbors in Acton with an appraiser who lived over at White Cliffs, and he told us about that project,” Pedersen said. “That’s when we decided to take a closer look at the property.”

Currently, the company is working on a final build-out of the Stratford Ponds development in the Cape Cod community of Mashpee. Northland bought the rights to build the remaining 94 units of a 152-unit project in the fall of 1997. The community was started in the 1980s by a British-based developer. That development is expected to be completed in about 18 months.