The Saint Paul Condo Blog

It's never fun, when you start to hear from homeowners about the mounting trouble in the building they call home, but the calls, and emails I'm getting from Gallery Tower owners is getting greater.

I'm not sure when the troubles started, as some say it's been brewing since day one and others say it's a more recent event.  Whatever the case may be, Gallery has some difficult decisions ahead.

Here's what I've know and have been told so far.

The building recently fired the management company that had been working for them since the beginning of the condominium or darn near close to that.  With that, the new management company looking over the finances, determined that the building was nearly out of money and instructed the association to take out a $100,000 loan to help meet the shortfall in cash.

Coming down the pipe, there's new codes for elevators, requiring Gallery Tower to comply (the Pointe just completed this same work).  The association has been tossing around the idea of dues increase to help pay for the elevator and this has rubbed a lot of homeowners the wrong way.  On one of my visits to the building, there was a flyer in the building, asking for signatures on a petition to remove the entire Board of Directors (all nine of them).

Gallery Tower, for it's price point has higer than average association dues, on top of the additional money you have to spend on parking.  A due increase, however necessary will make the building even more difficult to sell.

As an outsider to the building, it seems to me they need to run a special assessment to pay for these items.  I'd have to look through their documents to know how's it done, but some buildings require a high percentage of home owners in agreement to levy any type of special assessment.  If you have enough people that don't care if their place is sellable or not, you could continually vote down an assessment.

For anyone that lives at Gallery, sometimes you have to do what is right for the building, and that might trump what's right for you.

I think there's some pain ahead for Gallery, but I'm confident in the long run Gallery will be a better building.

Just whatever you do, don't replace the new board, and for Pete's sake, do not hire back the old management company!