Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 25, 1994 TAG: 9410250099
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: HAYMARKET LENGTH: Medium
Throughout the area, real estate experts estimate dozens of contracts were written with sales pegged to a certain date or conditional on approval of Disney construction.
Disney abandoned its Haymarket site Sept. 28 after nearly a year of opposition and a barrage of lawsuits from historians and environmentalists. The company says it still wants to build a history-based theme park in Virginia but has not said where.
For some people, such as Ike and Julie Broaddus, learning that Disney was leaving was cause for a party. Just 30 days before Disney pulled out, the couple closed on the sale of their house and 10 acres for about $850,000 - nearly three times what Ike Broaddus paid for the property 10 years ago.
``You could call it brilliant luck in hindsight,'' Broaddus said. ``It was entirely a matter of timing.''
For others, such as Denise Bettinger, Disney's departure obliterated dreams of a comfortable future.
On Sept. 30, she was to have closed a sale for her house, her barn and 22 acres just across the road from the proposed Disney's America site.
``All we wanted to do was have a mortgage-free place and be able to retire comfortably,'' Bettinger, a 56-year-old alfalfa hay farmer, said of herself and her 60-year-old husband, Frank, who works in the defense industry. ``Now, it's back to a hayfield.''
``It's really been a boom-and-bust cycle,'' said Mark Moorstein, a local development lawyer. ``There were a lot of people who, once Disney came in, went out and got options on properties and just got crunched.''
Almost no major commercial parcels, defined roughly as larger than 50 acres, were sold over the past year. But land records show, and brokers, lawyers and trade publishers say that speculative investors drove up Haymarket-area land prices by three to six times their pre-Disney levels.
In some cases, the value per acre went from less than $10,000 to more than $60,000.
Even some of the most powerful real estate specialists got caught by Disney's timing.
H/P Cos., one of the region's best-known developers, purchased about 16 acres in Haymarket the same day Disney announced its retreat. The developers paid $850,000, easily triple the land's previous value.
Company President James Todd declined to discuss the purchase.
Naim Amireh, a McLean real estate broker, led nine partners into buying three acres and a historic stone house in Haymarket last winter for $401,000, after the property had been on the market for months.
By mid-spring, they thought to sell the property for $1.7 million, touting it as an attractive site for a bed-and-breakfast inn or small shopping center.
Then Disney pulled out.
``Everyone said [Disney] would go through, that it was 100 percent sure,'' Amireh said. ``We are not happy, of course.''
by CNB