Construction workers used bulldozers to flatten and crush the beginnings of a wall that had been started months ago at a delayed 500-acre Del Webb retirement development in Richmond.
However, the toppled concrete blocks don’t mean that Del Webb owner Pulte Homes has changed its mind about building the 1,520-home project. In fact, Richmond City Manager Glen Gilmore said company officials have been upbeat about local real estate market conditions lately.
So much so, Gilmore said he thinks it’s possible Pulte will re-start work on the project sooner than the March 2010 date they’ve given city officials.
Gilmore also said the city has requested that the developer begin seeding grass along the project’s frontage – along FM 762 south of Fort Bend County Club.
By Friday, no trace of the wall remained, and the frontage area and been smoothed stripped bare of trees and bushes.
Del Webb has said it plans to build the 1,520 homes divided into classes called garden homes, classic homes and estate homes, ranging in price from about $185,000 to $350,000.
In 2007, Gilmore said he was told developers would spend $22 million in amenities alone at the Richmond site, including landscaping and a recreation center of about 24,000 square feet.
Since then, Del Webb has had to kick in money with large other area landowners to build a levy north of the project along the Brazos River, in order to keep the development out of the waterway’s soon-to-be revised 100-year flood plain.
In February, Richmond officials acknowledged that the Del Webb development had been postponed.
A few weeks prior, Pulte homes had reported a net loss of $1.5 billion for 2008, compared with a $2.3 billion loss for 2007.
Pulte Chief Operating Officer Steven Petruska told analysts at the time that the company had had a 47% home sale cancellation rate in the 2008 fourth quarter.
