Kent Spencer, The Province February 27, 2011 7:03 PM
Rick Wellsby’s vision of a luxurious golf resort and housing development in Chilliwack has faded like a bad putt on the 18th green. The company Wellsby founded, Blackburn Developments Ltd., has been granted creditor protection in B.C. Supreme Court with debts of about $75 million held by dozens of chagrined investors. Since 1996, they’ve been sinking money into what was supposed to be a 500-unit residential golf resort, in which they hoped to own homes they could rent or use themselves. “Blackburn has no cash to meet ongoing obligations. There is an urgent crisis,” Wellsby, Blackburn’s president and major shareholder, says in a 19-page court affidavit. Although the golf course was built, opened in 1996 and remains in operation, the residential side of the project was hit with a six-year construction delay because the City of Chilliwack refused to approve the envisaged private sewage system for the homes. It was 2002 before conventional sewage connections were in place. Wellsby, 57, who began the Falls Resort project in 1989 by assembling 137 hectares of land in the eastern Fraser Valley, says $500,000 is needed to pay bills in the next five weeks. He says the funds will be used to pay employees at the golf club and restaurant, located in the 8300-block Nixon Road. Court was told that $120,000 is owed on property taxes and another $1.26 million to Blackburn’s legal counsel, Borden Ladner Gervais. PricewaterhouseCoopers Inc. has been appointed monitor. “The purpose of the proceedings is to preserve the operations of the golf course, restaurant, banquet, pro shop and accommodations. Residential development will continue to operate,” says a statement released by Blackburn on Friday.(more)
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