Posted May 2, 2024, 3:44 PM
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Ham-burgher
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Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: Hamilton
Posts: 6,540
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Quote:
Originally Posted by drpgq
Anyone heard anything lately about Forge and Foster? Heard some rumours.
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The Spec has a story today about one aspect of their business. I've picked out some parts of it, may have missed a few that would be of interest but there's a lot written in that article about individual experiences and specific "resorts"
‘People everywhere are mad at them’: Forge & Foster’s tiny home troubles draw the ire of campground residents across Ontario
Hamilton-based company says court appeals underway to contest alleged building violations resulting in threatened evictions — accusing Hamilton of ‘ruining lives’ with its zoning orders — and blamed high interest rates and inflation for spiking resort fees
Matthew Van Dongen
The Hamilton Spectator
Thursday, May 2, 2024
Last year, Larry DeCorte and Jodi Ford sank hundreds of thousands of dollars into luxury RVs located along the tree-lined banks of Jordan’s Twenty Mile Creek — only to learn their four-season, four-wheeled “retirement homes” were not legal in the eyes of the government.
In the Ottawa Valley, Deanna Charlebois and dozens of other trailer campers hired a lawyer to fight a demand for doubled rental fees from a new campground owner — after they had already paid for the season.
And on the shores of Lake Huron, Betty Blasdell and other year-round trailer owners at a Goderich campground are taking the property owner to the Landlord and Tenant Board for allegedly trying to evict them “through neglect” of the newly labelled resort property.
These trailer parks are separated by hundreds of kilometres across Ontario and owned, on paper, by different named corporations — but all are linked to Joe and Mark Accardi, the founders of Hamilton-based real estate management firm Forge & Foster.
It turns out there are quite a few unhappy campers on land connected to the brothers, and their past or present management companies, Harmony Resorts and Resort HQ.
Last month, The Spectator reported on the conundrum faced by a dozen residents who bought tiny homes on wheels for up to $200,000 each from Harmony Resorts. They were told they could live nearly year-round on a rural, pond-view resort also owned by one of Accardi brothers’ companies — until the city labelled the units illegal, leaving them at risk of eviction.
Since then, the Ancaster Springs landowner has launched a court appeal against the city. But the apparently cash-strapped Forge & Foster now also faces the prospect of losing control of the tiny home resort property over mortgage default — a problem facing a growing number of the firm’s properties.
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Since writing about the plight of Ancaster Springs residents, the Spectator has heard from current or former campground dwellers across southern and eastern Ontario, including in Niagara, Caledon, Renfrew and Goderich.
All shared complaints about new campground ownership by companies linked to the Forge & Foster founders. Neither Accardi brother agreed to requests for an interview for this story, but Joe — the public face of Forge & Foster — replied to some questions by email.
In general, he emphasized court appeals are underway contesting building code violations alleged by both the City of Hamilton and Town of Lincoln related to the tiny homes on wheels sold by his companies — which Accardi argues should be treated as recreational vehicles (RVs), not permanent structures. He blames Hamilton, in particular, for “ruining lives” with its zoning and building code orders at Ancaster Springs.
He acknowledged the challenge of inflation and high interest rates in recent years on his various properties — resorts or otherwise — and added his company will be “downsizing” in the future.
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Other complainants to The Spectator are seasonal campers — think RV-living mostly over the summer months — who variously alleged spiking fees, difficulty getting deposits returned, a lack of campground maintenance or what they describe as the threat of “eviction” from longtime vacation spots to free up space for tiny homes.
You can watch such complaints pile up on social-media websites like Facebook and Reddit against Forge & Foster, and its past and present resort management companies, Harmony Resorts and Resort HQ.
“You read the (online) stories … people everywhere are mad at them,” said Susan Wilvert, who attracted more than 100 comments of outrage, commiseration and worry on her post about Forge & Foster on a Facebook group about Ontario campgrounds.
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Until recently, Forge & Foster was better known as a commercial property management and investment firm, earning praise but also criticism for buying, fixing up and flipping a portfolio of restaurants, multi-use office spaces and converted industrial buildings at one point worth more than $400 million.
But during the pandemic, face-of-the-firm Joe Accardi signalled his team was looking to cash in on the “tiny home” phenomena — not to mention a nationwide appetite for scarce affordable homes and cheap vacation properties during COVID. “We’re looking at it as affordable cottaging,” Accardi told The Spectator in 2021 as the firm embarked on a property-buying spree.
Most of their campgrounds are in Ontario. But Forge & Foster also offered investors as chance to buy a fraction of a Nova Scotia campground in 2022 and late last year Mark Accardi joined the board of B.C.-based firm Pathfinder, which invests in RV and tiny home resorts in that province.
Online presentations aimed at potential investors early this year suggest Forge & Foster at one point managed or had an ownership interest in up to 21 different RV resorts in Canada worth an estimated $100 million.
But in recent years, the company appears to have run into financial trouble.
Mortgage lenders have gone to court over mortgage defaults on more than a dozen properties in Hamilton and other nearby cities this year, including a wide swath of commercial-industrial land in the Frid Street business park.
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When asked about the slew of mortgage defaults, Accardi acknowledged the need to find solutions to “the shock in interest rates” and added the company is looking to find “new owners or managers” for some properties. “We will be continuing to find best solution for each asset,” he wrote. “We will be downsizing moving into the future.”
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Much of what happens next depends on court proceedings — including mortgage default battles in Hamilton, a landlord tenant board hearing in June and a legal challenge of Hamilton’s building department orders against Ancaster tiny homes expected to go to a court hearing May 14.
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