The Name Game

If you manage to slog through the entirety of Sara Rabb's front-page Sunday News Journal report on the failed 2,718 acre "Jubilee" housing development in nearby Pace -- an area distinguished primarily by an abundance of fundamentalist churches, chemical plants, and cows -- what you might be left with is the impression that a lot of grown men were playing kiddie poker using toothpicks for chips.

That didn't stop them from making 10, 20, and 30 million dollar bets with each other and dreaming of "a glorious new community with more than 500 homes valued at up to $1.5 million."

But this is Northwest Florida. They needed Other People's Money to make it seem like real life.

Enter Barney Ng, son of Walter Ng, founder of RE Loans, LLC. He claims to have invented "a new product, a six year first trust deed that could be used for both residential and commercial property alike."

Mr. Ng is no stranger to strange investments. One of his companies just unloaded the dry-docked Queen Mary which, weirdly, has been serving as a Long Beach "ghost hotel" while the California bankruptcy court sorts through the wreckage. He also recently foreclosed on the failed Olympian Brewery in Tacoma.

Now, there's a poker player everyone wants to see come to the table late in the evening! And, indeed, it seems that Mr. Ng has been left holding the bag -- again.

Ng said he never intended to be more than an investor in the project, and now, he realizes he has inherited a development that is many, many millions of dollars over budget, and now, he realizes he has inherited a development that is many, many millions of dollars over budget.
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Ng said he is in the midst of sorting through the project's financing, trying to determine which bills have been paid and which are still owed.

Reporter Rabb has some fun ticking through the various names the home town boys gave to their game. They went from "Governor's Club" to "Arcadia Mills" to "Jubilee" and now, apparently, "Contrada Hills."

Gosh, being a developer must be fun! You get to think up neat names and make 'billboards featuring boys, rabbits and girls' and stuff like that while waiting for the money to roll in from ... well, from somewhere or another.

Ng is now hoping "to get approval to create a community development district for the project, which is the subject of a hearing to be held Feb. 28 at the Santa Rosa County Courthouse."

Clearly, it's time for another name change. How about Potemkin Village?