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Owners, not builders, need protection

Senate Bill 177 may have little to do with many of you unless you have spent part of your life – as a condo or loft owner – in a project that was under-engineered, under-inspected and poorly constructed by a national builder. Ask any Rivergate Lofts owner who has survived the last nine years of litigation and reconstructions, and you will know that it is not the builders that need protection, but unit buyers.

The owners, who bought units at Rivergate, have had their lives consumed and altered because the builder and the developer of Rivergate were unable to mitigate early-construction defects. As part of the first nondeveloper-controlled board of directors at Rivergate, I saw how well mitigation and mediation worked when most condo covenants and rules are written by the developer to give them control of their own projects until the warranty and liability periods are at their end.

Yes, Durango is home to one of Colorado’s single largest, settled construction-defect lawsuits in the state’s history. That is what Rivergate Lofts Partners LLC, GENEX Construction LLC, and Okland Construction Co. gave to the city of Durango and 82 loft owners according to the initial report by The Durango Herald (Jan. 8, 2011). Many Rivergate owners wonder what the city of Durango’s role was in inspecting the complex as it was constructed. Additionally, there are questions about how the city could have approved the siting of a complex the size of Rivergate where an old sawmill and active spring complex had existed. The rebuilding is still ongoing at Rivergate; but structurally, there are now some 240 micro-pilings stabilizing the buildings to a depth of more than 100 feet and anchored in bedrock, which replaced the original support beams sunk to a depth of no more that 50 feet bottomed in fill.

We as residents are on the final path to recovery – of both our community and the building – but we are still licking our wounds and wondering how builders need more protection by further limiting the time to evaluate faulty construction.

George Richardson

Durango



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