Homeowners’ patience wears thin with incomplete build

BY JEFF B. FLINN Managing Editor

Residents of The Cottages on Oak Park Drive wait, often impatiently, for amenities to their community to be finished, more than a year after the community's 17 homes were completed.

Missing are a lighted community pavilion, white picket fences for each home, stone “wing walls” at the entry announcing the name of the community, and installation of covered parking structure.

Three months after a trio of residents voiced their frustrations of unfinished business to Boerne City Council, they still wait while developer Dave Luciani prepares his next housing project, Siena Court.

Luciani, of Greenway Cottage Builders LLC, said he intends to make the features happen for the The Cottages residents as soon as he can.

“We know what that responsibility is, and we’re not running from them,” Luciani said in a letter received from the group. “But it is going to take a little bit more patience. It’s not saying, ‘Hey, everything's going to be done in the next week.’” Luciani began the project in 2017, developing the subdivision and building the homes in a three-year span, the last home completed and sold in October 2022.

“We were the first cottage development to be proposed and built in Boerne,” Luciani said. “The city was learning at the same time we were. We had about 10 floor plans to choose from.”

They ended up being custom homes, he said. “We had 17 contracts before breaking ground on the first home,” he added.

He said the process took about 18 months to get everything in place, and construction was hampered by an extremely wet spring and summer that year.

Then in March 2020 the pandemic hit.

“We were on construction of the first three or four cottages when the pandemic hit,” he said. “Nobody knew where things were going to go. I didn’t know if the housing market would collapse, and it did just the opposite.”

The housing boom sent prices – already negatively affected by supply shortages – skyrocketing. Lumber prices, he said, went from $350 for 1,000-board feet to an eventual $1,700.

“We put metal roofs on all our homes. That doubled. Concrete went from $80 a cubic yard to about $150,” he said. “These are approximate … but they were almost unbelievable, with what that does to a home, the cost of a home.”

He said the delays and the escalating price of building materials forced builders to eat profits as prices escalated.

“About 90 percent of the builders we know just canceled contracts,” he said. “We didn’t do that. The average (Cottages on Park Drive) price was $247,000; it ended up costing us over $300,000 a unit.”

Basically, he said, the homeowners “were getting a $325,000 for $247,000,” which was the price stipulated in the contracts signed before construction began.

Luciani said the project left him almost $900,000 in the hole as he began to set sights on developing adjoining property.

“I’m not crying, I know things happen. But that (Covid-19 and the pandemic) event was just something out of a novel,” Luciani said. “When we finished the last construction, we knew where we were, not having working capital. We met (with homeowners) and I told them what the situation was.”

Resident Jim Seamans closed on his Cottages on Oak Park home in June 2021. Satisfied with his home, he remains dissatisfied with the lack of progress on the amenities.

While all the amenities were promised to homeowners and were part of the lure to buy and move there, none of the amenities – the covered parking, lighted pavilion, white picket fences, wingwalled entry – appear in the contracts the homeowners signed with Greenway.

“There's still nothing happening to this day. Nothing tangible is happening yet,” Seamans said.

“The (plans) he has given us, for the fence and the pavilion, were given to us prior to sending him the letter,” dated October 6, 2023. “It’s promises, but no action.

“We’re looking for the simplest of advancements. We’d be encouraged if we would see something. Anything,” he added.

Luciani said he would “never walk away” from The Cottages.

“Pam and I never said, ‘We’re not doing that,’” he said, referring to his wife, Pam, with whom he owns the business. “If you only knew what we had to do, to get to where we are now – I never denied we were ever going to finish it. It’s just taking a while to get there.”

Seamans said the residents will continue to keep pressuring Greenway Cottage Builders to finish their community.

On Nov. 21, the cottage owners formally requested Luciani transfer the HOA to the residents since all the homes have been sold more than a year ago. “To date,” Seamans said, “(Luciani) has not agreed to either of these requests.”

“The commitment to work with him, to keep the pressure on, has not run out,” Seamans added.

Luciani said he will hold an open line of communication with the residents.

“The good news is, we’re talking, and trying to find a mutual way through this,” the homebuilder said. “Hopefully we get to a point that makes sense for both parties.”