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Can he deliver?
By BRYAN GILMER, Times Staff Writer ST. PETERSBURG -- The man who plans to break ground Saturday on two waterfront condominium towers worth more than $70-million declared bankruptcy three years ago and cannot demonstrate that he has ever developed a real estate project. Paul Koehler Morris, 54, is the only person listed in Florida public records with Morris Development Group LLC. The company won City Council approval to build Villas on Beach Drive, two 20-story towers with more than 200 condominiums above a three-level retail complex bigger than nearby BayWalk. "We've created a project we feel brings a tremendous amount of benefit for the community," Morris said. "You'll find we're real straight shooters."
Morris said he has financing for the project, although he won't reveal the name of the lender. He plans a gala groundbreaking Saturday, when kids will paint murals on the construction fence around the project site. But some corporate sponsors listed on a news release haven't heard of the event. A St. Petersburg Times examination of Morris' background found no real estate experience and no indication he has previously put together a deal close to this magnitude. In the late 1980s, Morris started a cottage cookie dough business in Atlanta in which his then-wife and her parents lost their investment. He also has worked as a set dresser, "independent artist" and temporary worker in Los Angeles. Morris wants to build 200 condominiums now, but three years ago he couldn't pay the rent for the condo where he lived with his girlfriend and her daughter in Port Hueneme, Calif. He filed bankruptcy in April 1999 in California, declaring that his assets were worth a total of $2,600. He got the court to wipe out $17,488 in debts. Morris told the court that he had earned $19,902 in 1998 and $7,000 in 1997. He said he owned no interest in any business. Now, three years later, Morris' fledgling company has leased a prime development site for a 99-year term from the Hamiltons, a long-time prominent St. Petersburg family. The family said he has made the first lease payment, in the neighborhood of a quarter-million dollars. The deadline for the next payment is Monday. Morris also has hired a well-regarded local architectural firm to design the buildings and produce detailed renderings. Executives of CSJM could not be reached Wednesday.
The huge Atlanta-based Beers Skanska contracting firm has signed on as the general contractor. Beers Skanska's group president Frank Fralick declined to comment Wednesday. Asked about his bankruptcy on Tuesday by the Times, Morris initially said, "That's a different person." A reporter held a business card signed by Morris next to the signature on a copy of the bankruptcy petition to demonstrate that they matched. "Oh, yeah," Morris responded. Morris said he is personally investing a substantial percentage of the total cost of the project. He said he has secured financing from an out-of-state "registered banking entity." He declined to name it. He said there are no local investors. Asked how he was able to finance a project of this size so soon after declaring personal bankruptcy, Morris said, "Just do it." Morris makes deal for downtown siteMorris arrived in St. Petersburg about 18 months ago and began scouting two or three real estate projects. Before long, he was talking to the family of retired plastic surgeon John M. Hamilton. Over several decades, Hamilton had acquired all the lots in the 400 block of Beach Drive, near the Renaissance Vinoy Resort. Family members operated businesses there, including the family real estate company Hamilton Properties. Company president Courtnay Hamilton, son of John Hamilton, said the family received some development proposals over the years but never came close to making a deal. Then Morris appeared on the site one day with an engineer and architect and began talking big. "It's a sizeable project, bigger than anything we had imagined," Courtnay Hamilton said. The family didn't want to sell the land but offered to lease it for 99 years. Lease payments were to be paid to the family twice a year for the next century. "We had a meeting of the minds very early on," Courtnay Hamilton said. "It was just a matter of producing and getting the details hammered out." Negotiations lasted several weeks, but "were somewhat informal," Hamilton said. "A lot of it was over the phone. This is really a level of business that really none of us (in the family) are used to playing on. We were more or less shooting from the hip, playing it by ear." Morris hired local lawyer Don Mastry, who guided the project through city approvals. Mayor Rick Baker said Wednesday that the city government invested nothing in the project and so had no reason to check Morris' background. "We would hope any project in the city succeeds," he said. "They went though the design and permit process and complied with all the requirements. We'll see where we go from there." Courtnay Hamilton said the family didn't know about Morris' bankruptcy until a reporter told him. "At one point very early on, we had discussed, let's go ahead and get a background check on him. For some reason it was decided we shouldn't because it could have hurt his chances of getting his financing." But he added: "Paul is . . . current on all his payments to us. We've been assured the next payment will be on time also. We certainly expect the project to go through." There were clues that Morris might not be a big-time developer. The address on his business card and in city files, "2200 Third Ave. N, Suite 4," belongs to a small, residential cottage in the Historic Kenwood neighborhood that leases for $500 per month. His Florida driver's license is registered to 340 Beach Drive NE, a small hotel next to the proposed project site. Tuesday, Morris was working in a private office within the suite of architects CSJM, with a woman named Victoria Cadena-Vega. The room was filled with samples of tile and molding, paint swatches, cabinet doors and bathroom fixtures, all in a Tuscan theme. A "Project charter agreement" hung on the wall, listing several guidelines for a successful project, including "4. There will be NO surprises." Details of past projects lackingMorris acknowledges that the Villas is his first development "under my name." When pressed to give details of his development experience, Morris said, "This is what I've been doing for 10 years." He said he worked with Makad Corp., a Syrian developer with a U.S. branch in the Pacific Northwest. Courtnay Hamilton said Morris told the family he had "worked for the largest developer in the world. An outfit out of Egypt or something, for many years." Morris said Makad head Elie Mouakad could be called as a reference. Several company officials did not return repeated calls The Business Journal of Portland, Ore., published a special report on the Makad group of companies and Elie Mouakad in 1994. That article said Makad sold local investors on ambitious projects, but few came to fruition. Some investors lost all their money, and Makad was sued over a bank loan. The firm now has offices in Vancouver, Wash. When Morris was asked which projects he had been in charge of at Makad, he named some, but without details. For example, he said he was the designer and developer of a "fertilizer plant . . . outside Portland, Ore." But he was unable to say in which city the project was located. When pressed for more specifics, he quickly ended Tuesday's interview. He declined to comment further when reached by phone late Wednesday. Makad Corp. has proposed developing such a plant in Bardmoor, Ore. -- 165 miles east of Portland. But construction is not scheduled to begin until May. Jill Miles, regional development officer for Oregon Economic and Community Development, said she has worked closely with that project. "I've not met a Paul Morris," she said Wednesday. Parts of Morris' work history that he didn't mention are easier to confirm. When his landlord sued him for unpaid rent in 1999, Morris responded with a handwritten declaration under penalty of perjury that his employment history included short stints at Universal Studios Hollywood theme park, Knott's Berry Farm, a bankrupt company called Jett Productions and lengthy periods of self-employment as an "independent artist" dating to 1983. Morris' former live-in girlfriend, Linda Napolitano of Oxnard, Calif., said she knew he tried lots of business endeavors, but not real estate projects. They were together for five years, ending in August 1999. "He was trying to get a children's (TV) program going," she said. "And he was writing four or five children's stories. It was very disappointing that we couldn't get it going, but he has a tremendous talent, an ability to draw up a picture and get something going." She said she worked with Morris at Universal Studios' California theme park in 1998 and 1999 where they designed and painted sets for Halloween Horror Nights. Napolitano said she believes Morris left her because she didn't have physical characteristics he preferred and she didn't have any money with which to fund his business ventures. She and Morris remain friends, she said, though she hasn't heard from him recently. A former wife of Morris' shares Napolitano's high opinion of his artistic talent. She also said he wasn't involved in real estate. "He has good visual, conceptual skills," said Pamela J. Reeves of Atlanta. "He draws beautifully and decorates beautifully." She said she met Morris in June 1986 at their 20-year reunion for Headland High School in East Point, Ga. They had not known each other in high school, but they began dating and married in May 1987. She said Morris persuaded her and her parents to "set him up in the cookie business," to market a gourmet cookie dough with granola, carob and nuts. She said Morris created the recipe, designed the tubs the dough was sold in and persuaded 150 Atlanta area supermarkets to carry the product. The couple bought a condominium together in November 1988, but three days before Christmas, Reeves said, she returned home to find that Morris had moved out.
When she checked the cookie company bank account, "The bank said, 'Mrs. Morris, a $2 check won't clear that account.'" The couple settled their divorce amicably in May 1989, with Morris agreeing to pay his former wife $12,500 in monthly installments toward their joint debt. She said he paid $500 per month. Told of Morris' condominium proposal, Reeves said people dealing with him should do their research. "I wasn't smart enough to do that," she said. "I just wanted a happy ending. It amazes me how he can talk such a great game." -- Times staff researcher Caryn Baird and staff writer Sharon Bond contributed to this report. Bryan Gilmer can be reached at gilmer@sptimes.com and at (727) 893-8848.
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These older buildings in the 400 block of Beach Drive near the Renaissance Vinoy Resort are to be torn down to make way for the Villas on Beach Drive condominium / retail project. The map, oriented to correspond with the photo, reflects the layout Morris Development Group got approved by the city Environmental Development Commission. The St. Petersburg City Council agreed to give up an alley running through the site, as well as a 17-foot-wide swath of Bay Street to make the project possible.
