Something didn’t seem right at the Four Seasons Resort and Club Dallas at Las Colinas.
Valentina Burton, The Fortune-Teller of Dallas, didn’t pay it enough mind. She was getting ready to give readings to New Year’s Eve guests with her business partner, David Alexandre, a palmistry and Tarot practitioner.
So she didn’t get a vibe that within days, the owners of this opulent, 400-acre hotel, spa and golf club in Irving, Texas, would be facing foreclosure like the overextended developers of a Florida condo-plex.
“However, there was a feeling of emptiness and a kind of quiet,” she said. “That did strike me as odd, as it was New Years’ Eve.”
U.S. Bank NA recently scheduled a forced sale of the resort on Feb. 2, seeking repayment of a $183 million loan.
The owner is Los Angeles-based investment firm BentleyForbes, whose president, James Kasin, speaks as if a looming foreclosure is just business as usual.
“The filing of the foreclosure posting is something that BentleyForbes was expecting as it is a standard administrative process required by lenders,” he said in a statement. “BentleyForbes remains in proactive discussions with its lenders and is committed to working out a successful financial structure.”
BentleyForbes acquired the property in 2006, and has since poured tens of millions into upgrades to maintain its AAA Five Diamond Rating. It is, after all, host to the PGA Tour’s HP Byron Nelson Championship.
But apparently, BentleyForbes didn’t anticipate the Great Recession of December 2007 that is still crushing owners of luxury resort properties. Here are a few other examples:
Whenever I go to a luxury resort, I get this vibe that I don’t belong. That the people there are too rich for me. But then I’ve never defaulted on a loan or faced a foreclosure like BentleyForbes — a name that sounds expensive, but looks, typographically, like an exotic car crashing into a magazine stand.
I wanted to know what kind of vibes Burton and Alexandre were getting. In addition to occasional gigs at the Four Seasons, they give regular readings to rock stars, celebrities and entrepreneurs at Dallas’ tony ZaZa hotel. They are better plugged into the economy than most economists, and lately, they are sensing that things are getting better.
“We scraped bottom at the end of December,” said Alexandre. “Things are about as bad as they are going to get By Easter or so, that’s when things astrologically open up But it’s an uphill climb.”
I requested a reading on BentleyForbes’ chances of averting a foreclosure. To do this, Alexandre needed the exact date the hotel opened. Turns out it was April 1, 1986, and Alexandre didn’t make one joke about this being April Fools Day.
Alexandre did two separate Tarot readings for me that came to the same conclusions. For the sake of BentleyForbes’ embattled management, I’ll summarize some of the cards, not in exact order, from these two readings.
The first card, inquiring about the overall situation, was the Two of Pentacles. Alexandre said this means, “financial obstacles and embarrassing news. Hello!”
His next drawings came in triplets.
The final card Alexandre drew was the World: “Great success for all involved. A new chapter begins.”
“It is obvious that BentleyForbes is scrambling to come up with an amicable union that won’t pick their pockets,” Alexandre concluded. “All the cards are saying that to stay in ownership they must do a deal with someone who is probably based overseas and is already in the same business, luxury spas and resort living.
“This new partner will insist on a change in management and…a large share of the profit…If they take swift action they can avoid this catastrophe. It is the best possible solution given the current economic climate.”
Al Lewis: 212-416-2617, al.lewis@dowjones.com or .
