'If You Can't Sell, You Die'

Bobby Ginn gets the Sunday New York Times treatment in tomorrow's Business section, a feature on the controversial golf-community builder that reveals, among other things,  he's facing about 30 lawsuits from homebuyers and others.

Two of his developments, Tesoro and Quail West in Naples, Fla., filed for bankruptcy protection last year. He sold North Carolina's Laurelmor resort. He has 13 other resorts, some of which continue to struggle. According to the Times, there are a mere 48 homes at Bella Collina (out of a proposed 800) and only three are occupied.  At Ginn's Conservatory development, homes have been built on only five of 340 lots.

Ginn, who ran into financial troubles in the 1980s before reemerging as a developer in the 1990s, tells the Times he is "ready to sell properties in trophy locations" when the market recovers. "If you can't sell," writer Geraldine Fabrikant quotes him as saying, "you die."

-- P.F.