900 Kiely Developer Fairfield Residential Files Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

Real Estate Market Turmoil Comes Home to Santa Clara

In what the Wall Street Journal called "the latest casualty of the turmoil engulfing the U.S. real-estate market," Fairfield Residential, developer of the Gallery on Central Park project at 900 Kiely (the former Kaiser hospital site), filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization on Dec. 13, 2009.

Chapter 11 bankruptcy lets businesses continue to operate negotiate a plan with creditors to restructure the business or reduce debt. During this time, creditors can't collect payments and debts owed prior to the Chapter 11 filing. When the plan's conditions are met, businesses are said to be “reorganized” and no longer under bankruptcy court protection.

The bankruptcy was precipitated by the privately-held company's inability to refinance its existing debt or sell properties to recoup investments -- declining real estate value declines left the company owing more, in some cases, than the real estate was worth. This, in turn, created snowballing liabilities that could reach $1.5 billion or more, according to Fairfield's December 13 press release. Local Fairfield contacts declined to discuss the news, and calls to Fairfield's designated spokesman were not returned as of this writing.

The affects of Fairfield's financial collapse will be far-reaching. The company and its 14 affiliates reportedly have $958 million in assets and $835 million in liabilities. In 2008 Fairfield reported net losses of $108 million on revenue of $953 million. As of September 30, Fairfield had lost $49 million on revenue of $507 million in 2009.

Fairfield's top creditors are Wells Fargo/Wachovia ($130 million), Bank of America ($84 million), and Capmark Financial Group ($80 million). Capmark itself is in Chapter 11million), and in the process of selling its mortgage banking and servicing business to Berkadia Commercial Mortgage (owned by Berkshire Hathaway and Leucadia National Corporation). Other creditors include Compass Bank ($64 million), Regions Bank ($52 million), Principal Global Investors Bank ($47 million), Freddie Mac ($46 million), Cigna ($41 million), Nationwide Life Insurance ($37 million), JP Morgan Chase Bank ($29 million), Massachusetts Mutual Life ($28), and Fannie Mae ($26 million).

Fairfield filed Chapter 11 with a pre-negotiated agreement, which will enable a "quick exit" from bankruptcy, according to the company's website, "not a closing or liquidation of the business.

"The filing enables Fairfield to continue to operate our business effectively with minimal disruption and loss of productivity. Employees will continue to receive their regular wages and benefits. Company facilities will stay open. Property management and construction will continue. Goods and services purchased by the company after the filing date will be paid for in the ordinary course of business."

The company's assets will be managed in a trust whose goal is "to maximize value for the beneficiaries [creditors]." Decisions to sell or retain assets will be made based on whether a sale "would produce maximum value for the beneficiaries." In addition to its real estate and ongoing income, Fairfield's assets include the company's low income housing tax credit portfolio.

With 2,000 employees, San Diego-based Fairfield has interests in roughly 200 multifamily projects, including undeveloped land, projects under construction and recently completed developments. The company has investments in metro areas across the U.S. including Boston, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle; and has built about 64,000 apartments, condominiums and off-campus student-housing units in the U.S.

While the impact of Fairfield's bankruptcy on Santa Clara has yet to unfold, there's no question that its impact on California will be significant. The California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS) will lose $64 million, according to a recent report in the Sacramento Bee. "It's been written off at this point," CalSTRS spokesman Ricardo Duran told the Bee's Dale Kasler.

The case is Fairfield Residential LLC, 09-14378, in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Wilmington, Delaware District. You can find court documents at www.kccllc.net/Fairfield.

A New Opera Premieres in Santa Clara and a New Star is Born

Michael Taylor's new opera, "Truce of Carols," delights audiences.

At the world premiere of Gian-Carlo Menotti's Christmas opera Amahl and the Night Visitors nearly 60 years ago, New York Times music critic Olin Downes wrote, "It was an exquisite piece… a work that few indeed could have seen and heard last night save through blurred eyes, and with emotions that were not easy to conceal."

Downes' tribute can equally be paid to Michael Taylor's new Christmas opera, Truce of Carols, making its world premiere on December 5, 2009 in a production by Santa Clara's Mission City Opera (MCO). The first-ever opera premiere in Santa Clara's two-century history, the appealing show drew standing ovations at both its performances, bidding fair to join Menotti's opera as an enduring holiday classic.

Like Menotti's Amahl, True of Carols presents a famous story through the lens of ordinary lives (war's greatest, if not first, casualty). Truce tells the story of the spontaneous 1914 Christmas ceasefire on the western front that began with a German soldier crossing no-man's-land with a Christmas tree for the British.

Taylor's mastery as a singer, actor, director and conductor shows in Truce's unity and dramatic economy across the libretto, action and music. The music is both contemporary and enjoyable: richly melodic, spot-on in dramatic effect and above all, memorable. "This is extraordinary music," says MCO Founder and Executive Director Sharon Kaye.

Taylor's musical style is lyrical and easy-to-enjoy, showing influences as diverse as Romantic Italian romantic opera, as well as the 20^th century composers Leonard Bernstein, Gustav Holst, Giancarlo Menotti, Ralph Vaughn Williams, and French impressionist Eric Satie, who was contemporary with WWI. "I wanted the music to be accessible and engaging, to reflect the moment and the characters," Taylor says. "My ears are filled with Puccini, Verdi. I draw on every source."

Truce of Carols opens with an expressive orchestral exposition of two stage sets: an English garden where a young man proposes to his sweetheart, and a German country house where a family sits down to dinner. The overture that follows bypasses the musical cliché of military marches, instead evoking war's gathering clouds with unsettling harmonies and a moody, anxious melodic line. Then, like sunshine after a storm, dissonance yields to the 17^th century German carol, I Know a Rose Tree Springing at first quiet and tentative, then gloriously full.

The scene opens to trench war's stalemate. It's Christmas Eve, and the German and English armies are facing off across No Man's Land. The English keep fear and boredom at bay by playing cards, while salt-of-the-earth Sergeant Mac (Robert Snedgar) dispenses unvarnished lessons in survival – "Keep your head down and your yap shut."

A flying boot from the Germans, mistaken for a grenade, disturbs the card-playing. The boot contains tobacco and sweets from the Germans, and the erstwhile enemies start wisecracking and singing Christmas carols across the trenches.

On the German side, chaplain Gunther (Norm DeVol) decides to venture across No Man's Land with the storied Christmas tree. In a moving scene, former adversaries join together to bury their fallen comrades as Gunther intones the Latin Requiem mass. Here again, Taylor demonstrates that less is more; in this case with traditional, unaccompanied Gregorian Chant.

Truce of Carols' most interesting character is the brooding Prussian sniper Markus, a man unconvinced by Christmas pieties and holiday gemutlichkeit. Perceptively played – 'inhabited' may be a better description – by baritone Sascha Joggerst, Markus is no mere cynic. He's a soul looking into the 20^th century's heart of darkness, and instead of progress and peace, intuits poet William Butler Yeats' dark vision of the bloody and destructive century about to unfold:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.**

"Peace is a time of delusion between wars," Markus tells his comrades. "Thousands will fall and be forgotten, rows and rows of white headstones. Nothing more. Nichts mehr."

However, Truce of Carols is most emphatically not the relentless pessimism of modernist works like Wozzeck. Taylor, is at heart an optimist about the human condition, leavening tragedy with both humor and hope. "That's the human spirit," he says. "This hope lets the characters control their own destiny, even if it's just for 24, 48 hours." Indeed, as the two adversaries sit down to a Christmas dinner together, the German Lt. Gottlieb (Cliff Romig) offers a toast to "The day the trench rats defied the lion's roar, the call To War! To hell with their war!"

Fine achievement that Truce of Carols is, it would be nothing without the performers and supporting crew who undertook the formidable challenges of bringing a new work to the stage.

"The hardest thing about performing a new work for me was not having a point of reference," says baritone Jeffrey Taylor who made his debut on the opera stage as Jonathan Prescott. With leading-man good looks and a rich, expressive voice to match, the 17 year-old electrified Sunday's audience with his performance of Truce's signature aria, Lavender and Peonies.

Mezzo Carolyne Anne Jordan and Soprano Erin Lahm shone in their respective roles as Lt. Gottlieb's wife Inge and Jonathan Prescott's fiancé Constance. Their shimmering and perfectly balanced – something of a challenge because they were on opposite sides of the theater – duet, Writing Home, recalled the famous Flower Duet From Leo Delibes's opera Lakme.

Baritone Robert Snedegar exemplifies the all-round dedication of the MCO company. Truly a jack-of-all-trades, Snedgear brought verve to roles in both Truce of Carols and Amahl and the Night Visitors, in addition to designing and constructing the stage sets. Tenor Norm DeVol showed his acting and vocal versatility, first with a moving performance of Gunther's Aria, in which the chaplain insists on the humanity of even their adversaries, and later as the somnolent and deaf Wise Man, Kaspar, in Amahl.

And it goes without saying that six year-old William Voelker, a theatrical veteran who made his stage debut at 14 months, was a show-stealer as the Gottliebs' young son Kristian.

"I thoroughly enjoyed the performance, it was a very moving production," says John Peterson of Santa Clara. "I hope," added his companion, Robin Burdick, voicing the feelings of everyone in that opening night audience, "they'll be doing this again next year."

Santa Clara's Mission City Opera's next production will be Giacomo Puccini's La Boheme, Feb. 19, 21, 26 and 28, 2010. MCO's productions are made possible by the generous support of City of Santa Clara, grants from the Mission City Community Fund and the Applied Materials Excellence in the Arts program of Arts Council Silicon Valley, private donors, and ticket sales. For information visit www.missioncityopera.org, call (408) 749-7607, or email info@missioncityopera.org. Listen to Truce of Carols music.

*It's interesting to note that universal dramatic shorthand for the sacred remains the so-called archaic 1,500 year-old Latin chant of western Christianity. It appears that Dancing with the Angels has yet to displace Requiem Aeternam.

** The Second Coming, W.B. Yeats, 1921