I’m not saying I know any answers, because I don’t. But I keep looking at this info below and wondering whether the seventh page of this doc from the 2024 meeting notice with the 2025 Capital Reserves budget, numbered Page 5, doesn’t somehow provide some of the information on refurb info, amount available vs amounts needed for a full interior refurb (not nearly enough in reserves) and how some exterior costs plus common areas are shared between the hotel units and the VC units are split -
https://cdn2.parksmedia.wdprapps.di.../condo-association/180918-WDW-Mtg-Bk_GCAL.pdf
View attachment 987622
The $35M cost is not just for a refurbishment though - note the column header says "Estimated Current Replacement Costs". What that is really saying is if the building burned down and you needed to rebuild that wing of the Grand Californian from the ground up, it would take $35M to restore the interior of the building to a similar state to today and about $40M for everything on the Villas side, about $53M when you include the hotel side minus the hotel's interior which is not listed. Not everything is replaced during a hard goods refurbishment. The cost is probably accurate for a roof, exterior painting or pavement resurfacing since you do fully replace the roof or the pavement when those things are required. Probably less so for Common Element Renovation since not everything changes when you renovate things like the lobby or hallways.
Just to prove it to you, compare this to Bay Lake Tower, which was just refurbished (actually the BLT refurb will complete in September 2025).
https://cdn2.parksmedia.wdprapps.di...bers/condo-association/180918_BLT_11-8-24.pdf
The Estimated Current Replacement Costs for Interior Refurbishment is $81M. There is currently $36.6M in Capital Reserves and there was $45M in Capital Reserves for 2024 when the refurb started with $7.5M added through Annual Dues in 2024. So there was nowhere close to $81M available and about $16M was spent on the refurb in 2024 (some more will probably get spent in 2025). Bay Lake Tower is a much bigger resort than VGC is though, it has 281 units while VGC only has 48 units - so you would expect larger sums of money, but when you divide out the Capital Reserve funds per unit, VGC actually has more money per unit in Capital Reserves than BLT. This is what I was trying to explain in my previous post,
https://www.disboards.com/threads/t...vers-group-3-0.3952273/page-109#post-66271012
Bay Lake Tower got a pretty decent and normal hard goods refurb I'd say? They at least got a new coffee pot
Also, the sharing between the hotel side and Villas side is normal, there are 203 Hotel Units in that "wing" of the Grand Californian. The Grand Cal actually has many more rooms - but that portion of the building must be considered shared space. The Villas are responsible for 30% of the costs for shared infrastructure such as the roofing, exterior painting, etc while the hotel side is responsible for 70%.
BTW - In 2024, there was $11.2M in Capital Reserves and $2M added to Capital Reserves that year meaning $13.2M was available to them in 2024 and they spent about $2.5M in 2024, likely towards the refurb. I would assume more money would have been spent in 2025 for the refurb as well, but maybe not?
If they only spent $2.5M total or $52K per room, that might explain the lackluster renovation. Although consider that the $16M I referenced that BLT spent in 2024 for their hard goods refurb works out to about $57K per room and it still doesn't make sense.
