Looking across Water Place Park, The Residences Providence, left, towers above the Marriott Courtyard Hotel and the Westin Providence hotel next to it.

The Providence Journal / Sandor Bodo

PROVIDENCE –– Three owners at The Residences Providence, the luxury condos connected to The Westin Providence hotel downtown, say that the developer, The Procaccianti Group, has broken promises by leasing and then cutting prices on the condos.

The owners said they were told prices would never be reduced, units would never be leased, and the condos would carry the Westin brand for at least 20 years.

But leasing and price cuts have occurred, and the Westin name has been dropped to save money, they said.

“What we were sold on is not what’s going on,” said André C. Willis, who owns a two-bedroom condo on the 18th floor with his wife, Tricia Rose. Both are university professors; Rose at Brown University, Willis at Yale Divinity School. In addition, the management has failed to contribute condo fees due on unsold units to an account for condo maintenance, said another owner, former federal prosecutor Sam Perroni, of Little Rock, Ark. Rose and Willis said they were shocked to read a story in The Journal on Jan. 23 that said prices were being cut by an average of 31.6 percent.

The couple said they had been repeatedly assured, as recently as November, at an owners’ meeting, that prices would never be reduced.

TPG announced that prices were cut to help sell the remaining 65 unsold units. There are 103 condos at The Residences.

In a written response to questions, TPG spokesman Ralph V. Izzi Jr. said “the current effort promoting discounted prices for a limited time is no different than other strategies previously deployed throughout the life cycle of this project.”

But the decision to make steep price cuts was a sharp turn for the developer.

In a speech at a Providence Preservation Society gathering in September, TPG corporate vice president and legal counsel Michael Voccola derided the notion that the troubled condo market might lead to lower prices at The Residences.

“I guess that might work in a Saturn dealership,” he said at the time. “It’s not going to work here.”

Izzi has said that TPC began quietly negotiating lower prices in the last quarter of 2009, and has made 14 sales as a result.

Perroni said TPG “promised that they were completely financially sound and they would not be reducing the prices.”

“People like us, who got in early … we feel like we’ve been left out in the cold here,” he said.

Izzi said that “we have and continue to operate well within the parameters of applicable statutes, agreements and bylaws relative to condo fees … board appointments, etc.”

The owners were also unhappy with a decision to drop “Westin” from the name of the condo group. Rose and Willis said it was done without consulting the owners.

Izzi’s response: As “The Residences Providence we are able to provide a wider variety of desired amenities without encumbrances of franchise obligations.”

The hotel that is connected to The Residences is still a Westin hotel.

Perroni also said he was “distressed” that condos were leased. About 50 are leased, but TPG has said leases will not be renewed when they expire.

“It’s a luxury condominium complex, not a rental community,” Perroni said. Rose said there has been some leasing to “noisy” college students.

Jeanne DeLoe, a consultant for FirstComp, of Omaha, Neb., a workers compensation insurance company that owns two condos at The Residences, said she was elected Feb. 3 to serve as the first owner representative on the building’s management board. DeLoe said she manages property for FirstComp.

“I think we all feel the same,” she said about concerns expressed by the other owners. “We just want to keep our values, and I think we will.”

Rose and Willis said they have tried, without success, to sell their condo, and Perroni said his unit, a two-bedroom on the 22nd floor, is for sale.

But “I’m not going to reduce my condo 30 percent,” he said.

“Our decisions since day one have always been in the best interests of the building and its Residents,” Izzi wrote.

But Rose and Willis say TPG should be more open with the owners, who also have a stake in the building.

“We understand the economy is difficult,” Rose said. But “at every step, there’s been a sugarcoating” of the situation.

cdunn@projo.com