I Googled the words "tedious tap dance" and here's what the search engine returned. You get the drift - something you experience once and it's once too often.
I look forward to Tammy Sakry's ABC Newspapers report. March 15, 2011, taking hours. Sakry will have detail. She will write tightly and non-judgmentally.
This post is an impressionistic canvas. In the Hunter G. Thompson Fear and Loathing tradition; may the gentleman rest in peace.
First, buying distressed land when it was tied up in a foreclosure and with taxes and special assessments against it in a very depressed market, then paying seven million cash, is stupid.
Fear it or loath it, it's stupid.
It was not going anywhere. A bank making nothing would have taken two million.
Then, if you buy under those conditions, you realistically have to expect you are either buying long term, or you are willing to eat a true loss if you overpay and lack patience that goes with buying distressed deals in bad times. Desperate to get rid of the thing? That means ready to be plucked by fast talking ones who consult, by counterparties, by those knowing how to cut a deal favorable to themselves when dealing with impatient land speculator amateurs.
You pay regular money to somebody who repeatedly says "the dashboard is important" and he cannot show you "the dashboard" because that would be a "competitive disadvantage;" with some council members saying they have asked more than once to see "the dashboard" and gotten a shuffle.
WHY is that person still around?
That business about "competitive disadvantage" means he has a competitive advantage over the people who are paying the regular monthly money to him and taking "trust me" repeatedly as an article of faith instead of demanding factual showings in a responsible way.
A buyer is not going to say, "Wow, I can see all the other side's numbers, I see his Dashboard, I am at a competitive advantage."
A buyer is going to say what's it cost, how can I finagle the price down and the terms all as I want, how much of the other side's money and credit can I use for my risk taking instead of using my own, and how desparate is this unsophisticated counterparty.
As in your loss is how I gain.
They don't care about "competitive disadvantage" numbers. They care about bulling through whatever they can, ideally if the other side is willing to take some kind of loss on the deal in anticipation of other better future happenings.
They shop for deals, and if another deal is more attractive they take it. Not yours. Ask the VA.
But at that meeting --- "Wow, I got a peek at the dashboard!" Woo woo.
Get real.
I was wrong about Randy Backous. He and David Jeffrey have shown in the one meeting I could stand to attend a better grasp of reality than their peers. Or at least Backous is not married to having hired Landform in the first instance and liking the choice no matter what ensues.
It is not really too great a stretch of mind to paraphrase the Jerry McGuire movie line, "Show me the closings." Those two seem to be on top of that theme. Certainly the remainder of the town leaders have "Shown the money," on a regular monthly basis, and the hand's been extended not refusing any of it. Thank you. Trust me.
Now, perhaps a bit of nervousness is setting in with the regulars, seeing how much has gone out with a bunch of nice signs as the tangible return. Or will it take more, to make a strong man nervous?
Finally the drumbeat's started. Show me the closings. Show me the closings. It can only get better, or quell into repose.
Show us the closings. If only a majority would move there. The unopposed candidate who replaced Dehen showed a possible inclination to want to see closings. Soon vs. later.
That's a very healthy trend. The drumbeat may get louder if June is reached and only spiffy signs have been shown at different locations, paid for dearly in terms of all that's been spent with signage as the present tangible outcome. Perhaps it's time for another trip to Vegas.
Backous and Dave Jeffrey were both strongly saying "Incentivize the deal."
You bring in a deal, dead or alive, you get the bounty.
I think the rental thing by the ramp is a really bad deal. Yet good or bad, has it closed?
Council members seem to like what the Indiana rental housing folks propose and want to run with the ball. Even to the extent of some amenable to accepting the buyer saying a stinking 3000 sq. ft. of retail - retail that as Elvig said, "It's Ground Zero for likelihood of getting a restaurant or retail tenancy because of location." I think Dave mumbled something about somebody ought to be able to sell that rental if we have the right person.
I'd have to watch the videotape for certain, but then HRA is not videotaped, so go figure. David, if I misquoted, send an email or post a comment.
Those Indiana people are getting a favorable land price, citizen funded parking given them, and I think there's an extension of city credit, as a "loan." Yet they piss over 3000 sq. ft.?
And McGlone was adamant, let them have their way. I did not view that viewpoint as carrying the day, but Colin was there speaking his views as only Colin can. Views such as they are.
If you will not say no at some point to unreasonableness and intransigence - our way or there's no deal, then advantages will be taken one after another over the owner too desperate and unwilling to say no.
It's how buyer-developers live.
As a separate thought, carnivores eat what they can catch, what's easy prey without defenses.
Now back to Ramsey's finest.
If you are willing to cut bad deals and give a commission, why pay regular monthly money to a guy who goes out and brings back bad deals? If you want to liquidate a buyer's remorse situation, (and if there's no buyer's remorse on this one it's because of limited capabilities to understand why buyer's remorse happens), then you are vulnerable to ones experienced, who can see a deer in the headlights and don't need any "competitive advantage" in that situation by seeing the deer's agent's dashboard.
Again, get real.
If the agent is not willing to gamble on his capabilities to move properties and cut favorable deals, i.e., to go on commission, then maybe you have the wrong agent. If he will not take the deal on commission, wanting regular money instead as well as commission, indeed wanting all he can hope to get, it is saying he does not trust his own ability to move the stuff. Or he realistically does not trust the situation. The market, the times, the property, the circumstances, the attractiveness of the failed thing to thinking people not in the habit of giving away money or deal advantages. Aka, buyers with brains who've been there before.
If the agent cannot show the closings, then find somebody who can. That's always a seller's option, unless unwisely locking into grossly unfavorable long-term constraints. Do we know people who've done that?
If nobody is willing to take commission only now, even a high percentage of the take, then the market is telling you, the agent, everybody, your property stinks.
You can push the market around your way as much as you can push on a string. If the agent will not sell on commission, then he must think you are pushing on a string, and if you will pay regular good monthly money he might say "Bravo, keep at it." As the agent being handed regular money, wouldn't you have a lusty "Bravo" in you?
BOTTOM LINE: You have to have the patience to wait. You have to have some sense of when to quit on one agent and seek something better, without rat-holing lots of cash in the learning process.
If you have to go into waiting mode, and are sane, you do not give away five figure monthly cash flow for a bunch of signs and a "branding."
If you buy in a down market, you must hold, you must be patient, or you might as well not buy and let the land sit fallow because nobody else will buy it. But if you buy and are too impatient to do buy and hold then the only other game in town is buy and lose.
They bought.
They envision and want humongo build-up of tax base, and the one word I heard once, twice, all night was "restaurant." That was McClone saying let the rental housing people from Indiana taking over much of citizen funded ramp parking for venture profit "off the hook" on the 3000 sq. ft. of "retail."
It was mentioned it could be "restaurant." That word was absent from the entirety of the remainder of the meeting.
What would you like to see at Town Center? Out of curiosity, if you were allowed only one word, what would it be? Rentals? Unlikely. Rental does begin with an "R," but is that the R-word triggering your mind as good for YOU, useful in some sense, at Town Center?
NOW GET THIS: The learned council was unwilling to spend $2450 or so, as a band-aid flood relief plan for a few at risk properties this spring. Dean Kappler discussed it, and some sandbags are left in city storage from 1997 when there was flooding preparation regarding Bowers Drive. Send people a letter, was the consensus.
How about the idea, send Darren a letter? Another possibility, live out Pete Seegar's Big Muddy. Each is an option.
The few Ramsey residents unfortunately at risk for having bought housing in floodplain areas are existing long-paying taxpaying residents of Ramsey. They are not Indiana profiteers. They are voters. Citizens. Screw them over when a few thousand is under discussion, give five figures a month to some fast talking person with lots of numbers in visuals on screen for mere moments, and then the next slide, the magical mystery dashboard tour coming to take you away, the dashboard of competitive advantage which he will not show council members who have repeatedly asked because of the competitive disadvantage he tells them of doing that.
Your council, great and small.
Interestingly, Jeff Wise repeatedly was concerned about the land speculators having issues with property the west side of Armstrong. Behind Jeff's liquor store. It concerned him to the point he mentioned it twice. He should have the decency to stay away from such a conflicted situaiton.
Colin McClone? A short Todd Cook.
What else? It's going to be a disaster, with Jim Deal being the anchor of sanity in that end of Ramsey. But Jim's in it for what's good for Jim Deal, probably too for what's good for Ramsey, but the two probably are congruent in his mind, and if not, which will be his first concern?
It is a disaster. It should have been left safely in foreclosure, pending a long term market change. It was bought for too much and there is an air of cold feet in holding and a realization setting in, "This Landform guy has pulled out a ton of city cash," and it's a late recognition of something others saw sooner as it was happening.
Amateur hour. Tom Bray is not an amateur but a good lawyer. However, he's not negotiating over the dollars and cents, he's negotiating over protective contingency planning.
John Dehen was of record in the minutes last year questioning Darren Lazan's ability to handle the project, and nobody else seemed to join in that worry. Well, now half a million's been spent, at least, or short of that but close in Landform related expense, and the deals will be closing in May - trust me - all over - unless they don't.
And the Indiana rental housing folks as I understand things have an opt out if there is not a Ramsey Northstar stop by some drop-dead date they can waive, agree to extend, or use as cause to take a hike.
Great deal, eh?
______________UPDATE_____________
Darren Lazan is not the only Landform employee, and the 2011 legislative session has yet to end. However, at the meeting nobody speaking from the table spoke to that part of the overall fact pattern. Matt Look is no longer on council. When he was he noted his view of there being a benefit to Ramsey from Senator Jungbauer being attuned to available funding potentialities. To the best of my recollection, nobody spoke that way, at this meeting. Factors in council member minds but not spoken remain personal to each, and others would only have a guess if that was a factor in anyone else's mind. Look's comments, remember, were at the initial meeting where Landform first gained a foothold in Ramsey spending.