new and different activity

Not altogether sure where this would lead, Matt and I resolved to call an odd, former client of ours who had been a real estate developer when we knew him several years ago. The real estate economy had gotten so bad and he was approaching retirement age then, neither of us knew if he would be much help. As it turned out, he was gracious and charming and delighted to hear from us. We went to lunch and he told us the amazing story of how he'd seem the coming collapse and had managed to sell off most of his properties and kept millions of dollars of profit. He went on to say though that he had still got caught with one tract that he had bought from a farmer, gotten rezoned and permitted to build 50 or 60 houses but had done nothing else to the 25 acres. He liked our idea and offered to try to work with us. He also offered to pay for lunch, a gesture that I appreciated but Matt grabbed out his (our) corporate American Express card and paid the bill as I grimiced at the unnecessary expense. Despite the fact that the tract size was small we agreed to take a look.

On a frightfully cold afternoon we found the very pretty woodland tract, nesteled between 3 ugly and, more or less broken subdivisions. When I was in the 7Th grade, our class read a book called "On the Beach." this was a terrifying account of the end of the world. Armageddon had occurred and a group of survivor sailors on a submarine was traveling around the US coastline dropping one another off at their home states so that they could die at home of the radiation sickness that would eventually kill everyone. The images of the desolation were so vivid that I'm reminded of that book occasionally. Today was one of those days. The builders in those adjacent subdivisions had just walked off the job months earlier. Derelict tools and half finished projects were everywhere. There were no workers anywhere, just tattered marketing tenants, falling down sighs of welcome and muddy asphalt. But while standing in a never to be used drive way and looking at our prospective site I saw something amazing. I saw 3 of the largest deer I had ever seen. Horse size really and prancing playfully in the woods. They were magnificent and I remembered in a flash that when we're successful we'll be saving their habitat. I left there resolved to find a way to get this project to work, to help this old friend and to hopefully see those deer again.

I had relationships of all kinds in my years at the bank and on the following Friday afternoon, as Matt - again had decided that he need the afternoon off I got my Rolodex out and started to see who else I could get some inspiration from. I had called Dave Kookenbach at the Trust for Urban Land and, as I feared the site that we'd just seen was too small for his group to consider. I had to find another land trust to help us with such smaller scaled opportunities. My first call was to Jim S. the executive director of the Atlanta office of a national environmental advocacy group. It seems an extraordinary coincidence that I had one, longstanding relationship with a legitimate expert in the field I found myself in so I was bound to determined to lean on him for advice. The advice I really wanted was "who else can I put into my net work." He gave me 3 names of influential people. Hans was the director of an environmental "think tank" associated with the University of Georgia. (as my daughter, Mary had graduated from there and I had grown very fond of that place, I was warmed by that lead.) Jim also told me about the largest Georgia land trust that had a sister organization in Alabama. I made a special note that this group, The Trust for Georgia Land also operated in western North Carolina, my home state and familiar also. The director of their coastal initiatives was a close friend of Jim's and he entreated me to call him with our most thorny problems as he was a "genius." Third, he told me of the Director of a land trust in North Georgia that was small but resourceful and was run by an ex-Navy Seal who was a character that I would either like or not. Lastly, he mentioned a very small trust in Gwinnett County - the county that I had worked in the last 7 or 8 years of my banking life, so I was particularly familiar with the human resources that group used and since the woodland tract that was now our next best hope for an engagement was in Gwinnett County, I conscientiously wrote down the director's name and contact information. I thanked Jim for his help and called each of these people even though it was now late on a Friday afternoon. I was only able to get Hans at the think tank in Athens but he was just a s helpful as Jim knew he would be and he gave me much food for thought. What he gave me in sufficient measure though was encouragement.