new challenges along down the road

Bob, Matt and I spent our first working hour together in the Trust for Urban Land's corporate offices in a tower in downtown Atlanta. For what seemed like the thousandth time I told the story: For years now, as Atlanta's economy boomed and jobs were plentiful developers had bought river fronts, hill tops and other desirable locations and made plans to build huge numbers of houses there. An army of investors and community banks had sprung up to profit from and cater to these developers and home builders. Add historically low mortgage rates and no natural boundaries to confine it, the city of Atlanta and its suburbs sprawled like no other. Then the Sub-prime mortgage problems began to infest the larger banks, which led to a full blown credit crisis that all but stopped the economic growth of this, and most other regions - the interdependent banking and home building industry machine that had evolved here began to creak then seize up completely. By January 2009, finance and housing, especially in Georgia were in a state of economic depression. I believed that this confluence of historic events created an unprecedented opportunity to build a company organized to take back the river fronts and hill tops from the development industry and conserve them for posterity. And, it just so happened that the Georgia legislator had passed a law in late 2008 giving tax credits for those who purposefully conserved natural resources - especially water shed maintenance oriented projects as a persistent drought and uncontained growth had added a water crisis to the list of problems with which the region grappled. We imagined that such tax incentives would inspire investors, who were not in the finance or home building businesses to beat a path to our door. All we had to do was perfect a mechanism to identify the development land that had legitimate conservation opportunities and which were owned by investors or banks in the most distress and we should be able to have the wind at our backs to be that change agent. We were boldly proposing to use the circumstances we found ourselves in to build a business, out of whole cloth that would change our corner of the world. Bob Kookenbach was mesmerized. What's more, he was capable of helping us. His company had worked to conserve places like Golden Gate Park and the Okefenokee Swamp and while we didn't anticipate conservation opportunities quite as unique, he easily got the vision that we could turn Atlanta into a model of conservation and perhaps even smart growth. He was delighted by the prospects. I also saw something in the gleam in his eye that I hadn't anticipated. I saw an entrepreneurial spirit in this liberal, tree hugging, environmental bureaucrat. We could use this guy and his experience to give legitimate weight to our process and he could use us to promote their environmental agenda. In the following weeks, I met with Bob, often by myself a half dozen times to pick his brain and to build an interpersonal relationship. In no time, we had collaborated on how to reliably save Belmont Downs and the handful of others that we were now beginning to identify. The credibility of the Trust for Urban Land gave me confidence and I sensed that we were now beginning to get some meaningful traction.

Possibilities of the conservation easement

Even as I slogged toward the Christmas holidays the business bug kept buzzing around. By now, Dallas, Mark and I had a clear idea about the possibilities at Belmont Downs. We were going to propose to Tim and the First Commitment Bank - the bank that held the $10 million dollar, non-performing note but on which they could not foreclose due to the bank's own solvency problems, that they reserve 10% of the property for exclusive home site but put everything else, all 400 residual acres in a conservation easement, give the easement to a land trust and harvest the tax credits and deductions for use by bank investors who had a vested interest in seeing that the bank stay in business. The problem now became, what land trust? There were lots of them chartered in Georgia but was there a perfect one? The answer came, as so many of the big ones had so far: from a remarkable source. Mark and I were eating breakfast together one rainy morning and I was looking at the survey and the appraisal that Jim Rice had given me. Having had some prior experience with appraisers, I decided to call the guy who had done the work on Belmont Downs and go pick his brain. His name was Dennis and he turned out to be an odd but remarkably articulate fountain of information on easements. he volunteered almost immediately that the Trust for Public Land and their local Director, Ken was who we needed. I liked Dennis right off as he had a big sign beside the door to his very cluttered office that read, "Nobody gets to see the Wizard, Not Nobody, not No How." he was the wizard alright. And man, was he right about Ken. The Trust for Public Land is a huge, old land trust that has as its mission "Land for People." And Ken was a disciple of the religion of conservation but he had a can-do attitude that seemed to suggest that he could think in technicolor. He listened carefully to our plans, made a few thoughtful suggestions and gave us every indication that we could count on this land trust to help execute Belmont Downs and perhaps many more. In his office in downtown Atlanta, I saw for the first time that our process could work, it could work in lots of different settings and circumstances and we could make money helping people with broken land deals either using the equestrian facilities idea or not. The outline of an evolving business was emerging right in front of us.

It seems the right time to say that i am a firm believer in a variation of the Protestant work ethic. My theory goes: work hard at something constructive and something good comes from the effort. it might not be the good you intended, but it'll be good never the less. My idea of starting a business to save broken real estate projects, and community banks in the process was picking up momentum and I was beginning to believe it, despite the fact that we had no proof that it would even work outside a couple of exotic examples