And time goes marching on...

There was something that I felt some urgency to get done before year's end that I hadn't gotten to and really had to apply myself if it was going to happen. I remembered that my old client, Rick S. was in the habit of spending the Christmas holidays at his home in California and I didn't want him to be gone for 2 entire weeks without having touched base with him again, so I made a pilgrimage out to see him at his office. This time, I went especially well prepared. I photocopied a dozen different articles, made complete records of the meetings that I had and even put together a notebook of my thoughts concerning conservation easements. I wanted this to be something of a technical conversation, coalescing all that I'd learned. In retrospect, I might have been using the occasion of meeting with someone I respected to demonstrate my consolidation of all that I'd learned in the past 4 months. In my own mind I passed the test because, even in from of this extremely accomplished real estate magnate, professionally trained accountant I had become a self taught authority on the subject of the tax benefits of conservation and this was saying something as we had generally found few articulate spokespersons for the field. Oh there were lots of lawyers, accountants and ecologists that knew about easements and their effectiveness but we hadn't met anyone who had actually built a business around the concept. Rick acquiescence that we were on just such a track and that the admission that he might be willing to invest in it were two goals that I had for the meeting. I thought that we had both by meeting's end as he agreed to change a appointment that he had made for the day before Christmas eve to join us at a meeting with the only investment banking firm that we could find in Atlanta that made a secondary market in conservation easement tax credits. We adjourned for the weekend confident that he was about to make us an offer to set up an office in his complex, be able to use his company's medical benefit program and maybe even collect a salary - evn if that meant giving up a big percentage of the profits from our own efforts. (OK, I'll admit that we hadn't made a dime yet, but by now we all felt sure that we'd get hired as soon as the new year began - by somebody) I can't entirely explain it but I still felt the need to have an institutional presence around me, despite all of the bad experiences that I had had with banks. I wasn't convinced that I could create a business out of whole cloth that would pay all of the bills just like a parent company would. I was about to get a very abrupt wake up call.

Monday morning of Christmas week - a pretty quiet week traditionally Mark and I met at a now very familiar, Einsteins Bagel shop to go over our presentation material for the investment bankers and my e-mail chimed. I looked at my Blackberry to see that Rick S. had sent me a message that fairly succinctly said that he'd thought about it over the weekend and that he was now unconvinced that our business proposition had sufficient promise for him to devote any more time to it. He wasn't coming to the meeting that morning and he thanked me for offering him the insights that I had but, as of now he was utterly, out. We went on to the meeting, which was inconclusive but encouraging and then went home to begin the Christmas holiday. While I was completely stunned by Rick's position, I was even more surprised by my own response. I was actually relieved. I had almost too much energy invested in seeking his approval for what I was doing and somehow it made me mad that he was being so obtuse. In no time I made my mind up that he was the one that was wrong and that we, I could do this without him or his money. I grew up a little bit that day, having weathered an emotional storm that I hadn't seen coming. I am still amazed at how I relaxed and enjoyed the rest of the week off, after such turbulence.

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