Chapter 04

Land Baron

Pat’s class schedule is heavy and very full. However he doesn’t have any classes until after lunch on Wednesday, so he doesn’t need to go to the college until 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday. He uses the morning to catch up on many other tasks and to relax a bit. One part of this is to have an early lunch in one of the city diners near the college. The place concerned is very busy in the afternoon and very empty in the morning. It started life in the 1950s and it still has the same customer area decor with built-in booths along the walls as well as tables and chairs in the centre area. Pat has a favourite seat in the rear booth because no one can see him in the booth when he sits in it with his back to the main area while against the wall. Thus he can take his time eating while he reads without anyone interrupting him.

One Wednesday in mid January three men sit in the booth behind Pat soon after Pat sits down in the booth with his plate of sandwiches and a bottle of drink. He’s finishing his first sandwich half when he feels the seat and partition shake while the men take their seats. He continues to quietly eat and drink while reading. He can hear the low talk of the men in the background and he ignores it until one of them raises his voice a little and his words have Pat stop reading to listen to them after the man says, “What makes you so sure you can steal the property for a song?”

One of the other men replies, “Grogan relies on income from campers visiting the forest to pay his taxes and utilities. But I’ve got people seeing to it he can’t get any campers to stay there, so he’s been without income for six months. His property tax is behind, so when the next tax bill goes unpaid we can apply to the county to get the place for the back taxes.”

The first man says, “So you can get the land cheap. Why do you need us to invest in the project?”

“His land is the key to making a great profit, but the profit comes from the other land I’ve already bought. However, I over extended myself when I got a chance to buy more land cheap. So I need investors to fund all of the infrastructure work that needs to be done. What I paid for the land to date is about half of what it’ll cost to complete all of the construction, so I want to raise as much again to pay for the building after I buy Grogan’s property. The big cost will be the roadworks.”

The third man asks, “Why is the cost of the roadworks so high? I see you have it as about a quarter of the whole project. Most roads aren’t that expensive!”

“The majority of the roads are cheap, but the key is the construction of the interchange on the Interstate Highway. The state planners don’t have it in their schedule and they see no need for it. Also, by paying for it we have it as a private road and we can restrict usage to our clients. We can build and sell housing there to people living in the city due to being able to get on the Interstate and get to work in a fraction of the time it takes to use the county road through the area. The county road is about four times as long and is a low grade road, which is why no one working in the city lives in the town.”

Pat quietly listens to their discussion while he finishes his lunch. He waits for them to finish their food and leave before he gets up to go to his class while thinking on how he can find out where the place is so he can stop the men from screwing over this guy Grogan for their profit.

Finding the Place

The next evening Pat has an opportunity to ask Ann about who to talk to in order to locate a property he heard about coming on the market. She gives him the address of a house designer she knows is good and she says, “I know Jack has access to an electronic copy of all the properties in this part of the state with a list of who owns what. Go see Jack.”

On Saturday morning Pat goes to the address to look for Jack Lovett, a house designer. However, the address is a small strip mall with all of the shops turned into offices for a number of companies with Lovett in the name. There’s a young woman sitting at a desk just inside the entry area, so he says, “I’m looking for Jack Lovett. Which office is the right one?”

The woman smiles as she says, “Which Jack are you after? We’ve six and all are related. Do you have a number or a middle name?”

Pat laughs as he says, “I was told Jack Lovett, no number or middle name. The Jack I want designs houses.”

The woman smiles and points down the walkway to the right as she says, “The fifth door on the right is the one you want. There’s a house painted on the front of the shop.”

Pat walks down to the indicated office, opens the door, and walks in. There’s a woman in her late twenties sitting at a desk. She looks up as she asks, “How may I help you?”

“I’m looking for Jack Lovett, the house designer. Am I in the right place?”

She says, “You’ve found me!” Pat’s eyes go a bit wider so she adds, “The first born son in the family is always named Jack. When I was born the doctors told my mother she couldn’t have another child, so I’m Jack as in Jacqueline but shortened to Jack because I was a real tomboy while growing up.”

Pat laughs as he says, “I’m Pat Nolan. I need to locate a property somewhere near here but I don’t know where it is.”

“That’s odd! What do you know about it?”

“The property is owned by a fellow named Grogan. It’s beside a forest area and an Interstate road, also Grogan is behind in his taxes. He makes his living by renting out campsites but someone is interfering with his business so they can steal the property for back taxes. I want to stop it.”

“I think I know the property, but let me check a few things,” and she turns to her computer. A few minutes later she says, “I was right. You’re after Mike Grogan’s property. It’s the only one that fits the bill. I know him. Want to spend the afternoon driving down to see him?”

Pat nods yes, gets out his phone, calls Rosa to tell her what he’s doing, and he follows Jack out to her car. He asks, “Where can I park my bike so it’s safe?”

Jack says, “Push it into the mall and tell Jenny why. She’ll see it’s safe until either you collect it or she locks up before we get back. I’ve got keys if we’re that late getting back.” Pat does as told and they’re soon on their way south to visit Mr Mike Grogan.

Visiting

It’s almost lunch time when Jack turns into a dirt road with a sign saying, ‘Grogan Camp Grounds’ and a second one below it saying ‘Closed.’ A little way down the road Jack stops beside an old wooden house. They get out to meet an elderly man on the porch of the house.

The man says, “Jack Lovett, what brings you down here? And who’s this with you?”

“Mike, this is Pat Nolan and he’s here to talk about your land.”

“Well, since the EPA people closed me down with their crap about the waste disposal I’ve got no income. So I’m being forced to sell. The only offer I’ve had is by Bob Clinton, for about a quarter of what it’s worth.”

“Does Clinton own a lot of land in town?”

“Not really. But he owns a lot of land on this side of the town. Why?”

“I’m here because I heard a man trying to get people to invest in a big development project. The key to it is getting your land for the back taxes when the next bill goes unpaid and then putting a road through here to an exchange they’ll build at the Interstate behind your land.”

“Damn, he’ll have to destroy my section of forest to do that. If I sell to you what will you do with it?”

Pat slowly shakes his head while he says, “I hadn’t planned to buy the land, just to offer help to keep the other fellow out.” He thinks a bit then adds, “If the money was made available what would you do with this land? But keep in mind it has to stop him from putting the exchange in.”

Grogan says, “Let’s get in Jack’s SUV and have a look at the property.”

Except for a large chunk of private forest land beside the public forest there isn’t much else to look at. They end up at the south-east corner to look at the Interstate going by. The public forest to the north kills any work on that side and there’s a ridge a bit to the south which stops Clinton if they can block his access right here. There’s a crop field immediately to their south so Pat asks, “Do you think your neighbour will sell us the two hundred yard strip of land beside yours? That’ll give us control of all of the land to access the Interstate.”

“I’ll call him and see.” On the way back to the house Mike calls the man and he arranges for him to come to talk to them. They have a cup of coffee while they wait for Jim White to arrive.

After Jim walks in and they explain the situation to him Jim asks, “Will you buy the whole strip from the Interstate to the county road that’s three hundred yards wide? If you do I’ll sell it for a bit below the going rate.” Pat opens his mouth to ask why, but Jim adds, “When they re-arranged the counties, way back when, my place ended up straddling both. That strip is all that belongs in this county. If I sell it to you I don’t have to deal with two counties in the future.”

Pat sighs and says, “I can arrange the money to buy both properties if I have to, but what can I do with them? I’ll have to do something to be sure Clinton can’t organise political pressure to claim it as public land.”

They spend some time talking about prices and how to arrange to buy both properties without letting Clinton know what’s happening to them. Mike gets up to make some lunch of sandwiches and soup for them while they brainstorm about the land.

After lunch Mike gets out a large scale contour map of the area then he marks the two properties on it. He points at one spot as he says, “Can’t do anything with this because it becomes a swamp whenever there’s a heavy rain or even a long period of light rain.”

Something about the way the area is surrounded by ridges catches Pat’s eye. He sits back and thinks for a few minutes before he asks, “What are the restrictions on what we can do with the river and streams on the property?”

Jim looks up and says, “The state won’t let us dam them. Why?”

Pat grins, “I was thinking about getting some experts in to work the river banks over to encourage fish and incorporate a few ponds in it. If we make it into a nice place to fish we can charge people to come fishing. Also, the stream that goes through the swampy area, if we can dig it out a bit we can create a good artificial lake there for swimming and the like.”

Mike says, “You’ll flood the road.”

Jack responds, “Who cares, it’s our road. We’ll build another.” They all laugh at her enthusiasm.

“Jack, if we were to build some housing out here we want to sell to people as a retirement or weekender house how big should the lots be?”

They look at Pat as Jack says, “You’d want lots of two hundred by about a hundred and fifty feet each, or bigger. Why? What are you thinking of doing here?”

“Looking at this map the area divides into natural areas.” He touches the map, “First is the forest area which Mike wants left as forest. I think it’ll be better for us if we do leave it as forest.” His finger moves on, “We’ll need to put a road in somewhere and that will divide the land into two while the river also splits the land into two. So, if we put high-end houses up between the road and the Interstate with one row across the back of the area we totally close down Clinton’s plans. We then run another row across the side of the property so they back onto Jim’s land. A road in front of that row of houses sets where our road runs straight from there to the county road. We can run some side roads up toward the forest for more housing in the estate area. Then we can also landscape the swamp area to make a little lake, landscape the river banks, and turn the area around the lake into a decent camp-ground and recreational park area. The area bound by the two roads, Jim’s place, and the river can have a sewage treatment plant on the front corner along with some commercial properties along the road.”

Jack grins as she says, “Let me play with the concept and do some plans for you. I think you’ve got a good idea there. Build one of those sewage plants that ends up with drinkable water and fertiliser pellets so you can make money selling the fertiliser.”

Pat nods agreement as he adds, “If you’re talking about the ones I saw an article on we can build a few small plants and start them up as the need for their services rises. That way we’ll have less county taxes to pay. We take water out of the river near the bridge after where we have the fishermen at work, treat it and pipe it to the houses, pump the waste through the plant, and let the treated water flow back to the river a bit downstream to keep the downstream water impact low. All of the houses are to use high efficiency water and power systems. Each place can be powered by solar panels and vertical axis wind turbines like the Savonius style ones. We’ll make the whole community self-sufficient.”

They go on their different ways after some more talk and all agreeing to keep the plans secret. Jack will do concept plans for Pat and he’ll talk to Melanie about creating some companies as well as organising to buy the land.

Preparations

The following Wednesday morning Pat is in Melanie’s office talking to her about creating some companies for businesses he wishes to start. This is a common request so the law firm has a number of ‘shelf companies’ they own. Due to the time it takes to create and register a new company many lawyers create and register companies they keep ‘on the shelf’ until a client needs one because it’s faster to change the details of an existing company not yet operating than it is to create a new one; that’s why they’re called ‘shelf companies.’ The company names are usually odd ones to not tie up a name likely to be used by a client. Melanie has a list of the companies like this the firms owns and can provide to their clients. She hands the list to Pat while saying, “See if there’s one that appeals to you.”

He scans the list of twenty or so companies while wondering how they selected the names and if any are being recycled. He sees one name which has him wondering how it got there. Most of the names are weird like ‘XGHJ,’ but the one he likes is named ‘Park It.’ So he says, “I like Park It, please set it up as a limited liability company with the pi symbol for its logo. I’ll also need some sub-companies it’ll own for the project.”

They talk some more to come up with a list of the companies and what they’ll do. The head company can be immediately set up and start to do business while Melanie takes her time with organising the others from initial paperwork. The full list of companies Pat decides on is:

Park It (PI): head company to buy the land and be in control of it.

Park It Commercial (PIC): to manage the retail business area.

Park It Development (PID): to do all of the construction work.

Park It Estate (PIE): to manage the housing estate area.

Park It Estate Home Owners Association (PIE HOA): a non-profit organisation to give the residents a say in the daily running of the housing estate area.

Park It General Services (PIGS): maintenance for all of the areas.

Park It Forestry (PIF): to manage the forestry area.

Park It Recreations (PIR): to manage the recreational area.

Park It Treatment (PIT): to manage the water and waste treatment plants.

This way each operational area will have its own legal company to do the management without impacting the others. PID will close down after all of the construction work is done, but it allows for one company to manage the construction phase. Once an area is finished the costs will be charged to each sub-company as their part of the property is moved to the sub-company. The paperwork for all of the sub-companies will lock their rules into place in a way any changes requires the approval of the PI owners first. In most cases it won’t matter because they’re wholly owned subsidiary companies. However, it’s important for the HOA because it stops a group of residents from taking control of the estate. The HOA paperwork also locks in the rates they can charge, how the bulk of the income is distributed for the services and maintenance, and a few other rules to control the HOA management. Finalising all of the paperwork for the sub-companies takes a few months, but that’s not an issue because PI is operational the next day and PID is done first to allow for the work to start as soon as plans are approved by the county management.

It takes Melanie two months to organise all of the paperwork for the other sub-companies, but they aren’t needed until the development work for the area they relate to is done and ready for them to actively use it.

Thursday evening Pat signs papers to transfer the money to buy the land into the new bank account for PI. The bank account also has Jack as a signatory so Jack can arrange the land transfers the next day.

Although Jack hasn’t finished all of the plans yet she drops in a plan of the final concept on Thursday evening. It has the details for all of the areas except the recreational area because she’s still working on the layout of the landscaping work and the camp-ground area.

County Clerks

The next day Jack is with a local lawyer representing both Mike and Jim in the land sales. The papers are signed by Pat and Melanie, and now they have to be signed by the current land owners. When they sign the sales contract Jack hands over the certified cheques she has for them. The three of them visit the bank to deposit the cheques. Mike stays to deal with the paperwork for paying off his small mortgage and to get the property deed while Jim and Jack go up the street to the county offices.

It’s just on lunchtime when they get there and they pass a woman on her way out of the office when they walk in. Jim goes to the counter and says, “I want to pay my taxes up to date.”

A woman sitting at a desk looks up, turns, looks at another desk, and another woman sitting at a desk further back says, “May just left for her lunch.” So the first woman stands, walks to the counter, and handles the payment for Jim. After the taxes are paid he shows her the contract, his deed, and they process the property transfer to the Park It company.

They’re almost finished with Jim’s transactions when Mike walks in. He shows Jack the deed and clearance from the bank while they wait for Jim’s work to be done. When Mike pays his taxes the clerk smiles as she says, “May will be sorry she missed seeing you pay your taxes, Mike.” The other woman laughs at the comment.

Mike asks, “Why’s that?”

“Her Uncle Bob has her watching certain properties with back taxes and yours is one of them. She won’t know you’ve paid until she checks the next monthly list of properties with taxes due.” The woman’s smile is larger when she processes the transfer of Mike’s property to Park It.

With both deeds in hand Jack says, “Now I want to merge Mike’s land into the deed for Jim’s land.” She has the paperwork with her and hands it over with the deeds plus a cheque for the fees. Then she waits while the clerk processes the papers to combine the properties and write a new deed. Both Jim and Mike leave because they’re no longer needed there.

While processing the paperwork for the merger the clerk says, “This means the title for Mike’s place won’t exist now. I wonder how Bob and May will react when they find it doesn’t exist by name or deed number?” Both the clerks and Jack laugh while Jack wonders why these two women don’t like the other clerk.

Forty minutes after arriving there Jack leaves the county offices to get a quick lunch before returning to the offices to see the County Planning Engineer. She walks in with a bundle of plans and the new deed.

Although the engineer has been in the job for only three years Jack knows him from other projects within the county. Entering his office she says, “Hi, Dave. I’ve got a large project here. I’ve got the full concept plan and the detail plans for the first few stages, but I want to get started while I work on the details for the final stage.” She hands over the plans for the full project as she shows him the deed matches the area of the plans.

Dave looks over the paperwork and says, “OK. Everything you have here is within code. However, the zoning doesn’t match what you want to do in some areas. Knowing the commissioners I expect they’ll pass the zoning changes you want, but you won’t be able to build any houses or the retail stores until they approve the zoning changes. The next meeting I can get that to them is in four weeks as they’ve just had this month’s zoning meeting. If you don’t mind taking the risk I can approve all of the work for the infrastructure to be done while you wait for the zoning, because that’s within the current zoning for that land.”

“I figured there might be a delay on the zoning changes. That’s why I set it up with the stages. I’ll be over a month just doing the first stages to put in the perimeter fences, the road, the bridge, the treatment plants and pipes for both the water and the sewerage. I don’t expect any troubles with the zoning, just the time taken to get the approvals.”

Dave smiles, signs off on the infrastructure work, issues the permits for the approved work, starts the file on the project, and he lists it for the next meeting to handle zoning changes and developments. Jack leaves, happy to have the permits to get the work started.

Developing the Land

Pat leaves the project to be managed by Jack and Melanie while he focusses on his studies. However, in mid March he visits the site to see how things are going. He does notice the property looks untouched from the county road, but it’s different once he gets further into the property.

The bulk of the work to date has been on the southern part of the property on what used to be Jim’s land. The area has been levelled for most of it, the road prepared, a wide solid bridge constructed, and both of the treatment plants are under construction. However, they’re together near the river. So Pat asks Jack about the change.

Jack simply says, “We need to have both places monitored all of the time. With them co-located we can have a smaller staff doing the job. Also, with the way the lake is now the bulk of the campers and casual visitors will be closer to the county road, so having the retail shops there makes more sense. The residents will drive to them, so this puts them in walking distance of the temporary people. It also means we keep the nice river fishing area quieter with most people closer to the access road. I’ll have some quiet picnic areas between the lake and the river as well.” She goes on to explain how the new location makes it cheaper to put the treatment plants in and cheaper to operate. With the water treatment plant right beside the road the sewage treatment plants aren’t obvious, thus few will notice them. These new plants don’t produce any odours, so the residents shouldn’t notice them or complain. She adds, “We’ve all of the pipes in where the side-walk will be on Jim’s side of the road with the pipes to the other streets under the road. Each lot has a connection for each of the utilities. The fencing crew are putting in the perimeter fences for this side of the river right now, starting at the forest corner to stop the illegal hunters entering from the Interstate rest stop area. We’re matching the twenty foot high forestry service fence along the whole perimeter. The fences between the houses will be the same style, but only six feet in height. The landscaping of the river and lake is finished. But we still have to do the rest of the recreational and camping area. We’ll finish the road through to the county road by the end of the month.”

Pat smiles as he says, “So you expect to be selling lots soon?”

“Yes. The plants will be operational at the same time. The county has given us permission to move the gate across the county road to just past our road when we finish the intersection. Thus the perimeter fence will stop illegal hunters along that road due to them not being able to park close to the forestry area without being seen and reported. The next two weeks will make the work here very obvious. Unlike how we’ve been able to keep most of it from being seen by outsiders up to now.”

“I expect that’s when a few people will start screaming. I’m surprised we’ve been able to keep the project hidden this long.”

Jack smiles, “Having the active deed as being the one for Jim’s land is helping to hide where the work is. Did you finish the HOA rules?”

Pat grins as he replies, “Melanie finished the land deeds and HOA rules before she finalised the paperwork on them. Thus the first form of the rules is what we want. The people buying the land have to ensure the construction is by properly licensed and approved people, also the work is along the lines we want with water and energy efficiency. The HOA fees will be a percentage of the property rates for each lot and they’ll have to pay almost all of it to the maintenance company who do the work on the common areas. Some people won’t like how there won’t be any paying positions in the HOA, so they’ll have to be volunteers doing it for free. Plus the by-laws restrict what they can control and any changes require approval by the head company as well as the residents. I don’t want any would-be dictators taking over out here. Some people won’t like the rule they can’t rent out their house at all. They can let friends and family live there free, but they can’t charge them any rent or for utilities.”

Jack laughs, “Good. We want to keep this as a prestigious area. By the time the road is done we’ll be ready to sell lots. By the end of April the retail areas should be ready to operate. We’ll be ready for day visitors to the recreational area by May first, but the rental holiday housing and the mobile home area won’t be ready until June first. Camper areas are ready to rent on April first. So we’ll be getting some income in for you soon.”

Pat smiles while saying, “Good. You’ve spent almost all my money.” They both laugh, but they recognise he’ll make a very good profit later.

Problems?

The day after Pat visits the site Jack is checking on the fencing beside the Interstate road. While she’s talking to Harry, the supervisor, he waves up along the fence as he says, “Let’s watch the fun.” She looks along the fence to the rest stop to see four men standing beside a pickup truck while staring at the twenty foot high fence. The men walk to the fence and shake it to see how strong it is, then they look down along the fence to where the crew are putting up more fencing. They get back in their truck and drive away. Harry adds, “While we were still up near the rest stop they’d come and ask us what’s going on. But we’re now so far away they don’t want to take the walk. I think you should put a few cameras in to record what they may do. The corner is well anchored and secured to the forestry fence, so they won’t be able to separate them or climb either fence. But they can still cut a hole in the fence, so you should keep an eye on the area. A battery camera with Wi-Fi to the security staff should do. The same will be true of the fence beside the road when we get it done.”

Jack grins and says, “The county have approved us moving the gate down to near the intersection. The same will work there and few will want to make the long walk to get around the fence.” She stays to watch them turn the corner and start along the boundary with Jim’s farm. Two crews are at work: one is putting up the twenty foot high perimeter fence that’s buried two feet into the ground while the second crew is putting in the six foot high fences separating the house lots. The interior fences come from the perimeter fence at one of their poles, so the first post and panel is put in by the first crew to help brace the main fence. That makes the work of the second crew a lot easier, so the second crew work faster.

The next area Jack checks on is the crew working the machine laying the continuous gutter. The cement is tinted to look like sandstone, also the house driveways are all pre-planned and marked, so it’s a simple job. It’s just there’s a lot of the gutters to do before they put in the final surface for the road. It looks like the gutters will all be done by the end of today.

When Jack nears the lake to check the landscaping around it she sees the foreman of this crew is involved in a heated discussion with a man beside a car parked on the old road to Mike’s house. Due to the work for the landscaping the road ends a little past where the car is stopped.