'T' on our Forehead

Betinha, Dean Bingham (Agracel president) and I were in NYC for a National Association of Industrial & Office Properties (NAIOP) conference. It is a great opportunity to exchange and learn what others in the industrial real estate market are facing and the one organization that has helped me to learn what to do/not do. Just a couple of those ideas have more than paid for ALL of the future NAIOP conferences that I could possibly attend.

The first night, prior to the conference, my wife and I went to an upscale fresh fish restaurant near Time Square. As we were walking back to our hotel, someone approached us and asked, “Hey, how would you like to go see some stand-up comics at one of the best clubs in the City? The next show starts in 20 minutes and it is only a couple of blocks from here.”

The guy handed us a coupon that gave us ½ off. A block later another person approached us with the same message. Betinha asked me, “Do you think we’ve got a T on our forehead or something else?”

“Maybe it’s just the straw in our hair.”

We trekked to the club and were pleasantly surprised that this was not just a NYC club but actually was named The World Stand-up Comedy Club! Wow!!! The World!! This was going to be good!

We noticed that there were about 30 people in the club as we paid our $10 cover and were informed that there was also a 2 drink minimum at from $5 to $9/drink. We each got a beer at the bar and the waitress told us not to worry, because she would find us later in the theater. Wow! This young lady has got quite a memory.

A few minutes later the usher opened the doors and announced that we could take our seats. Betinha and got right in line and filed in, getting the choice seats a couple of rows from the front. Her theory is that you never want to sit in the front row at an event like this, because you are going to be an easy target of the comedian. A couple of minutes later a second couple strolled in and the show started. Later a third couple and two women filed in, swelling the audience to 8. The waitress didn’t seem to have any trouble locating us for our second beer.

Sitting three rows back didn’t seem to jive with my wife’s theory. When the other couples are from CA, Quebec and Slovakia and you admit that you are from Effingham (when you grow up with a town name, you don’t always realize how other people might find it funny), there seemed to be a much bigger T on your forehead. Although the Slovakians helped to increase the audience dramatically, the fact that they couldn’t understand the language didn’t result in even one laugh from them. I, on the other hand, having had to give some early talks to as few as 4 or 6 people, gave each one of the comedians the benefit of the doubt and continued to embarrass my wife with my belly laughs. Later one of the comedians offered to hire me as his manager and another whispered as she left the stage, “Thanks so much for laughing!”

“Oh there’s the guy that gave us the first coupon and there’s the second one!” They were both also doubling as comedians. It was definitely a bootstrap operation but we ended up having a good time.

NYC is a wonderful place to visit. There is such diversity and unique things to do. Didn’t say I want to live here, though.

Global Warming as Campagin Issue

One of the surprises for me of the current presidential campaign is how little the issue of global warming is in the campaign. The issue is highlighted in much of the elite media especially on CNN. However, it doesn’t seem to be much of an issue on the campaign trail and is seldom raised in Q & A sessions after my talks. Local papers, which I religiously read, seldom have anything but wire service articles about the issue.

The candidates for President seldom talk about global warming. In the recent PA primary global warming was such a peripheral issue that exit pollsters didn’t even bother to question voters’ attitudes about it.

So imagine my surprise when I picked up the S. F. Chronicle and found that the entire front section of the paper was filled with articles on the issue. On the front page was this headline, “Shiver of Worry in Wine Country”. Inside articles were “Coal’s comeback raises alarms;” “Europeans turning backs on cars;” “Greenhouse gases growing faster than ever, report says;” and “Crisis faces the Andes as glaciers melt.” Out of the 21 major articles in that section of the paper, one out of four was devoted in some way to climate change.

Global warming seems to be a much bigger issue in SF than what I’m seeing in my tours around the country. I think it would be helpful if the candidates and city dwellers spent a bit of time in places like Modoc County in NE CA.

Bud or Weed? Big or Small?

Who knew that someone named Abner Weed, a timber baron who opened a lumber mill and named the town for himself, would set off a controversy with the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau of the Federal Government? The town which sits along I-5 in northern CA is the most recognized name along the interstate according to Siskiyou County Supervisor Michael Kobseff.

I’ve been to Weed several times in the past six months and found it to be a wonderfully quaint town with a historical downtown. It also is the site that a Milwaukee craft brewer, Vaune Dillmann, decided to start Mt. Shasta Brewery in 1999, after cleaning up a badly contaminated industrial site. His brews, Abner Weed Amber Ale, Lemurian Lager; Mountain High IPA, Shastafarian Porter; and Weed Golden Ale all promote the fact that they are made with 100% Pure Mt. Shasta Spring Water.

It was the last brew, Weed Golden Ale that got Dillmann in trouble with the Feds which is threatening to impose fines and/or sanctions against the brewer for promoting a beer named Weed with bottle caps that say Try Legal Weed. Evidently, they feel that the bottle caps tell consumers to support an illegal drug.

Dillmann feels that he is being unfairly singled out and that if the Feds wanted to go after someone they should go after Anheuser-Busch for their use of the word “Bud”, another name for marijuana, rather than a little brewer like him.

High Gas Prices Impact

In my travels through the very remotest areas of CA, I started to give some thought to the impact that increasingly high gasoline prices are going to have upon places like Modoc County. It is three hours to a reasonably sized town (Redding, CA; Medford, OR; or Reno, NV) and rapidly escalating gasoline prices are making it increasingly expensive to make what used to be considered fairly routine trips for people in the county.

I almost paid $4.00/gallon ($3.999 to be exact) and gas prices over the pass in Cedarville were $4.12/gallon and $4.68/gallon for diesel.

Jim Brown who runs the JNR Hotel in Cedarville told me, “I’ve seen my business go down by one-half primarily due to high gas prices.”

Fortunately, the higher end Surprise Valley Hot Springs hasn’t seen much of an impact, although the local manager Nicki Mulnholland told me, “We’re becoming much more concerned as prices go over $4 and the impact it has upon tourism.”

Remote places like Modoc County are probably going to feel the impact first. It could have some devastating ramifications for the most remote areas. I hope that they are able to survive and find ways to prosper.

Remote?

Modoc County, CA (population 9,197) is rated as the only county in the state as “remote”. It is in the NE corner of the state with OR to the north and NV to the east. With 3,944 square miles, its population density of 2.3 per square mile makes it one of the lowest in the USA.

I had a wonderful 3 hour drive through incredible mountains and valleys from Redding to Alturas, the county seat for Modoc. Amee Albrecht, head of the Modoc County Employment Center, which brought me in for the talk/tour told me prior to the drive, “Be careful because we can get all four seasons in just one day!” She was right as I drove from balmy, sunny weather through rain, snow and hail. At one point hail was pounding my car, even as the sun was brightly shining in the west.

I got an indication of how rural the county was when the local newspapers lead story was, “Spring drive…Tips for driving through cattle drives.” The second paragraph is a classic, “Some of us never imagined we’d one day live in an area where a “traffic jam” involved huge animals with four hooves rather than four tires.”

Amee and another dozen passionate, committed citizens gave me a wonderful tour of Alturas (population 2,898) and Cedarville (population 600), driving me through the same pass (6,300’ altitude) that separates the Sierras from the Cascades and which was part of the original Oregon Trail. Some of the wagon wheel ruts are still visible today in the rugged terrain.

Laura Williams, who heads up the local Forest Service, told me of the importance that the Federal Government plays in the local economy, “We control over 1.5 million acres in this county which is 72% of the total land area in the county. The county gets all of the receipts from timber sales but the spotted owl changed that greatly. Today there is only one large mill operating in the entire county.”

Unfortunately, Washington DC often doesn’t understand how changes in policy can dramatically impact places like Modoc County. In 2001, DC didn’t allow ANY timber to be harvested, not one log! Last year 10 million board feet were harvested and one of the county supervisors on the bus told me that they figured that 15 million board feet per year could sustainably be harvest each year for an indefinite period of time.

Remote often means forgotten. The wonderful people that I met in Modoc County deserve much better.

An American Success Story

On April 15th I wrote about a ribbon cutting we held in Ripley, MS for three empty buildings we purchased that had been used by a furniture manufacturer there. Our plan with this purchase is to retrofit the buildings, take care of delayed maintenance and promote them to other manufacturers as an economical way to start new operations. The high percentage of manufacturing workers in the county, 39.5%, is an added bonus as is the close proximity (<30 minutes) to the new Toyota plant being built in nearby Tupelo, MS.

On Tuesday the Tippah County Development Foundation held a ribbon cutting for the first success with these buildings. We sold one of them, a 230,000 sf plant to Carolina Accents, which plans to create 125 new jobs in Ripley.

The owner of Carolina Accents is Daniel Lim who moved to the USA in early 1980s with his wife Janet. Their first job was cleaning motel rooms for $1.00/day in addition to being able to board there. The two saved their money (you’ve got to clean a lot of rooms to save much!) so that Daniel could attend the University of North Carolina to study electrical engineering. While at UNC he cooped at a local utility company and later worked there for six years.

In the early 1990’s, when the U. S. was just emerging from one of its few recessions, Lim and his wife started a company to import goods from China, reinvesting their profits back into the business. Today their SV International which owns Carolina Accents has plants in China, Malaysia, Vietnam, NC and MS. The Business Journal of Greensboro, NC ranked it as the fastest growing company in the Greensboro-Winston-Salem-High Point region of NC.

Such growth doesn’t happen by accident. It takes creativity and hard work. And it shows that the American Dream is still alive and well. I’m thrilled that he is our first success with refocusing these buildings into new uses.

Secluded...Pristine

It really was a surprise when we drove up to the Surprise Valley Hot Springs, a wonderful retreat that sits at the center of the valley surrounded by the Warner Mountains and Nevada’s Hays Range. It doesn’t get much more secluded than this.

Manager Nicki Mulnholland told me, “The resort was started by Great Grandpa Rose who bought the hot spring dotted property in the 1950s and began building a hotel on the site. Grandpa Rose, 91, still lives on the property.” He is rumored to love cherry turnovers.

Each of their 17 rooms has a different theme to it ranging from the Cape Cottage Suite to the Out of Africa. One of their favorite promotions is the Fly-N-Soak Package aimed at private pilots who can fly into the nearby Cedarville Airport (elevation 4,623’—runway 4,415’ asphalted and lighted), get a complimentary car and stay at the Springs. With the new Very Light Jets (VLJ) that I’ve written extensively about, the Bay Area will be less than an hour from a wonderfully relaxing soaking.