The hopeful birth........................................

 ...............................of a sub-division:  Episode 8

Installing the sanitary sewer mains.

Sewer pipe has to allow for a down hill flow to work.  Better
get the grades right the first time

Sand and gravel soil tends to slide.  Have to work in the box 
for safety's sake

cutting the sewer main pipe the right length

If I was a better geologist I might be able to explain the 
subtle variations of soil levels

backfill begins.  The white poles tell the next crew where
to connect the sewer laterals that serve the lots

The hopeful birth.................................

 ......................of a sub-division:    Episode 7

Roughing in the building pads.

One of the things that makes this sub-division project hopeful is that we have already contracted for the sale of all of the finished lots with a production builder.  Our lot buyer is a NYSE company, so we know they are capable.   Having worked with some of their people before, we know they are both fair and particular about what they want.  One of the things they want are lots-ready-to-build-on.  That means, besides the obvious things like having all the utilities available at the lot, that the lots have been graded and compacted to their specification.  Once they get their building permits and buy lots, they can immediately begin construction.  All the earth work has been done - by us.

Adding dirt to build the pad up to its correct grade

Spreading and compacting with a "sheep's foot"

The borrow pit from whence the fill dirt comes.
More on this later.  The borrow pit will become
the storm water basin

The silt fence doing its job

building pads with finished rough grade

ditto

rough finished lots with roadway cut it

The hopeful birth................

 .........................of a sub-division:  Episode 6

Extending the sanitary sewer lines into the development.  

Once the 55 acres were annexed into the City of Newark we became eligible to tap into Newark's water and sewer systems.  Fortunately, the closest suitably sized sewer line was only a few hundred feet away.

Ground zero.  Our connection point

Setting our first manhole

First part of the structure in place.  Preparing for
 the second part.

Part two

watch your fingers

Removing the safety box

backfilling

more backfilling

this stuff is heavy

Cleaning up after ourselves

The hopeful birth............................................

 .............................of a sub-division:  Episode 5

Playing in the dirt/mud, also known as stripping the top soil:

the top soil level

building the top soil stockpile

The hopeful birth.........................

 ..................................of a sub-divison:   Episode 4

The juggling mentioned at the end of Episode 2 involves all of the things that have to happen before the actual work begins.  We will revisit those things later. Let's start the actual development work:

A year ago the land was tilled and corn planted.  This growing season nothing was planted, we just let God have her way.  The very first step was to mow:

Once the mowing was completed, the second step was to call OUPS (Ohio Utilities Protection Service).  The "call before you dig" people come out an mark any underground utilities in the area being worked on.  Fortunately for us, the only thing we need to be careful of is the underground telephone/cable line - marked by OUPS in yellow -  out by the road. 

Technology is a wonderful thing.  Elevations are important in development.  Everything has its place and it needs to be in the right place.  GPS handles much of that work today.  The third step was for the engineers to set up the GPS system for the project:

One of the things that is required of developers is to establish erosion control.  Apparently it is considered bad form to allow soil for our project to end up in our neighbors' yards.  To be good neighbors and to keep that from happening, 1,650 lineal feet of silt fencing was installed:

Once the silt fence was installed, the process of removing all of the top soil commenced:

To Be Continued.............

The hopeful birth.............................

..................................of a sub-division:   Episode 3:

Spoiler alert:

The land on July 15th:

The land yesterday:

The hopeful birth...........................

 .............................of a sub-division:  Episode 2

Once a development idea surfaces we subject it to a "reasonableness" test.  This vetting is fairly simple.  It involves answering the questions: 1.  Are we capable of executing the idea?  2.  Is it a worthy project with broad benefits?  3.   Are the projected financial rewards sufficient to incur the risks, both known and unknown?  4.  Will it be fun?   It did not take us very long to decide that the answer to all four questions was "Yes".

Once we decide a development idea is "reasonable", the key next step is to get the property we want to develop under our control.  In this particular case, the land was owned by the Licking County Foundation.  It had been gifted to them back in 2009.  The donor's intent was that the Foundation would sell the land and use the sale proceeds to support academic scholarships.  The value of development ground was at a low ebb in 2009.  Rather than sell if for a fraction of its 2004 value, the Foundation just held the land and collected farm rents.

Knowing that the Foundation would ultimately sell the land, we submitted to them a fair and reasonable offer — at least we thought it was fair and reasonable.  They countered our offer at a number 35% higher than our offer.  Yeow!   Some context may be useful.  The property is +/- 55 acres.   Five of those acres are located in the North Fork of the Licking River.  Another nine acres are located well within the 100 year flood plain.  We did not expect to pay for those wet and unusable fourteen acres.  They just took our per acre price for the usable land and applied it to all of the land, usable or not.   After consulting with a prospective home builder for the lots we planned to develop, we were encouraged to go ahead and accept the Foundation's counter offer.   So we did.

Once the land was under our contractual control, the juggling began.

To be continued...........................................

The blue shaded area is the flood plain.  The area to the left of the flood plain is the floodway, and the river.

The hopeful birth........................

 .....................................of a sub-division.

Faithful readers may remember that we are sometimes in the real estate development business.  The significant economic melt-down of 2008-09 put a damper on some of our plans, and we left that part of our business on the shelf.   But, cycles cycle.  With our residential market turning red hot last year, in large part because of a supply/demand imbalance, it seemed like the right time to develop again.  It's hard to believe, but the last new residential sub-division in Newark happened in 2006.   Fifteen years is a long time between projects.

It would be nice if we could wave our magic wand and make finished building lots just appear.  The reality is it takes a bit of time.  The plan here is to share the process with you, one day at a time.

Everything starts with an idea.   This idea was, "I bet it would be fun to develop this piece of ground."

To be continued...............................

what time is for........................

 On the other hand, when you have enough confidence to take your own time, to take your time to be present, to do the work, to engage with what’s in front of you right now, it’s a gift.

-Seth Godin, from this post

Be careful what you wish for................

       We have seen the consequences of the totalitarian alternatives in which the collective is supposed to bear the burdens of life, lay out the proper pathway, and transform the terrible world into the promised utopia.  The communists produced a worldview that was attractive to fair-minded people, as well as those who were envious and cruel.  Perhaps communism may even have been a viable solution to the problems of the unequal distribution of wealth that characterized the industrial age, if all of the hypothetically oppressed were good people and all the evil was to be found, as hypothesized, in their bourgeoisie overlords.  Unfortunately for the communists, a substantial portion of the oppressed were incapable, unconscientious, unintelligent, licentious, power mad, violent, resentful, and jealous, while a substantial proportion of the oppressors were educated, able, creative, intelligent, honest, and caring.  When the dekulakization swept through the newly established Soviet Union, it was vengeful and jealous murderers who were redistributing property, while it was the competent and reliable farmers, for the most part, from whom it was violently taken.  One unintended consequence of that "redistribution" of good fortune was the starvation of six million Ukrainians in the 1930s, in the midst of some of the most fertile land in the world.

-Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order:  12 More Rules For Life

Two gifts............................

 In this universe we are given two gifts:  the ability to love, and the ability to ask questions.  Which are, at the same time, the fires that warm us and the fires that scorch us.

-Mary Oliver, from her essay on Poe in Upstream

From the mind of Poe.......................................

 I AM come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence -- whether much that is glorious- whether all that is profound -- does not spring from disease of thought -- from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in awakening, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless into the vast ocean of the "light ineffable," and again, like the adventures of the Nubian geographer, "agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi."*

-Edgar Allan Poe, this being the opening paragraph to Eleonora

* [they ventured out against the sea of darkness to see what they would find]."

Nagging.......................

 What the hell?  Kelly frowned in frustration at the traffic because he didn't know the answer, but then there were a lot of questions to which he hadn't known the answers in the last six months.  He told his mind to be quiet and watched the traffic, even though it kept up its inquiries in a nagging sort of background noise.  One's mind, after all, rarely obeys its own commands.

-Tom Clancy,  Without Remorse

On orienting the world properly...............

 

As it is said, "Man shall not live by bread alone" (Matthew 4:4).  That is exactly right.  We live by beauty.  We live by literature.  We live by art.  We cannot live without some connection to the divine—and beauty is divine—because in its absence life is too short, too dismal, and too tragic.  And we must be sharp and awake and prepared so that we can survive properly, and orient the world properly, and not destroy things, including ourselves—and beauty can help us appreciate the wonder of Being and motivate us to seek gratitude when we might otherwise be prone to destructive resentment.

-Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order:  12 More Rules For Life

Actually, he did..........................

 

Life its ownself...........................

 Take a risk. If there is no risk, there is no change. No one ever got anything different by doing the same thing. Write a new destination for your life and take a step toward it.

The greatest stories ever written and the greatest battles ever fought are those between our ears. Check your perspective and perception. Leave low living at the door. Strive to live with integrity and honor.

Life can be very hard. Life can be scary. But there are no champions without challenges and no victories without battles.

-Beth Bline, as culled from this column in the Newark Advocate

Checking in with Martin Gurri......................

At bottom, all discussion of freedom is really about its restraint.  Once we move beyond the Protean cult of personality, human life becomes a balancing act between consciousness and desire, private goals and public demands, the individual and his family, his profession, his country, his culture, his God.  In this matrix of possibilities, freedom means having the opportunity to choose when to surrender freedom.  Thus the husband chooses his wife while giving up the freedom to bed others.  Similarly, the athlete chooses a tyrannical training regime to achieve automatic (but consciously learned) behaviors like the overhead smash in tennis. 

-as culled from this post