The man who bought Pine Bluff, Arkansas
maxread.substack.com
maxread.substack.com
OK, MaxRead, if you're reading this I'd suggest a similar investigation into Bill Gates.
The other Bill Gates. He of Midnight Engineering magazine "fame." Midnight Engineering was a great magazine about engineers starting their own businesses while working 9-5.
And it was pretty damn good. Until he decided to buy an entire printing press for pennies on the dollar, truck it from Florida to Colorado and set it up in a warehouse so he could run it, alone, to print the magazine. No, he had never run a printing plant before!
The magazine's print quality declined far enough after he did this (CMYK registration was so bad it gave me headaches) that I let my subscription expire, but I always wondered what happened to him after that. My guess is that he was overtaken by the rise of the Web and lost subscribers, but it could be a good story either way.
Strange as it may sound, I think the most efficient path if you did want to continue would be running for city government.
I'd also try to find some way to get some state-level advocates who could help with development grants or special innovation zones or whatever they can do.
Curiosity got the better of me and I went and listened to it, available here:
https://soundcloud.com/john-fenley/shots-fired-in-pine-bluff
It’s pretty wild. I can’t say if someone were robbing me at gunpoint I’d be arguing with them like he did (“Get that gun out of my face!”).
Look at pontifier's YouTube channel to see the warehouse, videos of break-ins, and the conflicts he has with his tennant.
Why did this fall off the front page so quick? Was it flagged?
I've lived in 8 states and think the Natural State compares well. (Especially NW Arkansas, which is wildly developing yet still home to world class biking, hiking and outdoor life.)
He's proposed 10 entirely different uses for the warehouse (go karts, makerspace, fusion reactor, corporate office, science museum, etc.). He's not paying professionals to get up to code so he can get permits. He doesn't have the money to pay for security (that size would need 6 people, $50k/year, $300k/year). He's still buying more property and imagining huge parties and living in it like a penthouse suite.
He mistakenly thought the purchase price was all you need, and you're in business. But you need way more capital to attempt fusion (what?). You need to invest a huge amount into building codes, security, and focus on one project at a time.
It's like this person is experiencing a manic episode or something.
Cheap land is cheap for a reason. And true arbitrage in real estate is generally a stroke of luck, more-so than something that can be sought out by scouring the country for "deals". Where it can be done, it relies on intensive long term local knowledge, i.e. why real estate agents are still a thing.
I'm interested if the HN exposure can glean a review of his proposed nuclear reactor.
They have an awesome annual holiday light display, but little else that's good. Crime and Poverty seem entrenched. I wish there was some program that could bring in enough jobs and money to bootstrap a recovery, but I'm not sure such a thing exists.