Local Business Owner Boldly Proclaims Ignorance

Response to ‘Planned downtown Edmond brewery faces delays, questions on city’s RFQ process’

We live in an age and society in which the most ignorant among us are the loudest and most disruptive. It’s as if their volume increases in direct proportion to their lack of knowledge; the less they know the more their passions drive them.

Wednesday morning I found myself and a proposed project of mine at the center of a lengthy article called ‘Planned downtown Edmond brewery faces delays, questions on city’s RFQ process’. The fact of the article itself wasn’t a surprise to me. I’d spoken with Joe Tomlinson, the reporter for NonDoc who wrote this story, several weeks before, and again the day before the article came out.

But that’s not to say I wasn’t surprised; I definitely was.

A Job Offer?

That’s a pretty decent thumbnail sketch of the situation. A project I've been working on for a development on property I’ve leased from the city, the result of a public RFQ process, has faced delays because of soaring construction costs and interest rates. There are a few things in that synopsis that aren’t quite right.

For instance, the initial term of the lease is 25 years (it couldn’t be financed otherwise), it doesn’t come up for renewal until after that time period, and then there are five more 5 year options, a total of 50 years. Also, my company would own the building until the end of the lease, at which point it would become an asset of the city. No one would build a multimillion dollar building subject to a wing and a prayer every five years. But, hey, close enough. It’s certainly not my main point of contention here.

The article then goes on to quote Scot Rigby, Edmond City Manager, as he discusses the various options the city has in this scenario. Like above, this is hardly my main issue, but it caught my eye.

Huh. I didn’t realize I’d been hired for a job. I was kind of under the impression that I was taking significant financial risk all on my own, spending my time (coming up on two years to date) and my money, utilizing my relationship with a friend and tenant from another project, and bringing the investment and bank financing necessary to complete this project all with no guaranty of a return on that investment or a payday of any kind.

I guess I missed the part of the RFQ that said this was a job for hire to build a building for the city. Considering I’m taking all the risk, doing all the work, spending all the money, and it pays nothing, it’s a pretty shit job.

But I digress. Scot asks an important question above: what would the conditions be for the project to move forward?

I did say that. Because it’s true. It was a conclusion reached after many hours of exercises trying to make a single story, single tenant project work. So, what do you do when construction costs and interest rates have pushed the project into the realm of financial unfeasibility?

You go big or you go home. You double the size of the building. You double the leasable area. But you don’t double the cost if you go vertical (ie there’s one slab and one roof whether single story or two).

It’s the only solution.

That of course left me with the problem of finding a tenant for that 2nd floor…

The article could’ve ended there. Should’ve. That’s the whole story.

Facts & Feelings

Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, we live in an age where the ignorant are encouraged to speak loud and proud, where one’s feelings become truth if one just believes hard enough; and so the article continues on, leaving the world of fact and entering the world of feeling, allowing Robert Black to express his truth and show his ass.

What is Robert’s truth? What have his emotions revealed to him about this project and process?

*Gasp! A backdoor deal? Sounds juicy. Do tell!

This seems pretty unambiguous. Robert’s feelings have revealed to him that the city and I engaged in a ‘dishonest’ process that was a pre-decided ‘backdoor deal’ and that we engaged in a farcical, ‘disingenuous’ public RFQ process. But, ‘maybe it’s not illegal’.

That’s a bold assertion. Very bold.

But is he right? And what are these ‘indications’ that caused him such concern and led him to believe that something hidden and sinister was afoot such that the city would have my idea in mind when opening the RFQ?

Well, that does seem to indicate the city may have had my idea in mind. I assume I am the developer Mr. Conyers is referencing. But was there something hidden or unethical about that? The fact that the above is a part of the public record and Conyers’ statement was made in a public meeting would indicate to me that the answer is, no.

Ideas

I don’t want to spoil the rest of the article for you if you haven’t read the whole thing, but from my reading it seems that this all comes down to the idea. It’s the main theme throughout. And so I want to briefly switch gears and talk about ideas.

I’ll start with one of my other projects as an example, also in Downtown Edmond, and one that is mentioned in the article; The Icehouse Project. See cool video below.

I put this video in for two reasons. First, because it’s cool and I’ve never shared it. Second, because this project is a great illustration of an idea pursued, a public process initiated, and a collaboration without which the project couldn’t have been developed.

Years ago another developer bought these properties with the intention of redeveloping one of the two historic buildings, the old ice house. That project stalled. The metal buildings to the west would have to be demolished to make room for the required parking. Redeveloping a historic building is expensive enough, but adding the costs of the property required for parking and the costs of the parking itself ended up making the project not pencil. Financially unfeasible.

I was disappointed because I was looking forward to the project that had been planned for that building. But then I had an idea. In the first few seconds of that video you can see an old road just south of the crappy metal buildings. It terminated at the railroad right-of-way a few hundred feet to the east. Just south of that old road was a bunch of grass, excess right-of-way owned by the city doing nothing but growing grass to be mowed.

I thought, “What if the city would vacate that old road and build a parking lot on that grass right of way? Then it might be possible to redevelop this entire property, not just a single building…”

To make a year-long story short, I contacted a person at the city and a person at Edmond Economic Development Authority (EEDA), shared my idea, asked them if it was even possible, and if so what would the process be?

The answer turned out to be a very lengthy public process during which time I had to continue to work on it with absolutely no guarantee I would get what I needed to make the project financially viable.

Well, I did end up getting that idea approved and the result is the project in the video. We know that project couldn’t have happened without that idea because a project had been attempted and stalled already. But, now the project is there and it’s because I had an idea that I took to the city and was willing to take the risk, both temporally and monetarily, that it wouldn’t go the way I wanted it to and I wouldn’t be able to do the project I wanted to do.

There’s a 280 unit multifamily project nearly done with construction in Downtown Edmond. The city paid for the parking garage to serve that project because it was in the best interest of the city and the downtown businesses to have more residents living nearby.

But that wasn’t the city’s idea. It was a developer’s idea to bring the multifamily project downtown, and his idea to make it pencil was the city ponying up for the parking garage. A similar process unfolded as what I described above, and after a lengthy public review process, the funding for the garage was approved.

There are many other examples and they all follow the same pattern: idea leads to discussions with governing body leads to initiation of appropriate public process leads to approval/selection/denial whatever.

If it even gets that far.

I’ve also given the city ideas for other things like a pedestrian bridge over Edmond Rd. that would connect the north and south sides of downtown. Or years ago I had a friend of mine do some drawings and sent them to the city proposing to glass-in the existing Farmer’s Market pavilion and rent it out as event space, continue to use it for Farmer’s Market, hold classes in there, etc. A few years later when nothing happened from that idea I brought up the idea of putting a brewery in the pavilion which lead to my idea for the project we’re discussing now.

I wonder, if the city ever does use any of my other ideas will there be public reprimands like this again? Maybe I should just keep my hat out of the ring since they were my ideas?

I’ll skip the next part of the article where they did Open Records Act requests to get emails associated with this idea. It was interesting to read emails about myself, but there’s really nothing for me to comment on. It’s correct and is a pretty good summary of the process of bringing an idea to the city that I described above.

Shenanigans!

Let’s skip ahead to this part:

My May 2022 meeting with city officials is where I presented my idea to see if there was any possibility of it happening.

By the way, this clandestine meeting happened over lunch at The Railyard, across the street from the project site. After lunch we walked around the site as I continued explaining my idea. Downtown Edmond is a small community, and with no pride whatsoever I can say that most people know who I am, and they know who the city staff are. That is hardly the location I would choose for a covert gathering to plan an intricate collusion.

It’s hard for me to argue that it gave me an advantage, though. I mean, it was my idea.

I’m not sure what the Roberts would have preferred I do. Not bring that idea up to the city and hope someday they would maybe think of it on their own and be ready to strike if and when that day ever came?

Maybe post my idea on social media, or invite the Roberts to the meeting at The Railyard?

Bring the idea of ground leasing that property but give no indication as to what could be done with it?

“Interesting idea, what would you do with the property if you were able to lease it from the city?”

“I have no idea.”

“No idea? Why not?”

“It would be an unfair advantage to my team if I thought about what I would do with it ahead of time. I’ll think about it if and when it goes to RFQ.”

No, that’s idiotic. Like this is: “He had architectural plans, he had engineering plans, he had a business model…”

I don’t know what Robert means by ‘business model’, but I did have a preliminary pro forma I use to quickly analyze the potential of a project. It’s literally the first thing I do for all potential projects. It’s the actual first step.

However, I didn’t have any architectural or engineering plans. That would be stupid. Those are really expensive. The risk for me in the RFQ process is that I do all of this legwork to unlock a valuable parcel of land for development and someone else swoops in, outshines my idea, and they do the project that was the result of my efforts.

So, no, there were not architectural or engineering plans. That would be moronic.

What I did have is the ‘pretty picture’ mentioned in the caption above to help the city visualize what I was talking about. They’re the preliminary renderings my architects did for me in a week for a couple thousand dollars. The same pictures that are in the article. The same pictures I used in the RFQ process.

But I am glad the Roberts brought up the six months between presenting my idea to the city and the RFQ opening. The Roberts thinks I was nose to the grindstone on this to press my advantage. I wasn’t. I was doing other things totally unrelated to this, waiting impatiently for the RFQ to happen, or not.

Six months I sat there and waited for the city to do things by the book in order to give others who didn’t have the idea the opportunity take of advantage of the idea. But that’s the process. That’s how it goes.

The Process

I know I was annoyed by Scot Rigby’s quote that I mentioned earlier, but here he provides quite a nice summary of the entire RFQ situation.

That’s how the sausage is made in three sentences. Add in a couple of sentences about exploding construction costs and interest rates since May of 2022 and you have the entire story.

The Other Proposal

You’d be forgiven if you assumed this was a hotly contested RFQ process. The article I’m referencing here and this response alone would lead one almost inevitably to that conclusion.

A valuable piece of property up for grabs, dozens of highly qualified respondents to the RFQ with solid proposals, and guess who gets it?! That Lodge guy with all his nefarious politicking and his six months, of course!

Hmm.

Well, I’m sure the proposal put forth by Mr. O’Grady and Mr. Weiss was solid enough to warrant the Roberts’ suspicions that the books were cooked in the selection of my proposal over theirs.

So, their proposal did not specify a single idea. But maybe it’s a restaurant that used to be downtown and now is not, or it could be a gym? Or something else? General concepts for sure. I can see why the Roberts grew so suspicious of the selection process.

For his part, Weiss did say he understood why the city selected my proposal.

BUT,…

…it was just going through the motions and just kind of felt different.

For the most part…but not this time! This time it was shenanigans!

The Roberts

You may have noticed that at some point in this response I quit referencing ‘Robert’ Black and started referencing ‘the Roberts’. Who are ‘the Roberts’?

Those are ‘the Roberts’. The other hens pecking around the yard with their cock, getting all agitated at his flapping wings and incessant crowing. This jealous whining and gossiping started with just Robert, I’m sure, but has morphed into the Roberts. Thus the switch.

Listen, I know I’ve got to wrap this up. But if you’ve hung with me this long I really have saved the best, or weirdest, part of this whole saga for last.

We shall leave the Roberts behind to focus again on just Robert Black.

My Money’s on Arrogant Ignorance

I’m part owner of a dairy farm that is opening a creamery and deli concept in the Icehouse Project (video above) in April. I know nothing about dairy farming or operating a food and bev concept. That story is for another post. Fortunately, I have partners in the dairy farm who know how to do dairy farming. Unfortunately, they don’t know how to do restaurant operating anymore than I do. And so we needed to hire a restaurant consultant.

One of Robert Black’s businesses not mentioned in the article is a ‘restaurant and coffee industry consulting firm’. They ‘specialize in restaurant, bar, and coffee shop consulting, for new startups and existing operations alike.’

Guess who hired him? That’s right!

So, imagine my surprise reading this article, seeing these thoughts Robert has about me and these accusations he’s leveling publicly, after having spent the last year with him consulting on our creamery. Somehow this never came up. He never asked me about the process I went through and what went down.

But why would he? He had his feelings. He felt this was ‘just dishonest’, a ‘backdoor deal’, ‘disingenuous’, a breach of ‘faith and trust in our city’s systems’. He felt it strongly and convinced himself and his hens that it must be true because it feels true. And if it feels true it must be proclaimed loudly and publicly because it’s righteous!

But wait! There’s more!

Our creamery is (was) partnering with Robert’s bakery, Twisted Tree Baking Company, to provide all of the bread and baked goods for the deli side of the creamery. They have a great product and we are (were) excited to partner with them and support another small local business.

Weird, huh?!

And so all of that leaves me to wonder: what the hell is Robert Black on about?

Is it just ignorant, righteous indignation? Just someone who doesn’t know enough and talks too much showing his ass publicly? Maybe. Those people seem to outnumber everyone else these days, so it’s statistically probable.

But there’s something about this that seems motivated. This wasn’t him just popping off, shooting from the hip, reacting to a question from a reporter. He thought about what he wanted to say. For a long time.

And the timing. It seems like feathers started flying the day I hadn’t broken ground per the lease terms. Nothing before the first of the year. Interesting.

And the fact that I’d hired him as a consultant and had partnered with his bakery, and he still chose to publicly slander me (or is it libel) is the weirdest part of it all.

Could it be projection? Could it be that Robert Black has an idea and would like to see a new RFQ process for that property? Could it be that while hurling accusations of underhanded politicking at me, Robert is actually engaging in underhanded politicking to sabotage my efforts of modifying the project to keep it alive? Do the cock and the hens have plans for that property?

I can’t know for sure, but my money’s on ignorance. Arrogant ignorance.