The Price of Everything

Monday night was the meeting about the Stanton Northwest Properties development at Lily Point, which is now called the Lily Point development.  About 75 people showed up with dour looks to discuss what could be done about the matter.

It was an interesting and puzzling experience.  The community members appeared to have  pretty much a single position (This is a very  bad idea.  Why is such a proposal being made again, when the collapse of the real estate market and the banking industry had already defeated it once?  Do we have to have that happen again?).  On the other side of the question was the new developer, or at least half of the new developers.  The pair, let's call them Wayne and Anders, which makes them sound like an old comedy team even though they have nothing to say that is funny, sent Anders to represent their interests.  And their interests appear to be money and perhaps quick profits.

I have taken awhile to write about this because I was very conflicted about the meeting, so the blog is going to have to carry my description over two or three days' entries as I try to explain what was so puzzling.  When the original Stanton proposal came up, with its 100 houses costing a million dollars each and its beach club front and its swimming pool and expansive community center and, for all I know, its polo pony fields, one of the things most people had against it was its over-the-topness.  Now, Wayne and Anders have modified the plan and I was struck with how lacking in vision it was.  Thirty-nine houses for starters, maybe a tennis court, a little meeting place, no curbs and sidewalks.  Stanton wanted something grand, which at least befit the locale.  But W and A want something small, 'cottages' they call them, with piddling amenities, but something that will net them some very big bucks by the time they have disposed of the trees and the lots, letting actual builders move in later to assist the lot buyers.

Way too much of the meeting was devoted to Anders telling us how their plans differed from Stanton's, even though they are still operating off Stanton's plans and environmental impact statement because, he assured us, it was 'so much more efficient to do so,' which is to say 'so much cheaper,' because they don't have to start all over in the process of permits and all that.  I have rarely heard someone talk about a project in this particular manner: nothing seemed to be of import to him other than the financial issues, the 'economic viability.'  I have long known the phrase, but rarely run into someone who, at least to me, so clearly represents someone 'who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.' 

The meeting was largely devoted to a lot of technical explanations: what had the County approved, what was the SEPA statement that they had okayed but could be objected to by the public, what property or properties were actually at issue?  Wayne and Anders, it appeared, like a Junior grade Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein, had been trolling around the bottom as the garbage fell out in the housing/bank crisis and had taken up Stanton's interests for lack of a better word, which included ownership of the closest acreage (called, locally, 'the Butler property'), the plans and permits that Stanton had achieved, options on the additional parcels, and a $3 million dollar mortgage that the bank was still holding. 

The garbage turned out to contain a jewel, of course.  But a jewel with a price.  During the evening's discussion, Anders offered to sell their interests to us for $1.5 million (plus the mortgage).  Which might be a very good deal if you were going to put in a lot of houses and reasonably expected to sell them.  What Wayne and Anders plan initially is 39 lots, 10 or so on the bluff facing the ocean, a bunch more with what he called 'peakaboo' views of the ocean, and the remainder back in what would be left of the 'wooded area' after the trees are taken down for the lots, roads, and all that.  The 'cottages' are to be 2,000 square feet, but that may well be only the footprint, as two stories would be possible under the 25 foot height limit: some cottage!

And what that means, if they actually sold them to the Vancouverites who are their target audience, would be a lot of money.  The 1/4 acre lots in front, facing the ocean would be priced at $500,000 each.  That is the lot, not the lot with a house.  Building a house up here would be in the $150-$200/square foot.  Two or three thousand square feet would get you right up to a million dollars for your cottage with land.  And those little wooded lots in the back would run buyers $150,000 each.  Right away, I'm thinking that the ten lots in front are worth five million total and the other 29 lots would have to bring in 6-8 million (conservatively).  That would be a 12 million dollar return on a $1.5 million dollar (current) investment.  A nice day's (or year's) work.

So, what this certainly seemed like was Wayne and Anders' desire to make many quick bucks off some land that they had grabbed onto in the maelstrom.  Not land they cared about particularly, except for the fact that it had those ocean view lots at the front, way high above the ocean so you wouldn't even have to worry about global warming and rising sea levels.  And after all this discussion and explanation, two of our local real estate sales people, people with long experience in Point Roberts, advised Anders that the chance of selling 39 lots like that in any short term--Anders was talking a year or so--or even in anything but a very long term was very unlikely.  Very unlikely. 

So maybe we are looking at Stanton all over?  Except that, this time, the project could move along far enough before it collapsed so that a lot of trees would already have been logged.  It turns out that the Butler property has the bulk of the big trees, and the optioned property has largely already been cleared.  So by developing the Butler property first, the trees will go first.  But, as Anders pointed out to us, it would be much cheaper to develop the optioned property first, but he and Wayne don't own that property: what they own is the Butler property.

So, what's to be said in favor of this project?  Next round.

We've Been Here Before

You remember that Stanton Northwest Properties was going to build a hundred of million dollar houses back next to Lily Point Preserve, and it was going to have steps down to the beach and everybody rich from ROTUS was going to come and buy the million dollar houses and belong to the Lily Point Beach Club, even though the properties were way, way above the beach, but that's detail.   You do remember?  At the time, it seemed an unlikely development because the problems with real estate housing/development loans made either financing or proposing such a project seem like a very bad business to be in.  And then it actually became a very bad business to be in.  And Stanton, apparently, fell out at/with/through the bottom of the market.

But someone else, apparently, has taken up this burden of building a 100 big houses next to Lily Point Preserve.  It's an appalling idea, but somebody has to do it, apparently, and it is, according to those in a position to know, two companies named Lily Point, LLC, and Cassimar U.S. Inc.  And who would they be?  Googling provided a little Cassimar information but no Lily Point LLC information.  Cassimar is owned by someone named Wayne Knowles, out of the University of Saskatchewan, and now in Bellingham in the real estate world and apparently a Point Roberts resident.  It is surprising to think that someone doing this kind of deal would have so little Google presence.

A recent sheet of information about this appeared at the Point Roberts public library for purposes of providing information to the public.  The public, or at least some subset of it, is in arms or at arms or alarmed.  In any case, there is a public meeting on Monday night at the Community Center, 6 p.m., to discuss what might be done.  There are eagles and eagle nest trees and tree cutting at issue.  Also, the All Point Bulletin has many details from the County level of permits and requirements here. 

Here are some of the trees:

The area at issue is between Claire Lane and Paul's Road, with APA Road on the north and the beach on the south.  This photo is taken from the bottom of Paul's Road, looking back toward APA Road.  As you can see, lots of this acreage has already been cleared and there are lots of deciduous trees, as well.  But in the back, there's a fair stand of big firs, and as I took the picture, an eagle was larking around from tree to tree quite near me.

Another place we've been before is Sterling Bank.  For unknown (to the public) reasons, Sterling's stock today sky-rocketed, gaining about 60%.  Now that's not much in absolute terms, given that it has been hovering well below a dollar, but it went well up above $1.00, which is a big deal since it was under threat of being de-listed on the exchange.  Anyway, some recent developments suggest that someone may be attempting to buy the bank, which would/could be good for stockholders.  Today's stock sales were in the 16 million range, whereas a normal day is about 1 million.

9/11 and 9/15: Here They Come Again

This year, for the first time, the country doesn’t seem to be obsessing about the 9/11 anniversary, although Obama did note today that Al Quaeda is still hanging around.  Whacked almost a year ago (September 15, when Lehman Bros. declared bankruptcy) by the threat of the economy disappearing, we seem less frightened by terrorism than by bankruptcies and foreclosures of one sort or another.

A streak of good weather here this weekend will make it seem a little bit more summery—in summer, we don’t have to think too much about 9/11 or 9/15--but the news on my street is that two of our eating establishments are closing, which doesn’t bode well for the local economic front, such as it is.  We had five restaurants and now we have three, apparently, and only 1 of the 3 routinely provide evening meals.  Although that might change for either or both of the survivors, I suppose, given the vacuum.

Hardly a year ago that we were fussing about the proposed housing development next to Lily Point Reserve where Stanton Northwest Properties was aiming to build a hundred homes of the million dollar each variety so that 100 ROTUS families would be able to participate in the oceanside paradise that is us.  The newspaper reported last month that that development is on hold.  A rather more dire sign is that when you call the main (and only) phone number listed on Stanton Northwest Properties’ website, as I did today, I was informed by a recording that this number is no longer functioning and I was not given some other number to try.

On the other hand, the County has approved permits for yet another 100 house development around the Point Roberts Golf Course.  These developers appear to be moving somewhat cautiously, talking about building only a few houses to begin with, presumably in order to find out if there is a market for paradise yet. 

In the fifteen years we’ve been here, the massive housing development is a constantly looming event, but like an antic pirate ship in a Gilbert and Sullivan comedy, it only looms, it never attacks.  Perhaps just an important engine of the plot line, although the story, ultimately, goes somewhere else.  It's just not yet clear, though,  whether this is going to be a tragedy or a comedy.  Forty-one of fifty-one economists, it is reported today, have announced that we are out of the recession.  But for the moment, it’s not apparent up here.

Will Stanton Settle In? Part II

I had expected that the tone of the P.R. Taxpayers Association meeting might be somewhat hostile, but it wasn’t. In part, that might have resulted from the fact that Stanton Northwest’s founder was at the meeting, ready to not create a bad impression for his company and its development. In fact, it turns out that he himself intends to move here and is, of course, already a property owner and taxpayer. He kept a low profile in the discussion and when he did speak, he was clear but not confrontational.

The Taxpayers’ current President--this meeting was his swan song—directed the discussion, responding to questions from the audience but making a concerted effort not to let things get out of hand. There was, e.g., no mention of the charge that Stanton had cut down trees with eagle nests. There was some discussion as to whether the kind of development that Stanton was proposing (and its founder obligingly brought a very nice, large, colored map of the proposed design) really fit in with the kind of community that Point Roberts has become—which I would describe as a simultaneously laid-back, crotchety, economically diverse, and individualistic place. Why a gated community within an exclave? Who/what were these future homeowners separating themselves from? And wasn’t it, really, an awfully big development for a place this small; and wasn’t it the case that similar—if smaller--developments here sit around year after year with unsold lots and houses?

There was some discussion of technical questions as to whether the design would make water runoff in the area more problematic because of the porous nature of the soil. Around the question of public access, the Stanton rep had no problems with the idea that people would be able to walk on the trails and streets of the development, as well as on the beach. I wanted to cheer when he spoke despairingly and disparagingly of signs on the beach ordering people to keep off. “Surely,’ he said, ‘the people here should be able to walk on the beach,’ and he promised that the public would be able to walk on the beach of his development. He also suggested that the term ‘gated community’ did not mean a walled-off community. There would be a gate at the entrance, and it would be closed at night, perhaps, but that would not keep people from walking into or on the open space sections of the property.

He also implied that he did not know about the 30% public access option that had previously been in the zoning but that he was not necessarily opposed to that idea. By and large, he was a reasonable voice. But when it came to the easternmost section of the development that the Taxpayers’ think should constitute the 30% public access, he was clear: that he could not and he would not do.

The Taxpayers’ President repeatedly moved back to the 30% public access zoning question, suggesting the possibility of legal action if necessary. But it was not clear to me that there was much to base a legal case on (although I’m not a lawyer nor providing legal advice). I would sum up the meeting as one in which there was a clear undercurrent of unhappiness about the development. Nevertheless, that undercurrent failed to find any focus. Those who opposed this development going forward were urged to write to County officials telling them of their concerns; those who supported it were also urged to convey their views.

Both sides seemed to believe that economic development of the Point is much needed. They disagreed as to whether the proposed development or expanding Lily Point Park would be most likely to provide the desired kind of economic development. No one offered the view that further economic development might not be the best way or indeed a way to keep the Point Roberts they want to live in. And in the face of the current financial collapse, it is very hard to imagine that any bank is going to be funding such an inauspicious development in such an unlikely locale. But that doesn’t mean that the county won’t issue permits: not their job to pick economic winners or losers.

At the end of the discussion, all questions asked if not answered, the Taxpayers Association elected six new members to its board of ten (plus one alternate). By my count, at least three of the six, are generally supporters of real estate/commercial development on the Point. Among these new board members is the founder of Stanton Northwest: the guy at the meeting . So now he will be able to negotiate with himself when the Taxpayers take on Stanton Northwest. I guess Stanton is settling in, for the moment, but come spring, we’ll be looking to see what happens. Honk!

Will Stanton Settle In? Part I

Today, in a brief outside time, I hear the snow geese flying overhead. They come in from somewhere farther north and settle in for a comfy winter in the northwest. Flocks of them have been flying overhead for several days. They call to one another, ‘Honk! Honk! What’s it look like down there? Should we stay there?’ And eventually they make a decision, stop honking and settle in to a temporarily unused agricultural field.

Today was the Point Roberts Taxpayers Association Annual Meeting. The group has a Board that meets more regularly but the membership seems to show up only once a year. Today’s meeting was to inform the troops about the status of Stanton Northwest Properties plan to create the fabulous gated community of 100+ homes, each costing $1 million, next door to the Lily Point Park. Or maybe it was to incite the troops. Or maybe it was to confuse the troops since at the end of the meeting there was a peculiar coda about the urgency of global warming, which I’m pretty sure Stanton has nothing to do with.

Anyway, the current unhappiness of the Taxpayers is that the County government which, some 8-10 years ago wanted a new zoning plan that required endless meetings here in Point Roberts, somewhere along the way changed that zoning plan, after it had been formally accepted by the County Council, without notifying the people on the Point.

Here’s the history as I heard it today:
1. Originally, the zoning permitted only one house per five acres in areas of the Point that weren’t developed (i.e., large parcels).
2. The new zoning plan (which might have been called ‘The Character Plan'--I'm not sure about the name) that local people worked on and the county accepted created something called ‘Transitional Zones’ for areas involving five or more acres. In such areas, a developer could have one house per acre (instead of one house per 5 acres) if he clustered the houses and left 50% of the parcel as open space. A second option was also included: a developer could have one house per acre if he clustered the houses AND provided 30% of the parcel as open space, including community access and trails, as well as beach access if beach was accessible
3. Sometime after the acceptance of zoning plan #2, the County eliminated the choice involving the 30% open access. That is, the option that required public access to beaches, trails, whatever, was eliminated entirely. Only the clustered houses +50% open-space option remains. Strangely (?), the county does not seem to know how this change occurred.

The Stanton Northwest development is designed to meet the 50% open-space requirement. The Taxpayers wants it to meet the 30% requirements with public access, and are making vague noises about demanding #1 as a fallback position if they can’t have the 30%+ public access. Stanton has not yet received permits for this development and owns only one of the two parcels of land that it needs for this development. According to a Stanton principal at the meeting , the piece the company owns (about 30%) involves the company’s current investment ($4 million, involving bank loans). The company is said to have an option to buy the second, larger property. The 30% that the Taxpayers’ want set aside is the property that Stanton has already purchased. This parcel is next to the already completed Lily Point Park and that is why that is the part that the Taxpayers want devoted to community use. The Stanton group: not only not so much, but not at all.

That is the nature of the dispute. In tomorrow’s post, I’ll try to summarize the discussion at today’s 2.5 hour meeting. Honk!

Playing Catch-Up

Eagles. Jeff at lilypoint.org says that the list of eagle nests is not publicly available (wisely) because eagles and their parts are in great demand on the black market, even though satisfying that demand is definitely illegal in almost all circumstances. He adds, ‘eagles are the most monitored animal in the world. WDFW has GPS locations on every single nest in the State, and the program has a 30 year history. That is why people like Stanton NW can't get away with just removing a nest and think that nobody will notice or be able to prove that a nest was there.’ The lilypoint.org site has extensive information about eagles and their nests, so that's the place to go for it.

Pandora. Someone mentioned this site and it occurred to me that people might not know about it or how it works. If you listen to internet radio, this is a wonderful resource. Pandora.com is a music site where you set up your own music ‘station.’ You do that by giving the site the name of someone whose music you like. In the commenter’s case, it was Bonnie Raitt. So, let’s say you, too, choose Bonnie Raitt for your first station. Pandora then plays Bonnie Raitt’s music for you, but also other performers who are similar in various ways to Raitt. If you disagree about the algorithm’s assessment, you can say, ‘NO,’ don’t play that song again, and if you disagree twice more about that performer's recordings, then the algorithm never again chooses that performer. You can have many different ‘stations’ based on different kinds of music/musicians, and you can also have something called ‘quick mix’ in which music from all your stations (or all the stations you choose at that moment) plays randomly. It is a wonderful way to hear music you know and love as well as music you might love if only you knew about it. No cost. The only downside I know of is that it is available to you only if you and your computer are both in the U.S.

A similar site that does work in Canada is jango.com. Its music algorithm, it seems to me, is not quite as good as Pandora’s, but when I’m in Canada, it’s plenty good enough.

Protecting the Land

According to the Lily Point website, Stanton Northwest has done some initial work on the property that abuts the Lily Point Reserve/Park in Point Roberts, including cutting down trees and brush. I suppose once you own property, you can pretty much do whatever pruning and trimming and mowing you want to do, even if it is, in fact, some kind of site preparation for a project for which you don’t yet have approval. Of course, if that site work includes taking down trees that are eagle nest habitat, that is a different matter. I can imagine that for lots of people, the idea that a developer would be restricted from developing land he/she owned because it would inconvenience local bald eagles is an outrage or at least news. But whether it’s an outrage or not, it’s a law.

Some years back, when we were building a smallish outbuilding on our property so that I could have some space in which to quilt, we went down to Bellingham to get permits for the building. I’d never been involved in that particular kind of citizen/government exchange and was both interested and puzzled by the nature of the process. I can certainly understand, after that several hour activity, why people get so angry about bureaucrats, but the thing that most surprised me was the eagle issue. We went through person after person getting okays for various aspects of the project (keep in mind that the permit was for a 24x12 ft. structure without water/plumbing) and, at the very end, we were interviewed by the eagle person. She looked up on a map and determined that we were within the area of an active eagle nest which, she said, could change everything. The tree with nest wasn’t on our property, and in any case we weren’t proposing to cut down any trees. But it turns out that if you are planning to build anything that is within the area of an active eagle nest, there are additional regulations, including specific times of the year in which you may not build. This all happened some years ago and I can’t recall the specific months (in the spring, though), but it surely surprised me to find that that was the last approval we needed. After all, if we’d actually had an eagle nest on the property, the rules would have been even more stringent. Since it would have been a deal breaker, I would have thought they’d check that issue out first.

Anyway, I have some minor experience with eagle rules and can well imagine that there are people not too impressed with the idea that eagles would take preference over their own plans. The people at lilypoint.org say they have evidence that trees with eagle nests have been cut down, which would definitely be a violation of the law. They have a new video on their site to accompany that claim. I don’t have any independent evidence, but trees come down all the time on the Point, and not always from natural causes.

I still have trouble believing that a company with a relatively small repertoire of finished work is going to be able to find financial backing for a Point Roberts project that involves as many as one hundred homes in the million dollar range in these times of difficult credit and a dead housing market. Indeed, if they had such funding, I’d want to know the name of the bank that’s providing it so I could be sure I didn’t have any investments/accounts in that bank. This development may not be realized. But it would indeed be sad if in that process of not happening, the terrain of the land were irreparably destroyed by a lot of clearing and deforesting.

Does the County know or care? I guess we’ll find out. On October 11 (10 a.m.), the P.R. Taxpayers Association will be holding a meeting at the Community Center about the Stanton Northwest development proposal and the County’s zoning views. Everyone welcome to attend, I’m told.

10/1/08, Follow-up: A friend points out that the bald eagle is no longer on the endangered species act (as of June, 2007). However, there are still many federal and state laws that deal with eagles and eagle habitat. The most recent (February '08) information on Washington law is here.

In a Nutshell

This week, it seemed like fall had come early. Since Sunday, it has been grey, very rainy, and unseasonably cold. Everyone with a wood stove is staring at the woodstove grumpily, thinking it is way too early to have to start having a fire. And then, most of us march outdoors to bring in some wood to start a fire because someone in the house keeps talking about how cold it is. But then, this afternoon, the rain and grey and cold disappeared and it was a summer afternoon again. This is life in a nutshell, here, as far as weather goes. Never quite what you expect or have in mind, even when it’s the same every year. Reliably, come April, say, I start to point out that it’s really pretty cold this spring. But that’s always true. This is a place with a long, cold spring. This is not, say, Pennsylvania.

Because it’s the end days of the month, the monthly paper is now in our mailbox, telling us what happened last month. I always think of September as the real beginning of the year because of school starting, even though I haven’t been in school or had anyone in the house who was in school for many a year. The September All Point Bulletin is pretty wonderful this year, looking more forward than backward as it should at the beginning of the year, and--another nutshell--contains what I suspect is a fine compendium of everything we’ll be obsessing about for the next twelve months, when we’re not obsessing about the weather.

Article after article reminds us of what we’re not through arguing about and what we’re just starting to argue about. There’s the cell phone tower that some folks are still fighting against, though they seem to be on the losing end of the fight. And there's the curbside recycling problem which is more of a draw at the moment but looks to have a lot of life left in the dispute. There’s an argument between the Parks Board and the Seniors Group over who gets some money that didn’t get spent for what it was allocated for, a dispute in its very initial phase. We’re revisiting the need to keep boats from chasing the orcas off the coastline of Point Roberts. The Voters’ Association is trying to become an active group again by collecting up-to-the-minute news on all the ‘hot button’ items that all the other groups are already arguing about. And, finally, the Taxpayers’/Property Owners’ Association is re-emerging from its semi-dormant state in order to oppose the fabulous Stanton Northwest ‘Beach Club’ development and its 100+ million dollar houses.

I can hardly wait for fall to start, all things considered. The ‘Beach Club’ development, I suspect, will generate the most energy. One speaker at the Voters’ Association commented that Stanton Northwest’s publicity brochures about this fabulous development indicated that Stanton Northwest doesn’t have a clue about what it’s like to live in Point Roberts. “Picturesque,’ says the brochure; ‘at once, convenient and isolated.’ Convenient to what, I can’t imagine. To the border, I guess.

It's too late to help them with their brochures, but what I’m thinking for a fall and winter plan is this: I get Stanton Northwest to hire me as someone who can meet with their clients to explain to them exactly what it’s like to live in Point Roberts, so that said clients will be able to give genuine informed consent to their million dollar purchases. I’ll start with telling them about the really long, cold spring, and then work up to the September All Point Bulletin. That effort alone ought to be enough to stop the ‘Beach Club’ in its tracks.

Barbarians

Just a brief post tonight. First, to send you to a new website, lilypoint.org, where you can read more about what is going to become a dominant topic in the life of Point Roberts: The Stanton Development. That, and a poem.

This is the kind of development that shows up everywhere. And those who are most affected but are not going to be making (or potentially making) money from it are likely to be very unhappy about it. Nevertheless, it is hard to stop developments of this kind if there is sufficient money behind them. Which is not to say that there is bribery or chicanery of any kind...just that money does tend to make the world go round when it comes to property development.

In addition, there is an element of NIMBYism about it all. If people need million dollar houses at the beach, they should go to some other beach. OUR beach is too precious for such living. Even though there are plenty of million dollar houses that have been built in the last decade on or in sight of our Boundary Bay or our Georgia Strait. Not a hundred, certainly, but maybe fifty. And if fifty, why not a hundred?

If they ask me, I'll vote no. But so far, I'm not at all sure that I could defend that position. It can't be enough just to say that I don't like it, don't think it is change for the better, or even to say that this will somehow destroy the environment when all that went before may have been equally dubious. More to learn as we go. And now for the poem:

Waiting for the Barbarians
By Constantine Cavafy (1864-1933), translated by Edmund Keeley

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn't anything happening in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.
What laws can the senators make now?
Once the barbarians are here, they'll do the legislating.

Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting at the city's main gate
on his throne, in state, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader.
He has even prepared a scroll to give him,
replete with titles, with imposing names.

Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

Why don't our distinguished orators come forward as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and they're bored by rhetoric and public speaking.

Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?
(How serious people's faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home so lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.
And some who have just returned from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.

And now, what's going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were, those people, a kind of solution.

Dark Futures

Point Roberts is such a puzzling phenomenon that it is hard not to think about alternative futures for it. My most frequent dark vision is that the U.S. government will apply the powers of eminent domain to the whole place and turn it into Guantanamo II: The Sequel. All those people on the watch list will need a place to be watched more closely, I imagine. Fahrenheit 451 comes to mind (and it is Ray Bradbury’s 88th birthday today. Happy Birthday, Ray!).

Today, however, I was contemplating what the Sunshine Coast has become with all the development that has gone on here in the past decade. And it occurred to me that ten years from now, that’s what Point Roberts could be like, too. The Stanton Properties development (that 100 residence ‘Beach Club’ I mentioned on August 8) could be the beginning. I hear there are plans for another big development on the golf course, and yet another one at the marina. Next thing you know, Point Roberts, too, will be having non-stop summer festival events, no available parking spots, and a need for traffic lights.

All that seems very unlikely to me, though. The difficulties of getting in and out of Point Roberts are really too great, at least right now, to make that kind of development very likely. If banks and other big lenders are going to exercise some much-advised real-estate lending restraint, it seems unlikely that they would rush to populate Point Roberts with more unsold houses, even if it is a beautiful place.

No, I have a new dark vision for the future of Point Roberts, partially inspired by the giddy press excitement about McCain and his many houses. I’m thinking this: one of those trillionaires that are floating around the new globalized world and investing heavily in the U.S. (because we no longer have any money of our own to invest in the U.S.) could breeze in any day now and with pocket change buy, first, The International Marketplace and all four service stations. After buying them, he could just close them down. Then T.J.’s and The Reef would come into his portfolio, and they, too, would go away, along with their clientele. The same with the hardware store, the liquor store, and the remaining handful of small tourist shops and eating places. Six months later, after a winter of the residents having to go somewhere else to obtain everything, the trillionaire’s agents would be knocking on doors, offering a pleasant price for every residential property.

Six months after that, the trillionaire would own all 4.9-square-miles of Point Roberts, now a lovely gated-estate protected on the north by the U.S. and Canadian border people, and on the other three sides by the U.S. Coast Guard. The billionaire and his many guests could come and go by helicopter, thereby never having to fool with that border nonsense. Ed says the whole thing could be achieved with well under a billion dollars.

About ten years ago, there were rumors that Bill Gates was going to buy a big piece of Point Roberts to put a Microsoft campus in. Didn’t happen, but surely there are other billionaires out there, looking for a nice vacation home to add to their housing collection. It would be an extraordinary and rare Northwest project, an exciting opportunity to get in not only from the ground up but from all the ground up, and perfect timing for the investor who wants to be not only the end user but also the only user. Excellent location, steps to the ocean, the sky, and another country.