Before I leave my Sustainable Fairview subject for a while (see posting below), I want to share some P.S.’s. Yesterday I heard from a fellow SFA investor who sympathized with my frustrations, but said that he still hoped to live at Fairview one day and form a community with like-minded people. Well, that’s great. I hope that his dream comes true.
However, special settings that attract special people require a special mindset for their creation. The soul of Walt Disney still is felt in Disneyland. The soul of John Bogle still is felt in Vanguard. The soul of Conrad Hilton still is felt in Hilton hotels. By contrast, conventional people create conventional settings that attract other conventional people. When I say “conventional” I don’t mean untalented or unsuccessful. I mean something that is hard to put into words, but is apparent to anyone who visits a special place.
In downtown Salem, less than a block separates a Starbucks from the Coffee House café. The former is conventional; the latter is special. I don’t go to Starbucks unless I’m dying for a latte and there are no other options. I love to go to the Coffee House café and sit for an hour talking with friends, enjoying the unconventional atmosphere.
Sustainable Fairview Associates had an opportunity to create a world-class sustainable community here in Salem that would have been a truly special place. It would have drawn people from all over the country, and even the world, who wanted to live and work at Fairview. Some places people seek out. Other places—Aspen, Sedona, Carmel, Ashland—draw people like a magnet. And they are interesting people, unconventional people, special people. Whenever we go to visit friends in Ashland I realize that there are more artistic and creative souls in this southern Oregon home of the Shakespeare festival than there are in Salem, which has five times more people.
So, some sort of sustainable community probably will evolve at Fairview. But likely it will be a local or regional draw for potential residents and businesses, as evidenced by the early concern of SFA to have a marketing study conducted that analyzed the demand for housing in the Salem area. This was so short-sighted and uncreative, I couldn’t believe it. To start off by limiting your vision to a local market is like Walt Disney beginning by thinking, “What kind of an amusement park will attract people from Los Angeles?”
Thinking big, thinking “outside the box,” thinking creatively—the lack of such thinking is what frustrates Laurel and me as investors in Sustainable Fairview Associates. If we had wanted to invest in something conventional we would have left our money in index mutual funds. Instead, we were seriously seeking to help create a special setting that both we and the world could enjoy. Maybe it still will come to be. I doubt it, unless some special people with a special vision take over the management of SFA, and create a development that matches their sensibilities.
I am suprised that you would be so disappointed about a simple study of the local market for housing. Certainly some portion of the housing will be purchased by locals but not all of it. Is it reasonable to expect that all buyers will be special people from elsewhere? Is this the only market study that is being done? With a project like this will very high initial costs, one has to sell early to get some cash flow. Without it, the whole effort could fail early in the development process.
Posted by: Jerry Schneider | May 31, 2004 at 05:55 PM