> βIt'd be freaking fantastic to own a hotel, and like, have rooftop parties and turn the whole top floor into a penthouse for me. You know? Like, that's, like, how would I not want to do that?
Dude? Who the fuck are you going to be partying with? The town is full of criminals who steal from you. A makerspace? Where are the makers? An art studio? Where are the artists? Your town is "MAGA, drugs and crime" as an HNer put it in the previous article about this saga. Where is all of this culture going to magically come from, besides your imagination?
This guy seems like the true "If You Build It They Will Come" believer, but he's not even building anything. And even if he does Build It, the place seems like too much of a shithole for anyone to actually come.
Also, if you research the town, it looks like a big casino was just built there, at the cost of $350M. Which would suggest that the RE investments this guy made might just pay out, and that the town leadership was in fact maliciously trying to get rid of him (so that someone else would profit from the appeciation).
Yep, according to Wikipedia, you're absolutely right. Strike the "MAGA" part from my comment!
But, plopping a casino into an already-crappy town is not going to make it less crappy.
And, to be fair, if his plan was to help the city, plopping a makerspace or art studio, or a science museum isn't going to move the crappiness needle either. There's no silver bullet building that fixes poverty and misery. It's not like SimCity where you sprinkle your city with evenly spaced bonus-providing buildings and suddenly all your metrics start going up.
If his plan wasn't to help the city, but to arbitrage the low property values into a profitable business, then he should have bought strip mall properties and installed the usual turnkey check cashing stores, liquor stores, payday lenders, and so on. Not easy businesses, but at least they are understandable to the city and have a chance at being profitable.
If his plan was to just speculate on real estate and hope that some miracle happens that raises property values, that's just high stakes gambling. Good for him if it pays off and he can flip these properties to another sucker for a profit.
If it wasn't any of these, then honestly I don't get what his plan was. I'm going to buy a bunch of random real estate in a dilapidated city and... then... do what? Sit there getting robbed every time you move anything of value into those properties?
Though in terms of openness to, say, LGBTQ, it definitely isn't going to be the most welcoming place.
https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/exit-polls/president/natio...
That is a serious question - what is their thinking or feeling that drives them to this?
Then after discovering that he is a far above average target, and getting a windfall and bringing all his gear and customer's property to the site, he gets no security?
Definitely seems to be a few cards short of a deck and have more money than sense. I hope he doesn't get himself or his family killed if one of those robberies goes bad.