 
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 92 00:35:22 EST
From: wce@hogbbs.scol.pa.us (Bill Eichman)
Subject: Getting land
To: +dist+~js9b/Public/camc.dl@andrew.cmu.edu
Message-Id: 
Organization: The Heart of Gold BBS, Lemont PA
Comments: Validated

Hi, Everyone,

This is another trial of the mailist, and of the editor that I'm using to 
mail these messages... hope evevryone is still listening.

I'm enclosing a section of the book that I'm working on discussing these 
corporate village and hi-tech & sustainable communities that can provide 
us an alternative to the megacorporate hives and the life of salarymen.

How do we add the names of other interested people to this mailist? Can 
we build a library of ftp'able files? Should we develop an 
'advertisement' to post to other newsgroups, hunting for contributors?
Well, I hope to hear from you soon---- Later, Bill Eichman
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Pioneering the 21st Century -- summary --  Bill Eichman wce@hogbbs.scol.pa.us
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Section four: Getting Started

Part A: Forming the Teams

Part B: Preliminary Research, Preperation, and Training

Part C: Finding and Buying the Site

Part D: The First Year

***********************

Part C: Finding and Buying the Site
-----------------------------------



In an ideal and intellegent society, it would be a simple matter to
begin and test the types of decentralized, hi-tech, and ecologically
sound villages that we've been discussing.

In an ideal society, an plan like this would be conceived and developed
within the creative fringe, and then presented to the acaademic
community, which would discuss it's strengths and shortcomings, and
then devote academic resources to testing the idea. With nuetral and
objective observers making measurements and reports, a 'test-model' of
this new type of village would be built, and experimenter/researcher
members selected, and soon high quality data would begin pouring into
the society as a whole. If the idea was flawed, then it could be quickly
set aside-- if it was a good idea, then what was learned could be
rapidly passed on to new researchers.

If the academics dubbed it a valuable idea, an efficient and profitable
idea, then older monied investors would soon start to fund and support
these villages, in hopes of founding and "owning" a think tank, a hothouse
environment for the creative and commited entreprenuers and inventors so
vitally needed in a globally competitive economy.

-----------

However, this doesn't seem a likely route for this idea; for we do not
live in an intelligent or ideal society.

I have been discussing and presenting this idea in the academic
environment of PSU for over fifteen years, to a universally negative
response. I find a large percentage of students who find the idea
attractive and exciting, but those with the power to effect changes and
make funding rrequests, the Professors and Administrators, have devoted
their attention wholeheartedly to serving the needs of existing
industry. Despite lip service paid to sustainable systems and
agriculture, the proposal that a revolutionary and integrated
experiment be undertaken is met with dead silence and even active
opposition. (An example of this opposition can be found in the closing
of the student-run sustainable agriculture Circleville Farm at PSU,
despite heavy student protest.)

To give another example of this general opposition to radically new
sustainable-living ideas, let me point out that despite nearly twenty
years of ecological and alternative energy research and publication, no
reputable academic community has attempted the one logical experiment--
the construction of a superefficient, moderately self reliant housing
development large enough to test economy of scale and the types of
lifestyle changes mandated by a superefficient lifestyle.

I could continue giving examples, but my point is not to criticize the
intellectual community. My point is this: If we want to see any results
from these ideas, we must rely on ourselves to accomplish the first,
and hardest, basic experiments.

If we are successful, we have to expect the academics to jump on the
bandwagon full force-- untill then, we can only be grateful for any help
at all that they toss our way.

(Note: My skepticism of the possibility of help from the academics, the
government, or wealthy investors should NOT be taken to mean that we
shouldn't still make an extremely serious effort to master
grantsmanship, and seek funding and support from those sources. We would
be amiss if we didn't make every reasonable effort to "harvest" support
from these traditional sources.

In typical grantwriting situations, as many as twenty to fifty
applications may be made to get one real source of funding-- my
expectation is that these sustainable-village concepts may require two
to five hundred applications to get the same results.

However-- we're a high-tech venture, right? We simply develop an expert
systems program that, with the help of a trained operator, can generate
many properly composed grant applications every day, track the progress
of those applications, and perform much of the 'grunt work' of the
grantwriting process.)

------------

Well, let's leave academia to it's ivory tower, and look at alternative
ways of funding the first "test-models" of these sustainable hi-tech
villages.

It seems to me that there are four or five possibilities....

(1) We work like demons on some money making scheme or another, try to
build a store of wealth, and hope that we gather enough capital to start
the projects while we're still young enough to enjoy the challenge.

(2) We work like demons to find some alternative source of funding from
some wealthy source or group of sources, something similar to the
process that the builders of Biosphere II went through to fund their
project, finally finding a texas oilman with the imagination to support
the (admittedly suspect and possibly silly) biosphere project.

(3) We make arrangements, or are lucky enough, to inherit a suitable
piece of land. (Esalen started this way.)

(4) We obtain a suitable piece of land using some technical trick, for
instance, making a mining claim using the parameters set down by the
federal Mining Act of 1872-1972.

(5) My favorite possibility, and the one to which I plan to devote as
much effort as possible in the next few years--- We find a suitable
donor to either GIVE us the land, or to sell it to us at attractive
terms, and with no down payment.

All of the above ideas have their good points and their bad points, and,
ultimately, it seems to me that we should hope to try them all, in one
form or another.

And, I'm sure there are dozens of other possibilities that I haven't
mentioned, but which will become apparent to us as we continue making
efforts on this project.

---------------

Let me offer a summary of my favorite strategy for obtaining the land
that is needed to build an "test-model" of these sustainable villages; a
strategy that will almost certainly work for buying the land for
hundreds of such communities.

An ideal place to start these villages is on land that is now being run
as a small family farm, within a reasonable commute distance to a small
city or a university town. A 50 to 500 acre plot of farmland, typical of
the less-than-perfect factory farm-- a large portion of rough, natural
land, or woodlot, about thirty percent plus flatter, cultivated fields
and pasture, and a central complex of buildings, barns, etc, to use as a
starting base.

(It would also be very handy to start with the help of some seriously
experienced farmers, to help us make the changes from ordinary
cash-grain/animal farming to a superintensive maximal profit
human-feeding style of farming, as described in the chapter on
self-reliance.)

Fortunately for us, perhaps, this is an age of decay in the family
farms. While the price of farmland that can be developed into a suburban
sprawl is very high, the price of slightly more remote family farmland
is being held down by the lack of interested 'farmers'. Many family
farms, when sold today, are converted into retirement or country estates
for wealthier and older citizens-- which may be nice, but it's part of a
loss of the family farm way of life, and the rural farming-productive
society.

We may be able to take advantage of the decay of the american small
family farm. I grew up on a farm myself, and have always followed
farming and agriculture, reading farming magazines, and studying
sustainable agriculture-- I have seen for myself a trend that the
farming magazines report frequently... The older family farmers have
no-one to carry on the family tradition; their children are moving to
the cities, and to the wage/salary way of life. With the right type of
advertising and research, we should almost certainly be able to find a
number of likely farms, owned by older people, an older couple would be
typical, who would like to see the tradition of fareming their land
continued. Who want to see their land tended in a loving and
appreciative way. And who need help to keep the farm going, and who need
help and support as they retire and live out their old age.

These types of small farm owners are what the real estate bopoks will
call a "motivated seller". They need to turn their farm over to others,
they need to retire, but they don't want to sell their farm to those who
won't appreciate it, and they may even find it hard to find anyone at
all to buy their farm. "Motivated buyers" can often be enticed to sell
their property in unusual ways-- the infamous methods of creative
financing. I suggest we set up a concentrated program to find this type
of seller, and make carefully designed offers to them that will
encourage them to sell us their land with no down payment, attractive
terms, and maximum safety for all concerned.

My guess is that we WOULD be able to find such a seller within a three
year period of effort-- althgough we will have to make careful study of
the locations invovled, and we may be forced to accept less than
ideally desireable sites.

The offer I sugest we make would run along these lines: First, our
village corporation would establish a Land Trust, which would be the
deedholder of the property. This land trust would be managed by two
layers, one selected by the corporation of the village, and the other
chosen by the existing landholders; the purpose of the trust would be to
hold title to the land, and rent it to the corporation of the village at
fixed, reducing terms in perpetuity (reducing, so that once the property
has been completely paid off, the monthgly rent would drop to a
calculated overhead fee that ensured the perpetual existence and
management of the land trust). If the village corporation defaults on
the management of the community, or in some other way screws up, the
trust would sue to recover any lost payments due, (quarenteeing the
original owners their money, the income they depend on for retirement)
and then turn the farm into a Nature Conservancy.

We offer the security and legal muscle of the Land Trust in exchange for
what would normally be asked as a down payment-- and perhaps we provide
some level or another of small down payment to aid them in making the
transition into retirement. We begin making a series of payments to the
original owners, under a typical "contract of sale" agreement, which
they accept in lieu of the lump sum they would recieve had we finaced
this whole thing through the banks. They move to their retirement home
in florida, or to a retirement home that we build for them on the
property, and we begin to move onto the land, build new buildings,
transform the farm, so on and so forth.

The land trust holds the deed of the land, and the village never truly
ends up with ownership of the land-- but, at the same time, if the IRS
tries to sieze the land, or if debts incurred in business attract civil
suits, the land should be protected by the trust. A new corporation
village vcould form, if an older one was detroyed by mismanagement, and
take over operation of the farm again (such a possibility would be built
into the land trust's guiding document.).

The original owners get security, and a steady income for their
retirement, and perhaps other types of protections and benefits-- and
the village corporation gets land with minimal cost and maximal
financial protection.

Such a scheme can be adjusted in a hundred ways to suit differing needs,
differing sellers, and differing regions.

The first step involve planning and designing the basic documents of the
land trust and contract of sale, and the development of a convincing
presentation that can be mailed and delivered to prospective farm
owners.

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