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The man who bought Pine Bluff, Arkansas (2022)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- reducesuffering 3y agohttps://1900hotdog.com/2023/07/upsetting-day-john-fenleys-cursed-crime-warehouse-%F0%9F%8C%AD/ https://1900hotdog.com/2023/07/upsetting-day-john-fenleys-cu... is the far more entertaining read. I feel a bit bad, because John Fenley is among us here on HN. But I think they also surface that John, you really need to get out of Pine Bluff and reevaluate these pie-in-the-sky ideas.
- ratg13 3y agothis is the most entertaining article i have read on the internet in some time. thank you for sharing!
- greenie_beans 3y agosurely most of those incidents are fiction?
- reducesuffering 3y agoNo, all of it is very real. And there's a lot more on John's Twitter and Youtube.
- throwaway13337 3y agoDoesn't the writer sort of revel in the misfortunes of John? I'm not sure how he got his money, but what he is trying to do with it doesn't sound awful. He might be bad at business - it seems like that's the idea here - but a person like John, from what I can tell, is a kind of protagonist. He wants to build his crazy ideas that seem on their face not all together sound. And he puts a ton of effort into making it happen. These ideas are meant to improve the world in some way through the market forces as he can tell. I wish him the best for it. It seems like there is a big culture of cynicism towards people trying to improve things through action and not words. Underlying it is the assumption of negative externalities. But I think we lost sight of something here. All actions have the possibility of some negative externalities, but humanity got to where it is because of a lot of people doing their best to improve things. The instinct to make potshots from the sidelines at the guys playing the game sucks.
- ethbr1 3y ago100%. Sitting in a basement and griping about things on the internet has 0% risk. Real life fails much more spectacularly and frequently. But it also has an infinitely larger chance of effecting actual change. Edit: >> He’d had enough. Fenley began open-carrying a weapon at all times and holding any would-be thieves at gunpoint. This is semi-rural Arkansas. A state ranked 47/50 [0] in per capita income. It may require more than holding people at gunpoint, unfortunately enough. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_income https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_terr...
- reducesuffering 3y agoJohn isn't a bad guy, and if he was close to achieving good things, I would be all for supporting him. Unfortunately, he is living off a 6 figure sum he got from stock years ago. He is rapidly burning it to 0 by buying unprofitable real estate. Instead of proving out ideas on a small scale, and scaling up from there, he thinks if he just tries for a home run, he can eventually do it. But he has multiple kids that he isn't seeing when he's in Pine Bluff most of the time. It's obvious that he's burning through his savings and will go bankrupt if he doesn't change course sooner. The nuclear reactor or mayor of Pine Bluff moonshots are never going to pan out.
- dinobones 3y agoPart of me wonders if this is a high-risk high-reward play to avoid paying his ex-wife a divorce settlement. If he loses all his money, oh well, sorry ex-wife I've got nothing. If he wins big, he makes a ton of money, but paying out the settlement will proportionally feel like nothing.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- freetime2 3y agoYup, I don’t like to see anyone be the victim of crime like that. We can laugh at some of the poor investments he has made, but the reality is things sound pretty dire in Pine Bluff. I feel bad for him and all the residents of Pine Bluff living in a city where the rule of law has basically failed.
- justadolphinnn 3y agoThis article seems worse in tone frankly
- jachac 3y agohttps://twitter.com/pontifier https://twitter.com/pontifier He tweets pretty frequently about the on-going drama
- cko 3y agoI just scrolled through his tweets (Xeets?) and I must say I really like the guy. Hugely entertaining. I hope for his sake this is all a performance art but but I doubt it.
- cdchn 3y agoTop tweet is him confronting an intruder then biffing on his face after tripping on a fire hydrant. I just couldn't scroll any further.
- criddell 3y agoAnd he posts here too. Recently he mentioned his plan for eliminating crime in Pine Bluff and maybe everywhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39633534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39633534
- 83457 3y ago1. buy warehouse 2. buy houses 3. start a company and rent houses to workers 4. maybe profit
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mopenstein 3y agoImagine owning and renting to the people you employee. What a nightmare! He'd be villainized immediately.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoStep 2.5 Find reliable, quality, trustworthy colleagues.
- readyplayernull 3y agoThat seems to be a dangerous place, even hydrants are against you: https://twitter.com/pontifier/status/1609493285675859973?s=20 https://twitter.com/pontifier/status/1609493285675859973?s=2...
- Take8435 3y agoThis entire post is so great. Love that it was posted by dbcooper lol
- untech 3y agoWhat’s the story of dbcooper?
- darby_eight 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper If he is posting, I sincerely hope he's doing it through the security-from-state of some anonymized internet access. Chances are he's just dead though.
- Fuzzwah 3y agoStole a bunch of money, hijacked a plane, jumped out with a parachute, escaped capture.
- untech 3y agoI think buying a warehouse is kinda cool! But if he’s facing security problems, can’t he just hire guards? The labor price must be as low as land price there.
- declan_roberts 3y ago"Can't he just hire guards?" I'm curious what you think a ballpark cost for 24-hour guard security would be?
- untech 3y agoI’ve looked up minimal wages in Arkansas. It’s $11/h, which seems ridiculously high, but I’m not an American. I think that in a depressed town, it shouldn’t be hard to find someone for, say, $35 per 12-hour night shift, just to patrol the property with a torch, so that it wouldn’t look abandoned? Which amounts to about $13k per year.
- untech 3y agoWhoops, I’ve just checked the thread and it seems that I angered some folks. Not that this comment would be read by anyone, but just for history: as non-American, it was hard to wrap my head around the fact that the minimum wage is $11 de facto, not de jure. It’s almost $2k per month, which is a salary of an educated (non-IT) specialist in lots of countries. I also forgot that minimum wage must be a hot political topic in the US. Sorry for writing stupid things on the Internet, I guess.
- adolph 3y agoI think the above comment is using “torch” which in East Atlantic English means “flashlight” in Arkansas.
- saghm 3y agoThis reminds me of when my brother and I read one of the Harry Potter books as a kid and we were incredulous when it mentioned him using a "torch" under his blanket to read secretly at night. We thought it literally meant he was using a flame and didn't understand how his he managed to keep his blanket from catching fire
- Slava_Propanei 3y ago[dead]
- throwitaway222 3y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39576974&p=2#39587743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39576974&p=2#39587743
- dullcrisp 3y agoEliminate crime everywhere huh? I guess where would we be without maniacs?
- CrimsonCape 3y agoHow even do you reclaim Pine Bluff? it's obviously overrun with thieves and the local police are qualitatively useless. It's almost like the national guard needs to be sent in.
- hahajk 3y agoYou could institute a UBI by building a tower that drops a $1 bill every minute. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35585305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35585305
- lazide 3y agoWouldn’t it work better if there were levers and random shocks involved? /s
- Tabular-Iceberg 3y agoYou don’t need the /s because it would indeed work better. But that’s just because anything would work better than a tower that randomly dispenses dollar bills.
- lazide 3y agothe /s is so i don’t get banned for non sarcastically proposing obvious classical conditioning methods (that would be undoubtably uncomfortably effective) against what appears to be a severely disadvantaged and traumatized population.
- maayank 3y agoAwesome read. A real life Nathan Fielder (I mean, the “character” Nathan plays)
- rKarpinski 3y agoWhat he bought was a large warehouse and later some foreclosed lots at auction, spending in total ~400k. The warehouse alone was worth 3.4 million as recently as 2008 but de-industrialization and local crime have since cratered it's value. [1] While he's engaged in a completely unreasonable adventure, It's sad to see how accepting & cynical we are of the hallowing out and degradation of the US. [1] https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2022/08/17/meet-a-man-whos-been-buying-up-pine-bluff-cheap https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2022/08/17/meet-a-man-who...
- lotsofpulp 3y ago> It's sad to see how accepting & cynical we are of the hallowing out and degradation of the US. Certain parts of the US. It’s a big country, it might not be reasonable for it to all be doing well, especially with an overall older and older population with productive segments of the population agglomerating to smaller regions.
- cdchn 3y ago>t's sad to see how accepting & cynical we are of the hallowing out and degradation of the US. It is disappointing that people are socioeconomically swept away by the tide, but I think all across America since its inception has been a place of ebb and flow. A nation of boom towns and ghost towns.
- 7thaccount 3y agoI've lived in Pine Bluff before (not that long ago) and almost everyone I worked with commuted from either Little Rock (a straight shot on the interstate for something like 45 minutes of drive time) or one of the nearby little rural towns. A lot of businesses have since left the town and will likely never come back. The crime is just too high and there aren't enough jobs in the area. Little Rock is pretty dangerous too in parts, but is safe for the vast majority of places.
- TimMeade 3y agoi was stationed in Arkansas in the late 80's and we used to go to Pine Bluff sometimes. It was a lovely little town. Just tragic about the downturn. I had no idea.
- mtlynch 3y agoI'd never heard about this, but I found Bentley super likable and easy to root for. I hope he manages to get things going in his direction soon.
- Bukhmanizer 3y agoI fell down the pontifier rabbit hole from a HN comment in early 2021 as well and I’m glad other people have found the story as fascinating as I did. I do think the article makes him a bit overly sympathetic and glosses over some of his eccentricities. Like the fact that he seems to really think he can build a nuclear fusion reactor from an old MRI machine and I guess all of the Nem saga: https://whoispontifier.wordpress.com/2018/05/14/the-journey-begins/ https://whoispontifier.wordpress.com/2018/05/14/the-journey-... I still haven’t decided if all this is or isn’t some sort of elaborate performance art, but I appreciate the effort in any case. And even though I think he’s probably a few cards short of a deck, you do kind of root for him in the end.
- mikea1 3y ago> you do kind of root for him in the end I'm rooting for him too. He doesn't have all the qualities of a classic protagonist, yet I find myself hoping that he succeeds in his madcap endeavors. I admire his grit: I would have not had his fortitude in the face of violent threats nor withstand the constant frustration.
- pard68 3y agoI'm not anywhere near knowledgeable enough to chime in on the feasibility of creating a nuclear reactor from a MRI machine, but there is this guy in Floyd, Virginia who has created a nuclear reactor from some old medical equipment, so maybe it's possible with a MRI machine too?
- ThrustVectoring 3y agoNuclear fission is relatively straightforward so long as you either don't know or don't care about the health risks of radiation. It's just a pile of spicy rocks at the end of the day. Fusion, on the other hand, requires you to get center-of-sun temperatures and pressures going on to work properly. That usually requires either extremely difficult engineering processes or a fission bomb (and more precise engineering calculations but they're actually reasonably solvable).
- 3y ago
- ashleyn 3y agoReading this was difficult. * What exactly was his plan for the building? I don't see anything coherent. One moment it's a makerspace, another it's a music warehouse, then it's a science museum. Was there a coherent plan? $281k is a lot of money to spend with no real plan. * The city allegedly giving him grief. I'm still not sure if this was preventable or not considering the bit about how he failed to submit building plans. If your plan is to own a significant chunk of this city, you're going to have to play better politics than repeatedly being asked to leave at public functions. Palm-greasing would be a far better strategy than righteous anger. Maybe a fraction of that $900k could've opened a nice park they always wanted. Maybe the PD needs a new bearcat. Something. * Living in a tent on the lot instead of hiring security. This bit was straight out of some episode of a sitcom. This is a depressed flyover country town. If you couldn't afford security then you couldn't afford the building. Again, a good chunk of that $900k would cover round-the-clock security for at least a year. Righteous indignation over the crime isn't an actual cost-cutting measure. * The land is cheap for a reason. The way a town gets revitalised is external value flows in. How would the makerspace-warehouse-museum thing bring that value into the city? Even if all this did pan out, I'd predict an entirely new problem he'd have, which is no willing customers outside of a 200 mile radius. I don't get why people make cockeyed "investments" like these when the S&P 500 is sitting right there at a nice 8% a year. No bums, no politics, no thinking it through at all really. Just buy it and don't touch it. If your idea can't do better than that intersection of earnings and effort, don't bother with it.
- Nextgrid 3y agoSadly this whole story & his YT channel looks like witnessing a man's slow descent into madness, like the meatspace equivalent of TempleOS.
- resolutebat 3y agoHe was living in a tent and subsisting off ramen until he landed the $900k windfall, which he proceeded to squander on unrelated properties. But yeah, the total lack of security is astonishing, you'd think he could afford to hire a security guard: the main theft happened after he got the windfall and could easily have paid for it.
- ametrau 3y agoWow. I thought stories like these ended when the internet died. I’m glad I was wrong. Should have been on HN ages ago. Crazy and exciting read. Thanks max read.
- cpach 3y agoIt’s been discussed before: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=pine%20bluff&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- kevinmchugh 3y agoThis story only exists because the guy can constantly post for all to see everything that he's done or is trying to deal with and all his grand plans
- NotYourLawyer 3y agoHe’s here on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pontifier https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pontifier
- dec0dedab0de 3y agoI love this, and I am rooting for him. It's the kind of thing I dream about having enough money to do.
- cjbgkagh 3y agoI find that there is a lot of inertia in decline, things that have been declining for a long time generally continue declining. The amount of work to turn around a township (?) would be insane and I wish him the best of luck.
- TigeriusKirk 3y agoThere's a lot of small towns where buying Main Street wouldn't be an outrageous cost. It's got some appeal. Go in and make it work again. But when you get down to the "How?" it quickly becomes apparent that the inertia is strong and the odds of success are extremely low. Still, it's a fun daydream.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cooper_ganglia 3y agoChallenges aside, I’m jealous! He needs to pull a Rajneeshpuram and politically take over the town, too, lol
- superq 3y agoNeeds more pitch for the archer towers. Maybe some war dogs.
- AI_beffr 3y agoi find the person who wrote this to be a complete ass-hole. talking about ill-advised redditors, he gives one example of a man who decided to build his own house. but the link to that guys story is a weird twitter thread that just shows a guy building a house. as someone who knows how to build a house, i knew how much work and hard-earned lessons went into each of those progress pictures. and the guy builds the house better than most contractors would. besides the plumbing snafu. the doors and windows were not placed in a way that is pleasing to the eye but overall it was a great accomplishment. how is that ill-advised? its not, its awesome. i hate people that take a shit on those who actually make change in the world and take risks. all from their safe little cubicle or basement. people who are so ignorant and dumb that all the information that is packed into those pictures flies right over their heads. as a person in real estate, looking through pontifiers twitter feed is like looking back at my own life. most people know that there is a homeless problem. but what many people dont realize is that basically everywhere in the united states there are people who wander around at night looking for stuff to steal. they poke around everywhere but actually do not physically break in most of the time. people in liberal areas are familiar with window breaking and break and enter but everywhere else there is just this omnipresence of vagrants who commit smaller crimes. they are just really annoying and make the neighborhood seem more trashy than it really is. these people are all fit and ready to work. the cops wont arrest them. nobody really bothers them. i think the reason they exist is because people are shittier now and dont feel any urge to fix the societal problems that they see around them. there are videos on pontifiers twitter where he confronts them and they are totally without shame. they arent afraid of being caught. i think something similar happened in the 80s and people got super fed up and then NY started stop and frisk and other things. we need another one of those. as for the actual purchase of the warehouse and other properties, the risk isnt so bad when you take into account the relatively small amounts of money that are actually on the table here. as far as i know, hes making these purchases in cash. i would say that theres a good chance he will pull through and be able to use what hes learned to start making a real difference in this community and others. by far the most concerning part of this story is the city not cooperating. biggest road block by far.
- epivosism 3y agoyeah, the author seems to like the guy but still falls into typical prejudicial choices in explaining the actual story. It's so schoolmarmish. Step back man, people can do what they want, they make mistakes, they have grand plans that sometimes fail. > “The Overconfident Optimist and His Ill-Advised DIY Project.” This is what I mean. The article just started and he's defining his conclusion for all readers. Then, he compares Fenley to a "Child-destroying slackline" (which apparently never actually hurt anyone?). Fenley bought some property and tried to artistic type stuff. It is really slimy to compare him to such a horrible thing as hurting a child. That linked tweet is another "we know better" type of guy who's telling someone else how wrong they are. Yeah, doing risky stuff is risky, and I definitely don't think kids should (or would) be allowed to ride that thing, but I think they'd figure it out real quick (possibly after the creator died testing it). This is really a cultural thing - puritan types freaking HATE how unplanned, disorganized, and free/careless other cultural groups are in the US (i.e. appalachian/borderer people). So reading this as straight up cultural mockery/status management/ridicule makes it clear. Its basically equivalent to a 19th century "lets go to other countries and laugh at people's behavior" type of travelogue by northeast USA "know better than you" types criticizing other cultural groups for the behavior they don't like (monster trucks, bbq, hotdog eating competitions, basically anything that's just not done in the uptight north-east USA) Also: author, did you personally ever make 900k from a patent? So yeah, people are weird, have bad/dumb ideas. And I can feel you kind of like the guy despite everything. So like, get over the contempt you feel, figure out what he's got that gave him the skill to invent something, and rise above your need to mock him. The rest of the article is fine in tone, just fix the initial disrespectful comparisons. Something like "I looked into this guy and found a complicated, naive, but also gifted guy... <details>" rather than just hitting the regular playbook. Final comment: the note about race / murder is super weird. You mention a company moved, then immediately explain the race distributions without any reason to do that, as if there is a connection. Is there? what is it? Did the company ever mention race? This is typical journo hinting/dogwhistling. Is there any evidence of any racial problems in the subject of the article? Some towns are poor, some rich, some white, some black, whats the point? Then you mention the murder rates... inadvertently confirming a hate fact, that certain groups are linked to super high murder rates (victims and perps). I just don't get it. Like, what's the point of bringing that up?
- htag 3y agoI can't believe no one has mentioned the FDA toxicology lab near the town [0]. There is good reason they put the lab in the middle of impoverished no where. There has been issues with the lab in the past, including missing primates last year [1]. Maybe I'm a bit tin-foil-hat, but this is literally an isolated place to study toxicity and I think it's a unique risk to relocate near it. [0] https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/nctr-location-facilities-services/nctr-location https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/nctr-location-facilities-servi... [1] https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2023/aug/30/monkeys-gone-from-fda-lab-near-pine-bluff-for-now/ https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2023/aug/30/monkeys-gone...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- krisoft 3y ago> including missing primates last year The article you linked does not talk about missing primates. They were doing experiments on monkeys. Activist put pressure on them to stop and they did stop. Then they rehomed the monkeys to a sanctuary. They are “missing” in as much as the monkeys are no longer there, but everyone knows where the monkeys have gone and why the monkeys have gone. The article you linked itself explains this.
- LispSporks22 3y agoI love this guy
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Mountain_Skies 3y agoPerhaps he has really long term vision. According to National Geographic, if the polar ice caps melt completely, Pine Bluff will benefit immensely by being waterfront property on the now larger Gulf of Mexico.
- grouchomarx 3y ago>agent assured me the price was correct >arkansas yea
- Animats 3y agoAt least he's spending his own money. There have been far worse schemes where someone tried to create their own community. Some recent ones: - Satoshi Island [1] - Seasteading [2] - California Forever [3] [1] https://www.satoshi-island.com/ https://www.satoshi-island.com/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seasteading_Institute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seasteading_Institute [3] https://gizmodo.com/tech-billionaires-project-to-build-a-new-city-accused-o-1851355578 https://gizmodo.com/tech-billionaires-project-to-build-a-new...
- returningfory2 3y agoWhy do you think California Forever is a far worse scheme?
- hristov 3y agoI would like to remind HN that hoarding is a serious and well established mental disorder and that we should not encourage this poor soul that has fallen victim to a real estate version of this disease. It is unusual that someone should hoard real estate and it is interesting to see the circumstances of how this happened but otherwise it is a pretty standard case. Note how from the interviews he gets pleasure in obtaining new properties and yet has no idea what to do with them. Note he does not spend the money required to even get an architectural drawing made and yet he spends money on obtaining more and more properties. Or the fact that he has decided not to hire security but to guard his properties by himself, which would make it much more convenient if he has fewer properties not more. But he still keeps buying more. At this point a smart thief can get a map of his properties helpfully provided on the internet, find out where he is and attack any one of his other forty something properties. Note how in the end of the interview when he is supposed to say some inspiring words of his progress or near term plans, he does not talk about what he is going to do with the warehouse but fantasizes with great excitement about buying yet another abandoned property, a hotel. By the way I fully sympathize with the city officials. No city will approve any building project that does not come with fully compliant drawings signed and stamped by a licensed civil engineer and/or architect (depending on the project). Nor should they. It is their job to keep the community safe and habitable. It is kind of funny they are stealing his ideas, but that also might be understandable. They might be good ideas, after all. Here you have a town that is looking for ways to revitalize itself with little money, and here comes a young techie guy from California with what seem to be some very good ideas and some money. There probably was some excitement in city hall when this guy first submitted his plans. But then they slowly realize that this is a sad disturbed individual that is unlikely to ever accomplish anything and will not spend money on anything other than acquiring abandoned real estate. But the town keeps deteriorating, they have to do something, and his ideas do seem pretty cheap. So they decide lets try them out ourselves. Cities do not like to own businesses. The officials cannot take outsize profits for themselves but are on the hook for any screwups. So I am sure they would have much preferred if someone else was running these things, but they simply knew that this guy was not going to get it done. So yeah, this is an interesting case of hoarding, but that is about it. I urge Mr. Fenley to consult a psychiatrist.
- 3y ago
- ryandrake 3y agoTalk about tripling down. Looks like he's running for mayor of the town, too[1]. 1: https://twitter.com/pontifier/status/1761982196649250831 https://twitter.com/pontifier/status/1761982196649250831
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- codethief 3y agoOh, it's the Murfie guy! Does anyone know what the status is there? The video on murfie.com ends with "It'll happen. I'm not giving up."
- Cheer2171 3y agoAs always, The Simpsons did it first. Go watch the episode where Bart buys an abandoned factory at a tax auction for $1, although even Bart hired Millhouse as a security guard. The reason the city wants architectural drawings and probably an engineer to be involved is the same too. Spoiler alert: the building collapses into rubble at the end of the episode.
- lazide 3y agoThe thing that people always seem to forget about real estate is that assets can have real ‘negative value’ elements. For awhile they were selling houses in Detroit for something like $100 - but all the articles about it didn’t mention the $10k+ in delinquent tax liens on the properties, or the $100k+ in required improvements to make the property even basically habitable. Or that you’d likely get shot attempting to live there, unless you had some very specific skills.
- PickledHotdog 3y agoFor Australians: Right-wing, Sky News talking head, Rita Panahi, was born in Pine Bluff, AK, according to its wikipedia page. Sure would explain her hatred of the poor.
- selimthegrim 3y agoThis is AR, AK is Alaska.
- slater 3y agoI think that's a typo, her Wikipedia sez Arkansas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Panahi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Panahi
- justadolphinnn 3y agoCompletely different place
- cjbgkagh 3y agoI think one of the things that makes this guy’s story interesting, at least to me, is that there is big part of me that would do as he has done but I have actively and intentionally suppressed it. Maybe we share the same ADHD inspired impulses. The part of me that suppresses these impulses could have easily been missing, I see his story I think, ‘there but for the grace of god go I’. I don’t want to see him fail but since I’ve suppressed this aspect in myself I am kind of seeking reassurance of my own decisions. If he succeeds then that may suggest that I have been making the wrong choices in life. I wouldn’t begrudge him for his success and instead I would use it to try to recalibrate my own decisions.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bigjimmyk3 3y agoI am a lifelong Arkansan, and I hope he is able to pull off some kind of win. I visited that area often as a teen, and Pine Bluff was the main entertainment destination for the region. I haven't been in awhile, but it sounds like the years have not been kind. I really hope that his analogy to 1980s NYC works out. It's easy to give up when there's so much cultural and institutional inertia, but this guy seems to have a pretty deep well of motivation. I hope he hangs in there.
- tossedacct 3y agoPine Bluff is crazy. I know this because many years ago I found an amazing building in the downtown area for sale and went to see it. After a couple of hours of tours from a real estate agent and town officials I realized that this place was not coming back from the dead. The previous owner of the building had been stabbed there while trying to get it ready for occupancy. The city employees openly wanted money to help me avoid taxes. And the kicker was that it smelled awful when the wind blew in from the nearby Tyson chicken farm. It’s consistently been in the top murders per capita rate in the US. I feel bad for this guy, but it would hard to miss the red flags before buying there.
- gottorf 3y agoOthers have touched upon the point of crime, but it really is worth mentioning that crime (especially of the violent and/or property type) is a huge hindrance to the economic revitalization of any area. It's much, much easier to risk time and capital to try and build something versus risking your life and those of your loved ones. Just goes to show that rule of law and strong private property rights are necessary conditions to any level of wealth-building.
- OfficeChad 3y ago[dead]