3 ms·

This particular town is majority Black, so I doubt the MAGA vibe is strong. Also, if you research the town, it looks like a big casino was just built there, at

This particular town is majority Black, so I doubt the MAGA vibe is strong. 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).

ryandrake 3y ago
> This particular town is majority Black, so I doubt the MAGA vibe is strong. 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?
- riehwvfbk 3y ago
  I'm just saying he may still get lucky even though he had no plan at all.

ryandrake 3y ago

> This particular town is majority Black, so I doubt the MAGA vibe is strong. 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?

riehwvfbk 3y ago
I'm just saying he may still get lucky even though he had no plan at all.