Chapter 17

March 2004

Most of March is still winter on the calendar, and it's still definitely winter around Spearfish Lake. Occasionally a warmish day came along when there was a little melting, but those happened from time to time for most of the winter. Most years the snow still lies heavily on the ground, although the lengthening days and the slightly less chilly weather gives signs of spring being on the way.

Usually by the middle of March people are ready for winter to be over with. Randy was one of them; construction season clearly wasn't far off, and there were more and more things that needed to be done to get ready for it. This March was busier than most, at least partly because the decision to go ahead on the pellet plant came so late that some things had to be rushed in order to make a target date of getting it into production in the fall.

On top of that, the tribal leadership at Three Pines had made the decision to hold off on the next expansion phase of the ski resort until use increased a bit. That was one big job gone in Randy's summer, but that only lasted for a few minutes – it proved that they were all set to go on an expansion of the casino lodge that had been planned for years and held up by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. As always seemed to happen with them, the decision came late so that meant more hustling around. At least the building plans had been long complete, which was usually not the case when the tribe changed horses in midstream, a somewhat common occurrence. That simplified things to a huge extent, and at least the work on the ski lodge expansion could go into the files for use at a future date. Randy had little doubt that they'd be ready to go when the time came.

It all meant that Randy didn't get a lot of time to work on Clark Plywood matters, except where they involved the construction aspects of the pellet plant. Ryan had done what he could to keep Randy at least a little bit involved in other matters in the company, at least when he could find a few spare minutes. However, Ryan knew that Randy was busy and didn't bother him much with other Clark Plywood problems.

So, it was a little surprising to get a phone call from Ryan's secretary one morning along about the first of the month asking him to come over and sit in on a conference. Randy was about as busy as usual, but thought it would be good to get his mind off construction issues for a while, so agreed to the request.

An hour later he was in his father's office, along with Steve Augsberg, the plant's assistant general manager and Allen Halifax, the chief forester for the company. Steve was a guy about Randy's size, and one of his father's best friends; for years it had been assumed that he was in line to be the general manager when his father retired, presumably in the next decade or two. However, Steve wasn't a lot younger than Ryan, so it didn't appear likely that he'd be holding the job for long.

Halifax was a lot younger, not yet into his forties, only about ten years older than Randy. In recent years, Ryan had tried to bring young, well-trained, and experienced professionals into management positions when he could, looking to give the company solid management in the years when Randy would have to bear the ultimate responsibility at something of a distance. Allen was relatively new to the company, only about five years on the job, but he had a master's degree in forest management and knew his stuff from experience. Although it probably wouldn't be entirely his decision, Randy was privately of the opinion that Halifax was a likely candidate to be the next in line behind Augsberg.

"Randy, just to bring you up to speed on this," his father started out, "you're probably aware that we're not in the habit of selling Clark lands, unless they're likely to be unproductive and their sale won't affect operations. It doesn't happen often, but for a good many years we've only sold lands with board approval, which mostly meant that Brent and I had to approve the sale. This is the first time we've had a serious offer since he died, so I figured you ought to sit in on it. We should run the decision by Linda and Nicole, but Linda has always gone along with what Brent and I decided on these kinds of things."

"I imagine Nicole will be much the same way," Randy agreed. "So, what's the deal?"

"Are you familiar with Chandler Lake, over in Amboy Township?" Halifax asked.

"A little," Randy nodded. "There's a spot over on the road to Three Pines where you can just catch a glimpse of it when the leaves are down. I've never actually been down to the shoreline."

"The lake is about four hundred and fifty acres," Halifax said. "It's about a mile long and more than half that wide. It was logged over in the twenties, and it was one of the places Wayne Clark replanted in the thirties. The soil over there is pretty rocky, it's a Precambrian outcrop area like over around Three Pines, and there's never going to be a lot of timber over there to harvest. Your father and I have kicked around the idea that we might be money ahead to subdivide the land around there for potential large second-home sites. If we kept the number limited and included some hunting land, we could potentially see those sites going for a million apiece."

"Depending on the number of sites, that could make for a little pocket change," Randy smiled.

"Just for the record," Ryan broke in, "Brent and I kicked around the idea of building a big spec home or two out there if a slow summer ever came along, but things never got quite slow enough to do it. It's one of those things we decided to sit on until the right time came. There are some other places on Clark lands where we also might want to consider a project like that sometime, but that's neither here nor there right now. Allen, sorry to break in."

"That's all right," the forester said. "Like you said earlier, Randy needs to have the background on this. Now, in the middle of this lake is a small, rocky island, half an acre or maybe a little more, at most three quarters. There are maybe half a dozen scrubby pines on it, just volunteers, none over ten or twelve feet. I really doubt that Wayne had them planted. Yesterday, we received an offer on that island plus an access easement along the shoreline for a million five."

"That's a lot of money for a half-acre island," Randy shook his head. "Are these people serious?"

"Quite serious," Allen smiled. "I haven't met with them directly, but the agent I deal with said they really want to live on a small island in a lake. They supposedly have a really unique dream house they want to build on it, but I don't know anything about it."

"I don't either," Steve added. "Binky is the agent Allen was referring to, and she says that they didn't tell her much about it, either."

That told Randy something. Steve's wife Binky was the busiest and richest real estate agent in the area, and she wouldn't have forwarded the offer if she hadn't believed the buyers were serious.

"They also want an agreement that we don't do any clear cutting around the shore," Allen added. "That's part of the reason that they're offering a high dollar figure. I have no problem with that. We haven't planned any cutting there anyway. We're only talking about a hundred acres, two at the most, and in my opinion there aren't many trees worth the effort of cutting, especially with the idea of doing development there. From a forestry viewpoint, I have no problem with it."

"Their offer doesn't prevent us from doing home site development, does it?" Randy asked.

"It's not specifically mentioned, but I'm sure we could make that part of the counter offer," Halifax said.

"How does a million and a half match up with comparable properties?"

"I looked into it," Steve said. "Well, I had Binky look into it, since she has better resources than I do. The problem is it's very hard to tell since such properties come onto the market only very rarely, so there's not much to compare it to. About all I can tell you is that if they're willing to pay that much out of the blue it must be worth it to them."

"We don't know anything about them," Randy said, "but, if they're making an offer of that figure they must have the money to spend, and they're willing to spend it. I'd be willing to take the money, but it might be fun to throw a number of, oh, two-and-a-half million back at them and see if they bite. If they want it that bad, they're not going to squirm that much at an extra million."

"That was pretty much my thinking," Ryan agreed. "My only thought is that right now we're a little cash-poor considering the money we had to spend to settle Brent's trust. A million and a half would go a long way toward allowing us to build the pellet plant without a bank being involved, especially at today's interest rates. On the other hand, two-and-a-half million would really simplify things. I say, let's give it a try."

"Can't hurt," Randy said. "If it doesn't fly, it doesn't fly. We can always negotiate downward, or list the property for two and a half or three just to see if there's some other rich fool out there. I mean, it's not like it's costing us anything."

"I'll tell you one person who would be happy to see it fly," Steve snickered. "Can you imagine the Amboy Township supervisor getting a two-and-a-half-million-dollar piece of residential property on his tax rolls?"

"Probably more than that," Randy smiled. "If they're paying that much for the property, how much are they going to be willing to pay for their dream house?"

"All right, let's do it," Ryan said. "Randy and I will have to run it by our wives just for the sake of doing it by the book, but that shouldn't be a problem. Maybe after the snow gets off we ought to take a run out there and do a little more serious looking at how we might want to do a development project out there. Maybe we can get Binky involved to see how we might optimize it."

"I've had a couple ideas along that line," Halifax nodded. "It's nothing we have to be in any rush about, though."

--

That evening Randy gave Nicole a capsule summary of the discussion. "I don't have any objection to the idea," she said when he finished. "Especially considering that the little bit of stock in my name means that my opinion doesn't count for much, anyway."