FEBRUARY 24, 2024 – (Cont.) Few secrets can remain secrets forever, and even before Al Gore invented the internet, people figured out the means to investigate, uncover, and sound the alarm.
One day well into the buyer’s due diligence period, I received a call from one of the lawyers handling the buyer’s application for a conditional use permit (“CUP”)—the approval of which was among the buyer’s contingencies. The lawyer simply informed me that the buyer had experienced some “push-back,” which might delay approval by a month but that there was no need to worry. To be on the safe side, however, the lawyer asked if the bank would be amendable to extending the buyer’s due diligence period accordingly. Given how committed the buyer was to the transaction and how much time, effort, and legal fees the buyer had invested in the process to that point, I figured the request was a reasonable one and said I’d recommend approval (by our oversight committee). A day or two later an amendment extending the time was drafted and fully signed.
Depending on the scope of the sought-after CUP (“conditional use permit”), “push-back” is not unusual, and I didn’t think a lot about it until . . . I received a call from an irate woman who claimed she was from Chanhassen. She’d obtained my number by sleuth.
“Did you know you’re in league with the devil?” she said, after identifying herself and residency.
“How do you mean?”
“I mean exactly what I said. Your bank is selling property to a cult, and the cult is the devil in thin disguise.”
All I’d learned by this point in my handling of the property was that the end-user, the organization behind the shell buyer, was an “established spiritual organization” from California. The buyer’s front man and with more familiar credibility, the buyer’s land use lawyers—well regarded members of the Twin Cities legal community—had assured me that the California outfit was completely legit, above-board, cash rich, and coming to town with good intentions, not with any desire to convert people en masse or otherwise impose its beliefs or values on the local community. The vibrant, growing organization was simply looking for a place to locate its world headquarters and co-exist in peace and harmony with its neighbors.
The woman was clearly upset, and I sensed that it would be counterproductive to engage her in discussion or argument. Yet, at the same time, I knew I couldn’t ignore or dismiss her as a crank. She was exactly the sort of person who could rabble-rouse effectively at a public meeting of the city council at which my buyer’s CUP application was on the agenda.
I let the woman talk herself through and expressed polite acknowledgment of her uproar. At the end of her tirade she threatened to call all the local TV news stations. I didn’t want to give her any encouragement. All I said in response was, “Believe me . . . I understand that you’re upset.”
After she’d decided I was listening but not engaging, she hung up.
Before I could get a hold of the buyer’s land use lawyers to apprise them of the call, another woman from Chanhassen called to give me a piece of her mind. I didn’t ask, and she didn’t tell, but I surmised that she was in league with the first caller.
“Did you know they believe in some crazy stuff like they can transport your soul across the universe?” she said.
“No,” I said. “I’m not familiar with that. I mean I didn’t know they believe that.”
“Well, they do, and that’s a sure sign they’re a cult. An evil anti-Christian cult, if you ask me, and I don’t want my kids exposed to that kind of dangerous nonsense.”
“No, I don’t suppose you would,” I said, non-argumentatively.
“Well then you can’t sell that property to them,” she said.
“We’ve signed an agreement for the sale of the land, ma’am.” I left out the part that we’d just signed an amendment extending the buyer’s contingency period.
“Then you’d better take back your agreement.”
“I’m not sure we can do that.”
“Not sure you can or not sure you want to?”
“Both, I’d say. My job is to sell the land, which is owned by the bank, and the bank has the right to sell it and the buyer has the right to buy it,” I said, knowing that potentially I was headed down a path that could land the bank—if not me—on the 10:00 p.m. TV news.
“That’s just wrong,” said the woman. “And if the bank goes ahead with the sale, there are a lotta people out here in Chanhassen that are going to make sure everyone watching the evening news and reading the papers knows about it, and we’re gonna make sure the city council votes it down.”
That pretty much concluded our conversation.
The story did make the papers and the evening news—several times—but fortunately my name and face avoided mention. Quite a hoopla ensued, but the buyer wasn’t budging, nor were the “spiritual people” behind the scenes. Eventually those folks elected to withdraw their application for a CUP, waive the contingency, and proceed with closing. They still wanted the land for their world headquarters and were willing and able to wait out the opposition. They’d lie low for as long as they had to for resistance to abate or dissipate altogether. Eventually it did—over five years later, long after I’d left the bank.
Meanwhile, however, we proceeded with closing, and at the next meeting of the bank’s oversight committee, I reported on the event and the net proceeds that were booked as a result. Jerry said, “Good job on this one, Eric” and the senior execs chimed in their agreement with Jerry. Ray, who was sitting across the table from me, winked and I winked back. After the meeting on our way back to our offices, he kidded me by saying he’d forgiven me for having deprived him of a set of free 55-gallon drums for his floating dock.
The closing had gone smoothly, and everyone on the buyer side was appreciative of the fact we’d stuck to the terms of our agreement and not tried to blow things up in reaction to vociferous community opposition. Several days later I received a nice thank you letter from “behind the scenes”; from the so-called cult. The name on the light blue letterhead was ECKANKAR. Across the footer was a row of stylized, silhouetted humans, fading from very dark on the far left to barely visible on the far right. Below them was the inscription, “The Ancient Science of Soul Travel.”
Today’s world being a radically altered place from what it was in 1985, I Googled “Eckankar,” and sure enough—it’s still around, and its world headquarters got built and still occupy that old foreclosed farmstead in Chanhassen, Minnesota.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
2 Comments
This sort of reminds me of when I sold the site of the Minnesota Business Academy charter school, located on the old site of the science museum, connected by open skyways in downtown Saint Paul, to the Church of Scientology, which still has a site (temple? church?) there. Easiest sale I ever did, despite huge logistical problems (IMAX theater on the third floor, no camera), poured concrete building with no way to close off the building from the skyway system without completely blocking the entire skyway system. The church paid in cash–literally, not a check or wire transfer, but greenbacks in suitcases. And raised no issues about any of the problems. Bondholder return was about 25 cents on the dollar, but that was far better than the return would have been on the alternative proposal vetted by a large institutional bondholder, to turn it into a nightclub. The site was expensive to maintain–the city required us to keep the skyways open, and that meant hiring security people, in addition to the usual expenses of owning and maintaining a building.
I used to dream of owning a commercial/residential building (not any old building, but a particular one a friend of mine and I made an offer on many years ago, for which we had a commitment in hand from Patagonia to lease the ground floor). But after all my experiences with defaulted real estate, I want to own no real estate other than the house I live in….
Ginny, I remember hearing bits and pieces about that deal but I had no idea you were involved!!! What a story!!! I love the irony of the home of the former “Science Museum” winding up as the “Church of Scientology.” As is the case with so much of reality–it gives fiction a run for its . . . greenbacks.
Eric