Tomorrow I move downtown

Me and Jon Bon Jovi on my deck

I can hardly believe that it's been almost two years since I've posted on this blog. Time seems different, both stretched and compressed, when you are in midst of constant struggle, and that's been the way of it at CityWalk for all that time.

The economic downturn almost did us in and we've spent every moment making sure that we survived. Nobody got vacations and the office atmosphere had the hot, steamy quality of working inside of a pressure cooker. But that's pretty well behind us.

Since the beginnnig of the year we've refinanced, paid down debts and filled up the building so we're pretty well running on a stabilized basis now. Even if we aren't quite there, the end is in sight now.

So long delayed vacations are taking place, and, more important to me, my wife, dog and I are finally moving into our condo on the top floor of the building. I don't know that I'll qualify as an urban pioneer. Almost 7500 people are living in downtown Dallas now, but highrise living will be a new adventure for us.

I plan to write regularly about what it's like to live downtown, about what our organization is doing, and just enjoy the fact that once again I have time to write rather than spend every second talking to lenders or trying to raise more money.

Maybe, someday soon, I'll even be able to go on vacation, but until then I'm just going to enjoy this new episode in life. If any of you are still checking this blog, or if you come across it for the first time, then thank you for sharing some of your time with me.

Blog Maverick

Mark Cuban writes an interesting blog called blogmaverick. You can find it here: http://blogmaverick.com/. He’s often got interesting things to say and I’ve learned at least something about business from reading him.
Once and awhile, however, I read something that makes me realize just how different his world is from mine. His August 5 blog on his failed effort to buy the Texas Rangers has one of those passages:
It is not easy to get liquid to the point of $400mm dollars or more in just a few weeks.
Or, in my case, it would be easy in just a few lifetimes.

John P. Greenan

BlogMaverick

Mark Cuban writes an interesting blog called blogmaverick. You can find it here: http://blogmaverick.com/. He’s often got interesting things to say and I’ve learned at least something about business from reading him.
Once and awhile, however, I read something that makes me realize just how different his world is from mine. His August 5 blog on his failed effort to buy the Texas Rangers has one of those passages:
It is not easy to get liquid to the point of $400mm dollars or more in just a few weeks.
Or, in my case, it would be easy in just a few lifetimes.

John P. Greenan

Life

When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile.

Nick Sowell

Independence Day

4th of July is the most memorable day in the history of United States of America. It is the day when America got independence and was free from British occupancy. The day is celebrated all around the country with patriotic sentiment.

"I like to see men proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him."--Abraham Lincoln

"We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls."--Robert McCrackin

Nick Sowell

A Building

Look at the cityscape. Now focus on one building. Squint if you need to. Fifteen stories. As large as the entire town you grew up in. Once it’s firmly in your mind, close your eyes.

Now see the building in memory. See it as Picasso would see it as a series of foms, of cubes, as an abstraction. See the building as a fractal, breaking into pieces. See it as a lawyer sees it, as a bundle of property rights that can be unbundled and rebundled in endless variations.

Ask yourself what the building can be—retail, office, homes. No, better yet, ask the building what it wants to be. Not the whole unified building but each constituent part.

Once each part speaks to you and tells you what it should be, then start the hard work of creating it. First as an abstraction but becoming more and more real with each thought.

See the building as Walt Whitman would. Pipes humming and wires like nerves carrying power and information to each part of it. See the building as activity. Like Whitman’s mind the building can encompass all of us within us.

Each thing has its place in the building. Here the mother with her child. There the intellectual at his papers. Merchant and lawyer; rich and poor; man, woman and child; every dog and every pigeon have their place.

The building is not office or retail or residential. Disregard the illusion of unity. You see a whole only by disregarding the parts. The building is a series of spaces, not a building. Each space has its proper use and each its proper resident. This is mine; that is yours; over there belongs to neither of us.

John P. Greenan

Forgiveness

When we forgive evil we do not excuse it, we do not tolerate it, we do not smother it. We look the evil full in the face, call it what it is, let its horror shock and stun and enrage us, and only then do we forgive it.

Nick Sowell