Davis County Guy Puts His Money Where His Mouth Is

So fascinated were we with the facts set forth in Dan Schroeder's previous article, that we've decided to briefly spotlight another instance in which a local citizen has rolled up his own sleeves, reached into his own wallet and taken personal responsibility for the kind of development that will occur in his own neighborhood.

Accordingly, we refer our readers this morning to three news articles which appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune, Deseret Morning News and Standard-Examiner over the past weekend:

• Historic Farmington rock house destined for preservation
  
• Bidding war boosts price for historic home
  
• Historic Farmington parcel sold at auction

In a nutshell, Tom Owens stood toe-to-toe with a well-heeled local realtor/developer, and walked from the auction as the high bidder. Mr. Owens makes no secret of his motivation in this SL-Trib quote:

"One of my motives was to protect the side yard from some idiot wanting to build
a McMansion on it," Owens said.

"I wanted to make sure that whatever gets built on the rest of the land is in keeping with Farmington's ambience."

A Weber County Forum Tip O' the Hat goes out this morning to the very community-minded Mr. Owens, another gentle Weber County Forum reader (and recent contributor) who has demontrated the point that individual citizens can have a strong influence on development in their communities, provided they're willing to do it the old-fashioned way, i.e., putting their money where their mouth is.

We also believe that the foregoing fact set illuminates an important point of basic economics: Sellers benefit when transactions are carried out openly in the free market. As illustrated in the Farmington example, the court-ordered auction process generated a sale price far in excess of the expectations of the sellers. The process of selling to the highest bidder yielded a result most favorable to the Judd Family.

Before we wind up this article, we'd like to highlight another wrinkle to this story. Over the past few months we've been carefully following developments in the bootjack stealth transaction, the unfortunate instance wherein Emerald City Mayor Boss Godfrey hoodwinked the city RDA Board into authorizing the sale of a prime piece of downtown, FrontRunner station-adjacent real property to his crony, Chris Peterson.

Last month we learned that Mr. Peterson apparently did not exercise the purchase option which had been craftily engineered behind the scenes for the benefit of Chris Peterson. Nevertheless, the sale to Mr. Peterson was destined to inexorably move forward, according to this Ace Reporter Schwebke story.

Although we have been unable to officially confirm it, our sources reveal that the subject Wall Avenues parcels have been subsequently sold to Chris Peterson for the RDA Board-authorized $270 thousand sales price. The availability of this property was of course NEVER advertised, NEVER listed on the MLS and NEVER subjected to the natural processes of the free market. In essence, this prime chunk of downtown real estate was apparently placed into the hands of a Boss Godfrey crony in private.

A few weeks ago we mentioned in one of our comments sections that during the open option period (which ended on March 24) one of our gentle readers had conveyed a verbal backup offer to the RDA Board for this property, at an offered price of $300 thousand. Subsequently, we learned, the same reader again tendered that offer, this time in written form.

Although we were not authorized to disclose the identity of the offeror at the time, we are now privileged to do so: That gentle reader, who made a cash offer $30 thousand in excess of the RDA Board authorized price, was none other than Tom Owens, the same Tom Owens who hung in there steadfastly, to perfect an ownership interest in his Farmington target property last Thursday.

As to his written offer for the Emerald City property, his high offer was all but ignored. Late in April Mr. Owens reports that he received a short email from one of the "suits" in the Emerald City Economic Development Department (the always-reliable Dave Harmer, if memory serves,) informing him that the property was already "under contract," and that the transaction was expected to "close within the next several weeks."

So much for the operation of the free market in Emerald City. So much for Boss Godfrey's fiduciary obligation to secure the highest possible price in the disposition of surplus RDA properties from a ready, willing and able buyer. So much for the concept of opening the downtown development process for anyone except "Friends of Matt." Ogden home-boy Tom Owens got completely shut out of Boss Godfrey's sweetheart dealings. So much for influencing Emerald City community development the old-fashioned way.

This situation is something all lumpencitizens should remember, as the November elections approach.

We hope you enjoyed the segue.

Feel free to discuss this topic... or consider this an open thread.

Take it away, gentle readers.