Yesterday the Legion Post Holding Corp, (which I am a member of), voted to go ahead and invest in "Veteran's Village". This is a really big deal. Our post is closed and bankrupt, but we own four acres of very valuable land in the middle of a large suburb. The Post also owns our gun club.
We've had several offers to buy the property and build a small post in one of the apartment buildings they would build, that we could lease, but no guarantee that we could stay there indefinitely. We rejected that.
Instead we are signing on with a group that develops land like ours. They will handle all the permits, contractors, ect, and we will oversee the project and help design what we want. We will build an apartment complex that leans towards helping veterans but also provides middle income housing for many others. We will have our post built in the ground floor of one building facing our "Veteran's Park". We plan to include some apartments dedicated to families of patients in the nearby Vet's Hospital for their use while their family member is in treatment. We're minutes away from Fort Snelling Veteran's Hospital which is one of the best in the nation.
The city has already said they favor this. The banks are behind us, the Governor is behind us, our lawyers favor this. The Developer Group is doing their work, Pro Bono", which means for no profit. One senior member of this group is a lawyer and a former fighter pilot who did three tours in the VN war, was shot down twice, was a POW who escaped once and wants to do this for vets.
In the end the post will own the entire complex. The project is being hailed as a model for future posts.
Here we go, we're excited.
We went to dinner with friends last night and I was so pumped I couldn't get settled down until I had a martini.
