I have been on the road a lot for the last couple of months trying to put together financing for projects. I like the opportunity to visualize a project, and then accomplish making the vision a reality. A good visualization for me is having myself in the visualization, looking at the completed project. I find that kind of process is the most effective for me. Then I figure how to fund it, and what constraints I will encounter.

Each community is different, and when you get to a community, you need to understand the power structure of the community… the oligarchy, so to speak. I remember going over oligarchic influences with a prominent developer many times while working in Phoenixville, because he did not understand he was part of it. 

When I was Main Street Manager in Lock Haven, PA I was pulled in right away and given instructions not to change anything— just enhance what they had going for themselves at the time. I recognized that the town fathers were limiting the scope. 

In DuBois, PA when I was Main Street Manager, there was a decided slant against historic restoration. The power board (all the town fathers) that I worked for, wanted no parts of a program that limited the use of materials that they could apply to improve their buildings. They were putting up riverstone facades, or just stuccoing the entire front with no detail. At least they were doing something to the building. I recognized a limit in context.

In Philadelphia, it was a little different, with the housing in Kensington or the commercial corridor on South Street. There were local oligarchic substructures that at times, were fulfillment agents for guys like Vince Fumo. There were no blanket taboos there except in Kensington, with the race issue. A limiting factor concerning with whom I could do business.

The common thread throughout all of the limiting factors was, in the end, the group wanted to see something done. They were behind the project but it was a different bent as the rule.

Flash forward to the last few months… I am working on restoring a theater in one town in Western PA. It is a cool theater with 1,000 seats with an upper and lower balcony, which has not been touched, and the same art deco styling remains. Initially I always like to build a consensus that the project is a priority. While working on the theater, I found that after 12 years of planning, there was not even a site drawing of the building.  It is difficult to figure out what you are doing if you do not have a drawing.

I had walked into a very dysfunctional situation, and it appeared that the town’s oligarchy was alienated from the project. It was a tough sell, and it was going nowhere.  I viewed my visualization exercise similar to Michael J. Fox in “Back to the Future,” when he saw his family disappearing from a photo as he changed history. My vision was disappearing from my mind. 

One can do what one can do, but sometimes a project is deader than dead. There were no meetings, because board members were not showing up. Two of the five resigned immediately when I asked them for the financial records. I later found out that the records were difficult to secure because there was no checkbook, but only counter checks written from the account. It cost more than $700.00 to buy the records.  I needed a front and back copy of each check to ensure compliance. Everything turned out pretty good with the accounting, and I assured everyone that the books were clean.

Two other board members resigned because physical attendance of a board member was required. Four more people were then appointed to fill the slots and I had five of seven available board slots filled. We started to make progress, and were getting kind words about the project from people. I was really encouraged by the progress that the group was making. 

Then turmoil erupted between two board members, including the remaining original board member. I tried to let the process play itself out, but there were some very harsh words between board members. I knew the board was in implosion mode and a pattern that had developed over the twelve years was repeating itself for maybe the ninth or tenth time.

The board dynamic was very interesting, as the remaining original board member was a prominent elected official. There were political, cultural, social and every other kind of issue working against this project. Any glimmer of hope for the project to succeed needed to be evidenced, if history would not to repeat itself.

Luckily, during the first meeting we adopted new bylaws for the Board that laid out specific functions for people, and specific rules concerning administration of the organization. So there really was an outline for board transition. Once the transition took place, and there were all new board members, it was a clean slate and Michael J. Fox’s family was coming back into focus on the photo.

The elected official decided it was in the best interest of the organization, and herself, to step aside. There was also man whom she appointed to the board, when we went from one to five members, who submitted his resignation. I had to step in during his attempt to appoint board members without consent of the board. It was pretty whacked but I could not let it get that whacked. I had given him a quick “Yo, my man… ain’t happening.” The oligarchy did not know how to react. They hated the person associated with the project for so long, but at the same time supported the concept of the project, and they were baffled. It has been slow to turn these folks around, but the new group keeps plugging away. 

In this case the limiting factor was an individual, and the perception of the oligarchy of that individual. The individual’s realization that they may be the cause of the failure—  not in their own eye, but in the eyes of the oligarchic influences in the town, limited the chance of the projects success.