If you follow us on social media, you know we’ve recently hit a speed bump in our journey to open our resort. The land we had high hopes for, we had to say goodbye to. Yes, we signed a mutual release on the 1st of September.
What this means is that we now have to identify new land, something that didn't come easy on the last property. On the bright side, however, we no longer have to keep the exact location confidential. The more important positive aspect is that, once again, in the midst of something that seems bad, we’ve been shown an opportunity to refine our strategy, learning from this experience. More about that refined strategy is mentioned below.
But first, why did we abandon it? It checked the boxes of being secluded, having a water feature, and having an operator’s residence. Although this amazing piece of land consisted of approximately 85 acres, plus the surrounding hundreds of acres of state land, much of the acreage was occupied by the lake and wetlands. We did previously report that our wetlands delineation was positive, and it was. We had sufficient space for the planned 12 sites. However, after additional consideration and discussion with our engineer, general contractor, and excavator, we decided that this land would not allow for future expansion without compromising on one of our core tenets: providing guest privacy between glamping sites. In other words, we could add more sites beyond the initial 12, but the sites would have to be too close together or would be too costly to build.
This experience has given us a chance to reevaluate our strategy, which now places an emphasis on finding a landowner to partner with and/or from whom to lease land. This is a new direction that will significantly reduce major entry barriers, most notably getting land under contract and fitting it into the total project budget. To support this new strategy, we have created a Real Estate page on our site. Please check this page out and share with anyone you know (or don't know - e.g., on social media) to help improve our odds of finding a match made in Michigan. ❤️
For those who have made a soft commitment to investing, we are asking you to hold you investment if possible. For those who were considering investing, we are asking that you still make a soft commitment if the opportunity is a good fit for you. When we identify new land, we will update the total raise, company valuation, and corresponding investor terms, and our goal is to maintain or improve the return for our investors with these updates.
We will continue to provide updates on our progress via our social media, podcast, blog, and newsletter. Visit our Subscribe page to sign up for our newsletter, and find our podcast and social media pages to follow.
Kommentare