On GPAC and the Bessemer/Renaissance shopping center deal correlations

As I recall, when Skip Alston brought his investors into the shopping center deal, the idea was for the city to give up the land plus hundreds of thousands of dollars, in exchange for the developers putting up about $2 million to rejuvenate the project.

Thing was, the investors wanted to get their portion of the money from an equity loan using the property as collateral.

So the plan was to get a strip mall for free plus cash and borrow to pay for whatever portion that went over the city's and the coop's loan money paid for, with money borrowed from the property acquired at no cost.

Nice.
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Now it seems the Community Foundation wants to do the same thing only different.

Build it by using the equity of what the project may be worth in the future to guarantee the pledges the foundation says it has in the present.

Problem 1; The Community Foundation doesn't seem to want to provide any details about the pledged money.

Problem 2; It looks like city taxpayers would be on the hook if the pledges don't show, as the foundation wants to use what the city would own to guarantee the money.

Problem 3: The foundation only has about $5 million of the pledged money.

Problem 4; The foundation hasn't provided the city with the binding pledges.

If the Foundation can do this right, I think it could be a good deal for taxpayers, but it appears they are not.