I have been putting off writing this post for some time now, I knew it was coming about three months ago but held out hope that there was going to be some way around the way things were going, but now that I sit down to do it I wish that I had a long time ago, I have so much to say about what we did right and wrong but most of all I do not feel regret for trying, yeah there were many things that in hindsight I should have done differently but LJ Urban has been an extraordinary adventure from the start, we set out to change the world and I can only hope that there were others who were changed as much as we were along the way. But now it is over, or at least this version of it. We had a good long run, almost 7 years in total, but things are over now. To put it simply what happened is this, the market value of the property we hold fell too far below the loans we had on the properties, we were able to hang on for the past year after that happened in hopes that things would turn for the better but with no cash flow and no equity with which to borrow against LJ Urban became no more.
The plan was to take the year off so we would not keep spending money on overhead but the values kept plummeting and the banks and lenders became impatient. Despite sleepless nights, migraines, ulcers and everything else we put into making it work, the end result is a company with no book value and no future as a property development company.
But what LJ Urban really was at the heart of the company was so much more than the property values or the LLC Documents, LJ Urban was a movement, this site has had over 400,000 visitors every years since we put it together, LJ Urban represented for so many of us a new way of thinking. We built a company that set out to do things differently not just as a marketing campaign or motto but because we believed that we were coming into a market that was broken.
We believed that the wasteful tract housing trend is dead wrong and that there is a better way, we believed in cities, we believed in the power of communities made up of millions of people all over the world who wanted to see cities made into better places to live. We fought against long commutes and construction of more and more new roads to more and more identical rows of matching houses, and do you know what? We were right, spending countless hours each week in the car just to have a big yard and 3000 square feet of home to live in is not only wasteful its sick and wrong. More than 50% of the world lives on less than 2 dollars a day and we still continue to build larger houses with more room to park our SUV’s. What’s worse is that before all this happened with the market we as a community of people who cared about the earth and the people who live in it were actually getting somewhere with convincing the Americans that they needed to be more sustainable but as soon as the recession hit it was like everyone felt that they no longer had to do the right thing, the motto became “me first” as everyone tried to grab what the could for themselves. But the truth is if we had been more conscious of the impact of the things we were doing not just on the earth but to the people that live on it on both sides of the globe, if we cared about the other expenses that came along with our lifestyle we might just have avoided this whole thing. You heard me right, we brought this on ourselves by caring more about the flashy image we presented than the foundation on which we were building our lifestyle.
On the 12th of this month my family and I are boarding a plane to Ethiopia to go help out with the orphanage we have been talking about on here lately. That means you are going to start seeing some changes here on the blog and I thought I would start to introduce you to a few of them.
This trip means that LJ Urban is going to be on a sort of hiatus. Still alive and passionate about making cities better but temporarily backing off of what has proven to be an incredibly hard real estate market. We own several properties across the central city that we intend to come back and develop when the market is delivering active buyers at reasonable prices. Today that is not the reality and this trip provides the perfect opportunity to take a break while things are slow, and sales prices are lower than the cost to build.
We are going to keep blogging here but from a whole different angle. Jessie and I are going to be doing our best to update the Blog from Ethiopia. So instead of hearing about city planning meetings and the epic saga that is green building, you will be hearing about a family in culture shock and the struggle to learn how to speak Amharic and find diapers by the truck load in rural Ethiopia. Our favorite friends over at EMRL are going to be working over the next few weeks on changing the feel of the blog so that its design is more in line with what you are going to be reading. For instance the red box at the top right of your screen is going to say something about how we are a development company on Sabbatical in Ethiopia and how you can come along and join us on our adventure. I am sure that we will loose some of our 25K visitors every month but such is life. I guess if we do a real good job of telling the story we might be able to keep everyone… You never know.
So changes will abound and you are as always invited to chime in and make suggestions as we journey onward and upward into a whole new world. Here we go!
This is off the charts. We are having the event this Thursday evening at their space in Midtown and they are making all sorts of crazy delicious food for us to snack on which is amazing but today they kicked things up a notch. Just read this description of the coffee they are roasting up just for the event…
Ethiopia Natural “Koratie”
Region – Sidamo, near town of Dilla.
Certifications – Shade-grown/Organic
Elevation – 6,069ft – 6,889ft
Plant varietals – Ethiopia Heirloom
Processing – Hand picked & cherries dried on raised beds.
Another spectacular coffee from the Sidamo region! This time we have the Koratie, a natural process coffee that is in the Dara region of Sidamo, just north of the Yirgacheffe area. Grown by small farm-holders near the town of Dilla at about 6,500ft elevation.
A higher price has been paid for this crop in assurance that only the perfectly ripe cherries would be harvested, not the green unripe ones.
This is a natural processed coffee which means the perfectly ripe cherries are directly laid out onto raised drying beds. The grades of this particular lot are a notch above the normal, Grade 4 or 5, this lot is Grade 3.
Lots like this is extremely hard to come by and Old Soul Co. roasters are completely humbled by this coffee’s presence.
In The Cup: Overwhelmingly aromatic! The nose of this coffee will have you chomping your chops for just a sip! Super berry (blueberry) with a maple syrup sweetness. Sweet ripe pineapples cool into a luscious low-toned fruit cocktail.
Just a quick reminder that this Thursday is the fund raiser event for the Drawn From Water Orphanage. We really hope you can come out and learn a bit more about the orphanage. There are going to be some very cool silent auction items up for sale including several original pieces of art by local artists who did works just for the kids in Ethiopia not to mention weekends in Tahoe and Santa Cruz. To top it all off we will be announcing the winner of the Scooter Raffle, so be sure to get your tickets you never know if you might just get lucky!
If you have not seen the video for the Orphanage yet you really should, some incredible people put their hearts into making it and it makes me cry every time.
And so you don’t have to go digging for them here are all the details again.
When
Thursday April 30th from 7-9 PM
Where Old Soul on the alley between L and Capitol on 18th St [ map ]
LJ Urban has always been about seeing a need and stepping up to meet it. Sometimes there are needs too big to ignore outside the world directly in front of you, and you have to use your passion to do some good for people in another place.
You may have read recently on the blog about a new orphanage for children who were literally sentenced to death by their parents. The children come from a tribe in Ethiopia with very superstitious beliefs and we are going to rescue these kids and help give them a future. I visited there last month and have been writing about what we’re doing to help out.
Here is a video we put together that tells the story about how this all came together.
We’re having an event at Old Soul to help raise funds for these kids and we want you to come! Today there are 10 kids who have been saved and we expect that there will be many more over the next few months. It’s an understatement to say that your help is needed…the orphanage is a month old right now and is in desperate need of support in every way.
We published the post Monday about the Scooter Raffle and I think we started out with a price that was just a bit to high. Yesterday we lowered the ticket price to $25 and boom! We got it right! I just wanted to say thank you to all of you who stepped up and bought a ticket. This is all amazing to watch. There are so many good people out there in the world.
I saw this on a blog the other day and I am stealing it. It’s called the Kyoto Oven and it quite possibly could change the landscape of Africa. The thing that I find interesting about these types of inventions is that they will require a change in habits. I mentioned this oven to a friend who is familiar with African culture and practices (she’s been there and lived it) and she thought, ” Yeah, its great but what about cooking at night?”. I have to admit the solar oven might have some issue there, but you could change the way you do things. 1) Precook your dinner before the sun went down. 2) Boil lots of water while the sun is shining and store it in a cool place. 3) Make a couple of them yourself and sell them.
In order to make the serious changes we are going to have to make in the world to sustain the current inhabitants and bring everyone’s quality of life up, we are going to have to change habits. I think we have used this one before, the same thinking that got us where we are isn’t going to get us to where we need to be. I think everyone in the world should read, at least, the first chapter of Thomas Freidman’s book Hot, Flat, and Crowded to get a little perspective twist on how we all live and how much we need to change. Or there is a talk he gave on it that I haven’t watched yet.
Many of you have emailed and asked what you can do to help out with the orphanage and the kids over in Africa that we are going to help and I think I have just the thing.
We are going to have a raffle and see if we can’t raise some money for these kids. Are you ready for this? Because we not only need you to buy raffle tickets but we need you to send this post around to everyone you know to see if we can’t raise some serious money for them.
What is this raffle for you ask? Well its for a 2009 Honda Metropolitan scooter of course!
It was the office scooter we purchased in February and has only 150 miles on it. Since we are moving to Ethiopia we [Read more →]
Word is starting to get out that my wife and I are moving to Ethiopia to run the orphanage I keep mentioning here on the blog. We simply could not sit by while children were being killed over there without stepping up and doing something about it. So sometime in the next month we are going to be moving our family to Jinka Ethiopia for a Sabbatical.
But before you jump out of your seats… Don’t worry, LJ Urban is still going to keep rolling here with Micah at the helm but at a much slower pace. As I am sure you all know the market has slowed significantly and its a good time to slow things down and wait out the storm. I will be explaining all the details as well as keeping you all up to date on our progress as we wind up our American life here to embark on something completely new. As for the blog we are going to keep posting updates from Ethiopia and so it will be a sort of developer – orphanage blog for a while. Sound fun?
The thing with blogs is that there really are no rules and so we just kind of do what feels best and with this change in our lives it feels to good to keep blogging here. It’s been quite a ride for those of you who have been with LJ Urban since we started and I hope you will all stay tuned as we go on the biggest adventure yet!
In the mean time head over and check out the site for the orphanage and see what we are up to.
After returning from Ethiopia some incredible people who heard the story called up and offered to donate their time to put together a website and video about the project. The site is still not quite done but you can follow the link and see the 95% finished version. The video on the other hand is done and very cool. Make sure you are sitting down before you watch this.
We have been brainstorming about fun ways to get people involved in the effort and will be announcing them both here and on the orphanage site soon. Stay tuned…
