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I get several emails a month from people who are interested in what we do and are considering starting a development company… It’s a tough question to answer because I would not wish on anyone the battles we have had to fight in the past 2 years, dropping values has brought frustrated investors and changed plans at every turn. Projects that we were nearly ready to start building on have been put on hold and we have had to retrain ourselves to think in a whole different mindset. But on the same token there are more opportunities out in the market today than ever perhaps in our lifetime and I think a whole new breed of community developer will be born from this market and hopefully the byproduct is a better urban landscape.

Today I got one of those emails and thought I would share it (and my answers) with you.

1) Did you go to seminars or trainings to get your knowledge in RE Development?

I did not but am sure there are some good things out there. I liked everything written by Seth Godin, his blog is inspiring and his books are good especially Purple Cow. Also Jim Collins wrote some good books that are worth reading.

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I was interviewed today by Tina Vasquez a writer who is working on a new website about home design. I am sure she is going to take the interview and turn it into an article but I liked her questions and had fun answering them so I thought I might share them with you here. Warning, there is a bit of a spoiler on our next announcement in the last question…

T.V. What are “eco-urbanists?”
L.B. We actually came up with the term in 2004. We were searching for a way to identify ourselves and our passion for both sustainability and urban living and finally landed on eco-urbanists.  An eco urbanist is someone who cares and decided its time to make a difference. Its someone who wants to lower their footprint on the earth but does not necessarily want to drive a vegetable oil powered Volvo.  They are people who realized that living out in the country consumes more energy and that cities are worth making better.

T.V. How did LJ Urban come to be?
L.B.Back when it all started in 2003 we were called Asante Homes. A development company who did land entitlement work out in the suburbs. But one day we woke up and saw that we did not like the end product. We were not proud of what we were creating and decided to come to the urban core. In doing so we needed to remake ourselves into a builder/developer. We wanted everything we built to be as sustainable environmentally as possible and found that we had to do everything ourselves to do it all right. LJ Urban was born and we are still striving today to do things the same way. [Read more →]

A letter from the European Union environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, to Barack Obama calls for America to lead the way in an effort to stop global warming. He makes a point to call out that our economy is in peril but efforts to fix that should not derail the larger challenge we face.

He makes it clear that the rest of the world is depending on us and that no one else will feel compelled to fix their issues if America who contributes 22% of the carbon into the atmosphere does not get its act in order.

If someone’s basement floods and they lose their job on the same day it is certainly an unlucky day. But they would not wait until they found a new job before pumping the basement and fixing the leak. If they did, then not only would they be unemployed, but they would also have a house that is starting to fall apart. Common sense says that the longer you leave a problem unsolved the harder it becomes to find a solution. I am quite sure that even Joe the Plumber would agree with this. Climate change is similar. We know there is a problem and it would be short-sighted foolishness to not address it immediately.

Its a tough call for sure but one that we need to heed. We will either be remembered as the generation who stepped up and changed the world or the one who heard and ignored the greatest warning in the history of mankind.

You can read the entire letter here.

I was at EMRL meeting with Floyd our design guy yesterday and all around their office were left over signs of what appeared to be a pretty rocking new years eve party. My favorite remnant was a glass wall where they asked everyone to write their feelings about 2008. Pretty much every one of the comments were bad. Its like everyone was ready to get down and party extra hard this new years because they actually had something to celebrate. 2008 is over! Not the usual new year is coming but rather more excited that the old year is gone.

And I am not sure how much you have been following here at the LJ Urban blog but there were some pretty traumatic things that I am glad to get behind us as well.

But you know what? 2009 is a good year, I can feel it. Already we were able to secure our financing that I told you we were working on for a bigger phase on Good and we are getting ready to start building like mad! More houses being built means better efficiency in construction costs (better pricing for the homes) and we are going to be able to actually sell homes to the people who want them.  Vs. last year where we had to turn people away because we only had 5 houses built.

Now that we are cleared for takeoff we are going to be preselling homes and just getting this whole operation up and running again! It’s a good feeling to come out of a slow time and finally be ready to roll!

For those of you who have been itching to get inside a Good home, we are having another tour of the Good project next week.

We are going to be hanging out telling the story of how good came to be and showing off the last of the units in Phase 1 while we can, its already in escrow but we are going to show you around anyway. After that unit is closed we will not have any more finished houses to show until April so come look around while you can.

The tour will be at 5 PM on Friday January 16th.

Hope to see you there!

We just got word that the money you all pitched in to help out for Chala who runs the orphanage in Thailand helped avert a disaster. The debts were paid off in full and the 40 children will now be able to continue to have their caregiver safely at home with them. You all heard the call and stepped up and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart.

We are going to stay in touch with the folks from The Charis Project there in Thailand and hope that things go more smoothly for them. They let us know that they are working on setting up a sponsor a child program with Homes of Hope International, I will make sure and let you know when that is up and running.  I know my family and I will be supporting a child.

Thank you!

Levi Benkert

If you look at the average life expectancy as any guide to how long your life might be than you are likely to live somewhere in the range of 77.8 years. Translate that into days and you can estimate your life to be 28,397 days long. Today is one of those days, are you doing something with it that you are going to be proud of?

Levi Benkert

Take a step outside the world you know with me for a second and try to dream of a place where things are better. What kind of better comes to mind? Here is what my better place looks like.

I see progress but not the kind that we have seen before, instead this progress raises the poor and the rich at the same time. It’s a place where everything for sale is like the shoes that Tom sells where every pair you buy also means that someone who is in need is given a pair. A place where opportunity to help others becomes as abundant as opportunity for greed is today. A place deciding to rise from the pit of extortion and take on the challenge of the worlds poor becoming a people who are not any longer just absorbed with our self interest but also that of others.

What I see is a people who decide that no longer can we move through life building our own separate lives full of third world produced trinkets and our oh-so-important personal freedoms because there is a better way.
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Thanks so much for all of you who commented on the Planning commission notes I posted a few days ago.

I re-wrote the text based on what I heard from you. I think I got all of it but help me out and tell me what I missed. It’s a bit shorter this time around because I read it out loud and it felt a bit drawn out.

Here it is…

Planning Commission Hearing November 20th 2008  – Washington Blocks  -  Levi Benkert
Commissioners I want to thank you for taking the time to review the project we are proposing for the Washington neighborhood.

For the Record my name is Levi Benkert. I own LJ Urban, the developer for the project you see before you tonight.
As you may know I recently moved into the Good project with my wife and three kids and can tell you the density works well and the concept of shared outdoor living spaces makes for a thriving community. The exact type of community that the Washington neighborhood so desperately needs. [Read more →]

I believe to be alive today is truly a wonderful thing. I believe that we are looking at the single greatest time of opportunity we will face in our lifetimes and one that perhaps many generations never had the chance to see. I believe those that step up today and decide to lead the way are not only going to be able to see real change but are going to be remembered for centuries to come for what they did.

When things start to break loose from their long seated positions and the world starts to change the upheaval never lasts long but when it does and you are ready for it, your number has been called and its time to change the world.

Read this excerpt from a article written by Malcom Gladwell.

Recently Forbes Magazine compiled a list of the 75 richest people in history. It includes queens and kings and pharaohs from centuries past, as well as contemporary billionaires such as Warren Buffet and Carlos Slim. However, an astonishing 14 on the list are Americans born within nine years of each other in the mid-19th century. In other words, almost 20% of the names come from a single generation – born between 1831 and 1840 in a single country. The list includes industrialists and financiers who are still household names today: John Rockefeller, born in 1839 (the richest of the lot); Andrew Carnegie, 1835; Jay Gould, 1836; and JP Morgan, 1837.

What’s going on here is obvious, if you think about it. In the 1860s and 1870s, the American economy went through perhaps the greatest transformation in its history. This was when the railways were built, and when Wall Street emerged. It was when industrial manufacturing started in earnest. It was when all the rules by which the traditional economy functioned were broken and remade. What that list says is that it was absolutely critical, if you were going to take advantage of those opportunities, to be in your 20s when that transformation was happening.

If you were born in the late 1840s, you missed it – you were too young to take advantage of that moment. If you were born in the 1820s, you were too old – your mindset was shaped by the old, pre-civil war ways. But there is a particular, narrow nine-year window that was just perfect. All of the 14 men and women on that list had vision and talent.

You can read the full text here.

But first answer this question for yourself. Are you where you are supposed to be right now? Could you be making the world a better place somewhere else?

Levitr

Often I hear people say that you should never give up. I could not agree more. However I think it’s worth looking at why people give up. In reality many times we give up not because we did not have the fight in us to keep going but because we picked a fight that was not worth fighting. Consider this quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was hitting on something huge here.

“I say to you, this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren’t fit to live.

You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be, and one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid.

You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab or shoot or bomb your house. So you refuse to take a stand.

Well, you may go on and live until you are ninety, but you are just as dead at 38 as you would be at ninety.

And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.

You died when you refused to stand up for right.

You died when you refused to stand up for truth.

You died when you refused to stand up for justice.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
From the sermon “But, If Not” delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church on November 5, 1967.