from Hacker News

The man who bought Pine Bluff, Arkansas (2022)

by dbcooper on 3/23/24, 6:41 PM with 177 comments

• by ashleyn on 3/23/24, 9:06 PM

  Reading this was difficult.

  * What exactly was his plan for the building? I don't see anything coherent. One moment it's a makerspace, another it's a music warehouse, then it's a science museum. Was there a coherent plan? $281k is a lot of money to spend with no real plan.

  * The city allegedly giving him grief. I'm still not sure if this was preventable or not considering the bit about how he failed to submit building plans. If your plan is to own a significant chunk of this city, you're going to have to play better politics than repeatedly being asked to leave at public functions. Palm-greasing would be a far better strategy than righteous anger. Maybe a fraction of that $900k could've opened a nice park they always wanted. Maybe the PD needs a new bearcat. Something.

  * Living in a tent on the lot instead of hiring security. This bit was straight out of some episode of a sitcom. This is a depressed flyover country town. If you couldn't afford security then you couldn't afford the building. Again, a good chunk of that $900k would cover round-the-clock security for at least a year. Righteous indignation over the crime isn't an actual cost-cutting measure.

  * The land is cheap for a reason. The way a town gets revitalised is external value flows in. How would the makerspace-warehouse-museum thing bring that value into the city? Even if all this did pan out, I'd predict an entirely new problem he'd have, which is no willing customers outside of a 200 mile radius.

  I don't get why people make cockeyed "investments" like these when the S&P 500 is sitting right there at a nice 8% a year. No bums, no politics, no thinking it through at all really. Just buy it and don't touch it. If your idea can't do better than that intersection of earnings and effort, don't bother with it.

• by Bukhmanizer on 3/23/24, 8:50 PM

  I fell down the pontifier rabbit hole from a HN comment in early 2021 as well and I’m glad other people have found the story as fascinating as I did.

  I do think the article makes him a bit overly sympathetic and glosses over some of his eccentricities. Like the fact that he seems to really think he can build a nuclear fusion reactor from an old MRI machine and I guess all of the Nem saga: https://whoispontifier.wordpress.com/2018/05/14/the-journey-...

  I still haven’t decided if all this is or isn’t some sort of elaborate performance art, but I appreciate the effort in any case. And even though I think he’s probably a few cards short of a deck, you do kind of root for him in the end.

• by tossedacct on 3/24/24, 5:15 PM

  Pine Bluff is crazy. I know this because many years ago I found an amazing building in the downtown area for sale and went to see it. After a couple of hours of tours from a real estate agent and town officials I realized that this place was not coming back from the dead. The previous owner of the building had been stabbed there while trying to get it ready for occupancy. The city employees openly wanted money to help me avoid taxes. And the kicker was that it smelled awful when the wind blew in from the nearby Tyson chicken farm. It’s consistently been in the top murders per capita rate in the US. I feel bad for this guy, but it would hard to miss the red flags before buying there.

• by hristov on 3/24/24, 11:07 AM

  I would like to remind HN that hoarding is a serious and well established mental disorder and that we should not encourage this poor soul that has fallen victim to a real estate version of this disease.

  It is unusual that someone should hoard real estate and it is interesting to see the circumstances of how this happened but otherwise it is a pretty standard case.

  Note how from the interviews he gets pleasure in obtaining new properties and yet has no idea what to do with them. Note he does not spend the money required to even get an architectural drawing made and yet he spends money on obtaining more and more properties.

  Or the fact that he has decided not to hire security but to guard his properties by himself, which would make it much more convenient if he has fewer properties not more. But he still keeps buying more. At this point a smart thief can get a map of his properties helpfully provided on the internet, find out where he is and attack any one of his other forty something properties.

  Note how in the end of the interview when he is supposed to say some inspiring words of his progress or near term plans, he does not talk about what he is going to do with the warehouse but fantasizes with great excitement about buying yet another abandoned property, a hotel.

  By the way I fully sympathize with the city officials. No city will approve any building project that does not come with fully compliant drawings signed and stamped by a licensed civil engineer and/or architect (depending on the project). Nor should they. It is their job to keep the community safe and habitable.

  It is kind of funny they are stealing his ideas, but that also might be understandable. They might be good ideas, after all. Here you have a town that is looking for ways to revitalize itself with little money, and here comes a young techie guy from California with what seem to be some very good ideas and some money. There probably was some excitement in city hall when this guy first submitted his plans. But then they slowly realize that this is a sad disturbed individual that is unlikely to ever accomplish anything and will not spend money on anything other than acquiring abandoned real estate.

  But the town keeps deteriorating, they have to do something, and his ideas do seem pretty cheap. So they decide lets try them out ourselves. Cities do not like to own businesses. The officials cannot take outsize profits for themselves but are on the hook for any screwups. So I am sure they would have much preferred if someone else was running these things, but they simply knew that this guy was not going to get it done.

  So yeah, this is an interesting case of hoarding, but that is about it. I urge Mr. Fenley to consult a psychiatrist.

• by reducesuffering on 3/23/24, 7:26 PM

  https://1900hotdog.com/2023/07/upsetting-day-john-fenleys-cu...

  is the far more entertaining read.

  I feel a bit bad, because John Fenley is among us here on HN. But I think they also surface that John, you really need to get out of Pine Bluff and reevaluate these pie-in-the-sky ideas.

• by jachac on 3/23/24, 7:33 PM

  https://twitter.com/pontifier

  He tweets pretty frequently about the on-going drama

• by readyplayernull on 3/23/24, 8:02 PM

  That seems to be a dangerous place, even hydrants are against you:

  https://twitter.com/pontifier/status/1609493285675859973?s=2...

• by untech on 3/23/24, 8:13 PM

  I think buying a warehouse is kinda cool! But if he’s facing security problems, can’t he just hire guards? The labor price must be as low as land price there.

• by throwitaway222 on 3/23/24, 8:21 PM

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39576974&p=2#39587743

• by ametrau on 3/23/24, 9:16 PM

  Wow. I thought stories like these ended when the internet died. I’m glad I was wrong. Should have been on HN ages ago. Crazy and exciting read. Thanks max read.

• by cjbgkagh on 3/24/24, 3:22 PM

  I think one of the things that makes this guy’s story interesting, at least to me, is that there is big part of me that would do as he has done but I have actively and intentionally suppressed it. Maybe we share the same ADHD inspired impulses. The part of me that suppresses these impulses could have easily been missing, I see his story I think, ‘there but for the grace of god go I’.

  I don’t want to see him fail but since I’ve suppressed this aspect in myself I am kind of seeking reassurance of my own decisions. If he succeeds then that may suggest that I have been making the wrong choices in life. I wouldn’t begrudge him for his success and instead I would use it to try to recalibrate my own decisions.

• by cooper_ganglia on 3/23/24, 9:34 PM

  Challenges aside, I’m jealous! He needs to pull a Rajneeshpuram and politically take over the town, too, lol

• by bigjimmyk3 on 3/24/24, 3:48 PM

  I am a lifelong Arkansan, and I hope he is able to pull off some kind of win. I visited that area often as a teen, and Pine Bluff was the main entertainment destination for the region. I haven't been in awhile, but it sounds like the years have not been kind.

  I really hope that his analogy to 1980s NYC works out. It's easy to give up when there's so much cultural and institutional inertia, but this guy seems to have a pretty deep well of motivation. I hope he hangs in there.

• by gottorf on 3/25/24, 12:27 AM

  Others have touched upon the point of crime, but it really is worth mentioning that crime (especially of the violent and/or property type) is a huge hindrance to the economic revitalization of any area. It's much, much easier to risk time and capital to try and build something versus risking your life and those of your loved ones.

  Just goes to show that rule of law and strong private property rights are necessary conditions to any level of wealth-building.

• by Cheer2171 on 3/24/24, 1:38 PM

  As always, The Simpsons did it first. Go watch the episode where Bart buys an abandoned factory at a tax auction for $1, although even Bart hired Millhouse as a security guard.

  The reason the city wants architectural drawings and probably an engineer to be involved is the same too. Spoiler alert: the building collapses into rubble at the end of the episode.

• by mtlynch on 3/23/24, 8:46 PM

  I'd never heard about this, but I found Bentley super likable and easy to root for. I hope he manages to get things going in his direction soon.

• by Mountain_Skies on 3/24/24, 12:37 AM

  Perhaps he has really long term vision. According to National Geographic, if the polar ice caps melt completely, Pine Bluff will benefit immensely by being waterfront property on the now larger Gulf of Mexico.

• by ryandrake on 3/24/24, 1:16 PM

  Talk about tripling down. Looks like he's running for mayor of the town, too[1].

  1: https://twitter.com/pontifier/status/1761982196649250831

• by cjbgkagh on 3/23/24, 9:24 PM

  I find that there is a lot of inertia in decline, things that have been declining for a long time generally continue declining. The amount of work to turn around a township (?) would be insane and I wish him the best of luck.

• by maayank on 3/23/24, 11:47 PM

  Awesome read. A real life Nathan Fielder (I mean, the “character” Nathan plays)

• by superq on 3/23/24, 9:39 PM

  Needs more pitch for the archer towers.

  Maybe some war dogs.

• by codethief on 3/24/24, 1:34 PM

  Oh, it's the Murfie guy! Does anyone know what the status is there? The video on murfie.com ends with "It'll happen. I'm not giving up."

• by Animats on 3/24/24, 7:25 AM

  At least he's spending his own money. There have been far worse schemes where someone tried to create their own community. Some recent ones:

  - Satoshi Island [1]

  - Seasteading [2]

  - California Forever [3]

  [1] https://www.satoshi-island.com/

  [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seasteading_Institute

  [3] https://gizmodo.com/tech-billionaires-project-to-build-a-new...

• by dec0dedab0de on 3/23/24, 9:17 PM

  I love this, and I am rooting for him. It's the kind of thing I dream about having enough money to do.

• by htag on 3/23/24, 10:57 PM

  I can't believe no one has mentioned the FDA toxicology lab near the town [0]. There is good reason they put the lab in the middle of impoverished no where. There has been issues with the lab in the past, including missing primates last year [1]. Maybe I'm a bit tin-foil-hat, but this is literally an isolated place to study toxicity and I think it's a unique risk to relocate near it.

  [0] https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/nctr-location-facilities-servi...

  [1] https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2023/aug/30/monkeys-gone...

• by LispSporks22 on 3/24/24, 12:12 AM

  I love this guy

• by PickledHotdog on 3/24/24, 1:47 PM

  For Australians: Right-wing, Sky News talking head, Rita Panahi, was born in Pine Bluff, AK, according to its wikipedia page. Sure would explain her hatred of the poor.

• by grouchomarx on 3/24/24, 2:13 AM

  >agent assured me the price was correct

  >arkansas

  yea

• by Take8435 on 3/23/24, 8:05 PM

  This entire post is so great. Love that it was posted by dbcooper lol

• by rKarpinski on 3/23/24, 8:30 PM

  What he bought was a large warehouse and later some foreclosed lots at auction, spending in total ~400k. The warehouse alone was worth 3.4 million as recently as 2008 but de-industrialization and local crime have since cratered it's value. [1]

  While he's engaged in a completely unreasonable adventure, It's sad to see how accepting & cynical we are of the hallowing out and degradation of the US.

  [1] https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2022/08/17/meet-a-man-who...

• by AI_beffr on 3/23/24, 9:43 PM

  i find the person who wrote this to be a complete ass-hole. talking about ill-advised redditors, he gives one example of a man who decided to build his own house. but the link to that guys story is a weird twitter thread that just shows a guy building a house. as someone who knows how to build a house, i knew how much work and hard-earned lessons went into each of those progress pictures. and the guy builds the house better than most contractors would. besides the plumbing snafu. the doors and windows were not placed in a way that is pleasing to the eye but overall it was a great accomplishment. how is that ill-advised? its not, its awesome. i hate people that take a shit on those who actually make change in the world and take risks. all from their safe little cubicle or basement. people who are so ignorant and dumb that all the information that is packed into those pictures flies right over their heads.

  as a person in real estate, looking through pontifiers twitter feed is like looking back at my own life. most people know that there is a homeless problem. but what many people dont realize is that basically everywhere in the united states there are people who wander around at night looking for stuff to steal. they poke around everywhere but actually do not physically break in most of the time. people in liberal areas are familiar with window breaking and break and enter but everywhere else there is just this omnipresence of vagrants who commit smaller crimes. they are just really annoying and make the neighborhood seem more trashy than it really is. these people are all fit and ready to work. the cops wont arrest them. nobody really bothers them. i think the reason they exist is because people are shittier now and dont feel any urge to fix the societal problems that they see around them. there are videos on pontifiers twitter where he confronts them and they are totally without shame. they arent afraid of being caught. i think something similar happened in the 80s and people got super fed up and then NY started stop and frisk and other things. we need another one of those.

  as for the actual purchase of the warehouse and other properties, the risk isnt so bad when you take into account the relatively small amounts of money that are actually on the table here. as far as i know, hes making these purchases in cash. i would say that theres a good chance he will pull through and be able to use what hes learned to start making a real difference in this community and others. by far the most concerning part of this story is the city not cooperating. biggest road block by far.

• by 83457 on 3/23/24, 7:57 PM

  1. buy warehouse 2. buy houses 3. start a company and rent houses to workers 4. maybe profit