On February 28th we had two wonderful guest speakers, Mike Gentry and Samuel Harrison. They came to speak to us about a major project that they had been working on, with Samuel Harrison being the owner and land developer, and Mr. Gentry the attorney for that land. Both of these gentleman were alumni of A&M and former members of the Corps.
They are currently working on a project in town that is off of Briarcrest and Highway 6. They spoke of the difficulties that have arisen from this project, which are not too uncommon when working on development projects. One of their major problems was involving a leak of an oil pipe after the pipe was removed. Though it was only a very small leak, it is a huge concern when developing homes, and rather than forgoing the entire project they paid $250,000 to replace the soil that was contaminated by oil with clean soil. Another problem that they came across was the town it was located near, which happened to be a historical site. When they were digging the foundation, they were praying they would not find any artifacts as that would put them even farther behind than already and may even ruin the chance of finishing the project. Fortunately for them, none of these artifacts were found.
I enjoyed learning about how volatile these development projects are the entire way through. It doesn't matter if you spend thousands on the perfect location with all your permits filled, if something goes wrong, like an oil spill, discovery of artifacts, even endangered species or plants are found, then the entire project can be halted or even stopped, more than likely with no return of investment. Though I found their speech very interesting, it also made me realize how risky the business can be and that anyone who wants to succeed in it would have to have very thick skin.
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