Shauna picked me up right after class and I was surprised when we started heading west.
“I thought that our first appointment was downtown. You’re going in the opposite direction.”
“About that. I made a few changes to our schedule”, Shauna replied. “I cancelled all of our viewings today. And all of them for the rest of the week.” Shauna didn’t sound a bit apologetic as she said this. Her face had a determined quality to it, as if challenging me to override her decision. I had no intention of doing that. Over the past month, I’d found Shauna to be incredibly effective and if she cancelled all of our appointments, then I knew that she had a very good reason behind it.
“So where are we going?”, I asked her.
She didn’t answer my question right away. “I watched the auction the other day. You’d told me the range of what the auction house was anticipating so I was expecting for the rubies to sell for around fifteen to seventeen million dollars. When the hammer finally came down at thirty-three, I thought I was going to lose my voice from yelling and cheering. I was so excited for you. The Hannah Foundation had gotten twice what I had expected and that changed things.”
“Changed things how?”
“The way I see it, the extra money is a bonus. It’s great to have, but it wasn’t planned for or needed in the short term. You can get along just fine for years without it. When you asked me to find potential office spaces for the Hannah Foundation, you were looking at the short-term. You wanted to start the ball rolling and have space for the people that you would hire. Once you had the offices, you’d start looking at making arrangement for where you could temporarily house any of the people that we rescued and for places where they could get the counseling and training they needed to get back on their own feet. However, with the extra money that come in, I think that we should be plan for the longer term right away. Why outsource the temporary housing and training center? Why not simply get everything set up in one place?”
“I couldn’t agree with you more”, I responded. “Having everything under one roof would be amazing, but I can’t afford to buy a building big enough to do everything that you’re suggesting.”
“You can’t downtown or even within the city limits, but just a bit farther out, you definitely can. When I saw the auction results and realized what you should be doing for space, I went searching and I found a place just ten minutes outside the city. It’s an old church compound and it has everything you wanted and lots of things that you didn’t think of.” Shauna ended her description there and refused to go into any more detail about the place. She said that she wanted me to look at the place and decide for myself.
Although I was itching to push her for more information, I realized that I wouldn’t get anywhere with her. She had a smile on her face that told me that she was having too much fun making me suffer through the waiting. I know because I’d done the very same thing to Eva on many occasions. With the topic of the old church off the table, I placed a folder next to Shauna and asked her to read through it later today.
“What’s in it?”, she asked.
“Just some properties I want you to look into.”
“Properties for what?”
Now it was my turn to smile. “I’ll tell you all about it later; once we’re done with the old church.” It turned out that Shauna did not appreciate my use of her own tactics against her.
Soon we had left the city behind and ten minutes later we pulled into a two hundred space, sparsely populated parking lot that led up to a one-story building with a large hall in the center and office wings on either side. Tucked away behind that building, Shauna pulled up in front of another building, this one much older than the first and having a more residential feel to it.
“Wow! This place is awesome. How much are they asking for it?”, I asked Shauna as she parked the car.
“Asking price is two point nine million dollars. It’s been on the market for a little over two years and I think we can get it for around two point four.”
“Why hasn’t someone already bought it? Two years is a long time.”
“The church had been running a small medical center out of the main building for over ten years and one of their requirements is that the new owners sign a fifteen-year lease with the nuns that run it. The lease is not very lucrative and being forced to take on the clinic interferes with most buyer’s redevelopment plans. From our perspective, having an on-site medical clinic could be a good thing, but we won’t be saying that out loud to them.” Shauna gave a predatory smile as she said this last bit.
Shauna introduced me to the real estate broker, Tom Kepler, and he took us on a tour. The property sat on twelve acres of land and had four larger buildings on it. The main building that we passed on the way in held the main sanctuary, or as Tom called it, the banquet hall. He was trying to downplay the ‘church’ aspect of the property and present it as a potential business. With a seating capacity of three hundred and fifty, the banquet hall had a stage nestled inside the far wall. I could easily picture the reverend giving his weekly sermon from the stage, with a choir singing hymns behind him. The hall could also double as a gymnasium, with basketball nets that folded out from the ceiling on either end. The design had clearly been stolen from every high school gym in the country.
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On either side of the hall were small wings. The wing on the left housed offices, meeting rooms, lounges and bathrooms. Tom explained that at its peak, the church that used to use these facilities had dozens of community outreach programs and they also raised funds by renting out the hall and the meeting rooms to weddings and local businesses.
The wing to the right of the hall held the medical clinic that Shauna had mentioned. Ten treatment rooms, a waiting room, a reception desk and it’s own entrance. It was a nice setup and I could see why the nuns weren’t eager to give it up. Unfortunately, the clinic was closed on Mondays and the place was deserted so I didn’t get to meet any of the nuns who worked there.
Finally, behind the hall was a large commercial kitchen that could be used to prepare food for a small army. Having worked at Mary’s soup kitchen, I knew enough to know that this was an impressive set up and the equipment was first rate.
Tom took us out the back door and back to the building that we parked in front of. Instead of simply calling it the rectory, he rebranded it as the administrative offices. Sure it had offices and a reception area, but it also had spacious living quarters for a minister, his family, and some guests. The rectory was connected by a covered walkway to another building that housed the church’s learning center. The small school had eight classrooms on the lower level and teachers’ offices and a cafeteria upstairs.
By this point in the tour I was feeling slightly overwhelmed. I’d gone into the day thinking I was going to see four-to-six thousand square feet of office space for a staff of around fifteen people and instead I was being led through what could almost be termed a compound. All that was missing was a fence surrounding the property. This place was huge. It would need someone just to take care of the grounds and someone else to administer the property. I took Shauna aside for a moment to tell her of my growing fear that this was overkill, but she quickly answered that I shouldn’t worry and she’d explain after the tour.
After the rectory, Tom walked us out to a series of small residential cottages. Each one housed up to four occupants, everyone with their own bedroom and bathroom suite, and having a common living room, dining room and kitchen. The church had used them to house visiting members of the clergy, as well as their teachers and the nuns who ran the clinic. The nuns were still using one of the six cottages and they would continue to do so under any new lease.
Finally, we walked around the grounds, to a large industrial looking building. It was completely hidden from the other buildings and it housed the equipment needed for the grounds, such as a tractor with mowing attachments and utility vehicles, as well as having storage rooms for supplies and building materials for the entire property. Tom never told us what the building had originally been intended to hold, but at the moment, only a quarter of it was being used.
It took us over an hour and a half to see the entire property. An hour and a half. I’d expected spending my afternoon taking elevators to see fancy, air-conditioned office spaces and I’d ended up hiking through woods to see a small, secluded lake at the edge of the property. Apparently, it was an excellent place to mediate or to contemplate our place in the universe. Tom went on quite a bit about how this place would make an excellent executive retreat.
It was truly beautiful though and I thought of the therapeutic effect it could have on survivors who visited this place. When viewed with that idea in mind, this property was a dream. This place would provide the perfect environment for helping people restart their lives. With only a few modifications, survivors could relax here and feel safe. They could stay in the cottages and get the therapy and training they’d need to get their lives back on track. A cold office setting wouldn’t be best place for people who’d been had their lives stolen from them. This place could be their new beginning.
“Shauna, you’re amazing!”, I said to her as we got into her car to head back home. “This place is perfect. It has everything the Hannah Foundation needs. It’s exactly what I didn’t know I wanted.”
“So, you don’t want to go see other places?”, she asked with a smirk on her face.
“Are there other places like that?”
“Actually, yes. There are quite a few of them in North Carolina, but this is the best one in the area. Unfortunately, a lot of churches are for sale these days. It’s sad because many of these places were the heart of their communities and they brought the people together. In some cases, the church moved to a new area when the demographics of the area changed, but in most cases, the churches simply closed down. This church closed when the minister, Simon Cadieux, passed away. The community had been shrinking for years, as families moved to the city or left the state to look for work, and Simon held the church together with an iron will. With him gone, no one had the strength to continue the fight.”
“How do you even know all that?”, I asked Shauna.
“Yesterday, when I called to set up the meeting with Tom for today, I spoke to the nun, Sister Clara, that runs the clinic. She sounds like a very caring person and I think the closing of the church is still a painful subject for her. Anyways, none of the other churches available in this area of the state are as nice as this or as big as this one. Should I start negotiating with them?”
“Absolutely. Like you said, we can buy it with less than the ‘extra’ money that the auction generated. We are going to have to find someone just to run the place though.”
“About that. I was thinking that the team and I could set up shop in the old rectory building. It would save us from having to rent a place and the team and I could also double as the property admin staff in between rescue jobs. It also means that we could be legitimate employees of the foundation and won’t need to hide our income. If you’re ok with it, we could get a low base salary from the foundation and the remainder of our salaries could be in the form of a bonus or lump sum payment from your ‘other sources’ of funding. It’ll make life easier around tax time.”
“Whatever works for you and your team, I’m good with. Speaking of team. When will you be hiring them? Also, didn’t you already rent premises for you and the team?”, I asked.
“I found several potential premises, but I didn’t sign any leases yet. I was waiting to see where you’d be setting up the foundation offices first. I figured that I’d pick the one closest to you and reduce your travel times. The team and I could start working out of my apartment for the first few weeks, or until you sign the papers for this place. It’ll be cramped, but we’ll save money and the intimate setting will let us to get to know each other much better and see how we work as a team. It lets me see who has any annoying habits that the rest of us couldn’t live with. As to meeting them, I’m planning on hiring them tonight. Jenny Selinger, our cyber and technology expert, will start right away with setting up our network. Gabriel Danson, our banking expert could start as early as next week, if you’ve got work for him.”
“I definitely have work for him. Let’s see how fast you can close on this place and get the team set up here.”