It's 9AM
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I wish we could steal the best parts of other cities and cobble them together for our own.
I’m a big fan of CYPRESS WATERS in Dallas.
A big collection of MIXED USE buildings surrounding a lake. A boardwalk play area with an amphitheater backs up to the water with an array of restaurants for dining, drinking and general merriment.
There are oversized games of chess, ping pong and art areas for the kids, and seating for adults, plus open green spaces for play, picnic or just daydreaming.
Why can’t we do that in Arkansas?
The River Market is close to it.
This downtown Little Rock space has the restaurants, the amphitheater, the open green spaces, plus water views on the Arkansas river and the North Little Rock skyline.
Except all the restaurants front busy Clinton Avenue and the annoying caravans that cruise up and down.
Only one faces the water and the open deck sits in the parking lot next to a giant dumpster on one side, and Cantrell Road on the other.
The restaurant game is tough and bringing people to downtown Little Rock is even tougher, especially when there are so many dining options available in the much newer, cleaner and nicer West Little Rock communities, and Conway, and Benton/Bryant.
All of which look like they were picked up from Dallas or any other city in the world and plopped into a strip mall bordering the Interstate.
What are the options then?
I could keep complaining about it.
All the while, people in Dallas and other cities are building and growing and making their cities better.
Or I could start asking around, talking, planning and making it happen when and where I want.
I suppose the question becomes…
Who the hell does this guy think he is?
This may be a question most of us get asked when we try to play outside “our lane.”
I know I’ve been questioned when I talk about real estate development.
After all, I write zombie books.
Or alien books, depending on who you ask.
What could a “writer” possibly know about developing culture and community through smart mixed use real estate development?
It doesn’t matter that I’ve spear headed over two dozen large scale projects that resulted in millions of dollars in revenue navigating the complex world of the Department of Defense and the Department of Education.
I don’t “know” real estate.
What do you do when you run up against old school “know” versus new school “I can do?”
How do you overcome the “You can’t do that?”
Part of grit is putting your head down and busting through walls.
Except in a complicated and complex network of old school connections, acting like a bull in a tea shop isn’t the best way to make and keep friends.
I suppose I could write about it for the paper. Write a letter to the Mayor and city councils. Write to the developers and owners and anyone who will read to make it happen.
I tried that with the old Mayor of Pine Bluff regarding their downtown redevelopment. I shared over two dozen ideas, some of which were implemented.
Not necessarily because of me, but because they were just good ideas, lifted from other spaces where I’ve seen them work.
Someone suggested I take the ideas, write them down, and start to make them happen for the businesses I want to develop these concepts.
A de facto working relationship where I do free stuff for them to get the ball rolling, and they carry it across the goal line.
For someone who doesn’t care about credit, this is a great way to get something done, gain attention and to build relationships.
How would you feel about someone who did thousands of dollars of marketing and development concept work for you for free and asked for nothing in return?
Maybe it’s not enough to notice what could be better and complain about why it’s not.
Maybe it’s time to roll up the proverbial sleeves and start acting on some of the concepts and value I preach about all the time.
Hard work. Tenacity. Innovation.
Grit. Determination. The Will to Make It Happen.
All of those look great on a tee shirt, and sound great when talking.
But when it’s time for the heavy lifting, are you willing to put in the effort?
Am I?
All I wanted was a place to sit and drink a beer and feel the breeze off the water, sharing laughs with friends and watching the kids play together.
What I got was an idea, a pebble in my shoe thought and a moment of clarity.
Stop complaining. Start doing.
It’s how I ran marathons. It’s how I ran ultra races. How I wrote over fifty books. How I built and sold businesses before. How I found you.
The world is full of critics.
It’s time to stop criticizing and start doing.
There is a memory worth making on the other side.
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This is a sample chapter from the novel that will be included in every issue of It’s 9AM starting in Sept: Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to upgrade your 9AM and have it delivered to you every day;
“We’re here to catch a Cat burglar.”
Coop stared through the windshield and ignored the crack that ran from the top corner right through his field of vision.
It was like staring through a pair of bifocals coated with a fine sheen of dust.
“I don’t see what he could steal,” he said.
He shifted his bulk in the seat, searching for a way to get more comfortable.
Even this old Buick wasn’t designed for his size, and his knees folded up at an awkward angle.
“Catalytic converters,” said Brenda.
“What’s that?”
“Little things on the exhaust of those trucks,” she pointed to the fleet of service trucks parked in the fenced off lot.
A single halogen light illuminated the entrance to the area, but the rest of the trucks were shrouded in the gloomy darkness.
“They’re packed with precious metals that turn them into tiny little gold mines.”
She unscrewed the cap of a dented metal thermos and chugged two big swallows of steaming coffee.
“Want some?”
She held the opening toward him, but not the plastic lid that doubled as a cup.
“Maybe later.”
She nodded and replaced the cap.
“Some little sneak thief has been over the wire twice,” her harsh eyes glared at the stillness of the lot.
“They used a little battery saw to cut every cat off every truck. Tom had to replace every single one of them. Then the little fucker came back and did it again.”
“Ouch,” Coop said.
“Damn right. Now he’s hired us to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“So we’re just going to sit here and wait for someone to show up?”
“Stake it out,” Brenda corrected.
“Couldn’t he just hire a night time security guard?”
“I’m cheaper,” she said with a note of pride.
Coop did not point out that Tom, of the Tom, Dick and Harry’s sign on the fence may have gotten the better end of the deal.
“What do we do if we catch him?”
“Turn him over to Tom.”
They pondered the parking lot in silence together, letting it settle between them like a comfortable weight.
Nothing moved outside and it was too early to start trading shifts for sleep.
Inside her old car, Kurt could hear the rhythm of her breathing, the steady rise and fall of her chest as it rustled the fabric of her shirt against the edge of her jacket.
“You married?” Brenda broke the silence.
“I had a girlfriend.”
“Why didn’t she come with you?”
Coop sighed, a long drawn out thing that was full of anguish and sadness for the weight of the new world where he found himself.
It might have just sounded like a huff to Brenda.
“She ran off with my business manager.”
“The guy that took all of your money?”
“Yep,” there were epics in the answer he gave.
“Sorry.”
He grunted.
“She took the dog,” he said. “I miss him more than I do her.”
Brenda snorted out a half laugh.
“Probably more loyal.”
He nodded a grunt again.
Buster had been a loyal dog. He wondered if the mutt missed him.
“They find him yet?”
“They say they’re looking,” he shrugged. “But they also say I’m holding out and hiding things. So I don’t know what to believe.”
“You want to help them look?”
He could only see half of her face bathed in the weak halogen glow that leaked over them from the lot.
“If I see him first,” he said in a low voice. “They’ll never find him.”
She smiled a half smile under an arched eyebrow.
“You?”
“I’ve got no reason to kill him,” she said. “But I’ll help you hide the body.”
“Good to know.”
“For the right price.”
It was his turn to sniff out a short bark of a laugh.
“I meant married.”
“Widowed.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be. I killed him.”
She let out a big laugh at the look on his face and turned to face him. She tucked a leg up on the large seat so she could rest an arm on it.
“Earl liked to play a game called “Let’s beat the shit out of Brenda.”
“That doesn’t sound like much fun,” Coop said.
“It wasn’t. He played once or twice a week for a couple of years. Sometimes, I’d leave, but he would beg me back and I kept believing him.”
He watched her face for a moment, the fine lines and wrinkles around her eyes, the maturity that turned her from homecoming queen pretty two decades ago to something more now.
Handsome, he thought, but it wasn’t quite the right word for her. There was a beauty to the angles, to the miles and trauma she’d endured, but it didn’t make her a soft kind of pretty.
She shifted closer and lowered her voice.
“One Friday night, he said the black eyed peas tasted funny. After I got up off the floor, he told me to clean up the mess I made bleeding all over his kitchen. He laughed about it,” she touched a delicate scar that colored the corner of her lip.
“Can you believe that?”
He didn’t answer, though he could feel a knot of anger twisting in his stomach.
“I went to the closet to get the mop and there it was, like a message from God, waiting for me.”
“The mop?”
“A Louisville slugger, or what I like to call, thirty one inches of justice. I grabbed it and went two full innings on the back of his head until I was too tired to lift the bat.”
“Yikes.”
“Yikes is right. I am a self created widow by what a jury of my peers called justifiable homicide.”
“More than a little justified by the sound of it.”
She gave him a half mad grin and turned away to watch the lot again.
“My girlfriend used to call me thirty one inches of justice,” he joked.
Coop saw the eyebrow arch up over a smirk again.
“Really?”
“No,” he confessed. “But she did tell me I was the best thirty seconds of her life, so I’ve got that going for me.”
Brenda laughed and he was glad she did.
They needed to clear the residue of heavy conversation from the air and focus on the task at hand.