WRITTEN BY CHERYL WELLS
Being in the development business for the last 3 ½ years has been quite an interesting journey for us, to say the least. (Can I do that?) I look back to the very beginning, and I have memories of feeling overwhelmed by all the horrible ugly buildings that we were buying and thinking about all the work and investment it was going to take. I mean these were some of the worst buildings in Le Mars and many of them were so unsafe that I didn’t even want to go inside. Crumbling walls comes to mind and dead rodents of many kinds! I wasn’t sold on all the ideas that Mike had about our new future. A lot of it was because we quickly were in the business of owning, renovating (tearing down and totally redoing), managing and leasing lots of buildings – without much experience. I don’t think we had even officially closed on the sale of Wells’ Enterprises yet. I did do a fact check before I got too far into this, and I asked for permission to share with you all.
Mike and I had talked for years about repurposing when he was done at Wells, but all the speeches and the interviews had been about retiring and spending more time together as a couple. I just didn’t know what he meant by that, however I have always trusted and respected Mike’s leadership and ingenuity. For that I am so grateful and it continues to work for us as a couple and we both have always been about honoring one another.
How hard could this be?? And in the midst of this we lost our dear friend and general contractor, Larry Timmins. Losing Larry and walking through this with his family and our community was a huge loss and terrible grief for both of us. Larry’s hand is all over our little town and he is missed and remembered by so many. Larry would either meet with Mike in person or call him early every day and pray with him. I was with Mike on many of those occasions and I loved Larry’s heartfelt and simple prayers for us all. He has left a huge legacy for his family and for all those that came behind him to pick up all the construction work and keep moving forward. At any given time since then there are about 4-7 building projects going on at one time. We have a wonderful crew of contractors and sub-contractors, as well as an engineering firm that is daily on top of what is happening and how. Without a general contractor since then, Mike has tried to stay close and know what he needs to and give direction.
Another layer on top of all this, or maybe it’s the foundational layer, is that through circumstances I ended up taking responsibility for all of our finances. I hadn’t done that since almost 20 years ago. What we found out was that it was crucial for both of us to be more involved, but the daily struggle was on me to sort things out and learn what I needed to know. Selling the business and transitioning became so much more than that for us both. It was such an eye-opening experience, and we could see that there were more ways that we needed and appreciated one another. We had needs in our new business that we both saw and stepped into. One of mine was that I saw right away that we had to get organized and set up business practices for Red Shed Enterprises or we were going to have a mess. In fact, we already had a bit of a mess, and we had to turn that around. I had learned this at Habitué more than 15 years ago, as well as many other things I learned by doing.
We needed some help and there were some key spots that we needed to hire for. Things have settled and come together, and we are very grateful for those people. We are working on getting order for the next place that we are at in this process. We are focused on the goal of completing these buildings and getting businesses into them, as well as leasing out the living spaces above them. The next step is to sell the buildings, hopefully to the owners of the businesses and this is the best move for them also. Le Mars is looking better and getting healthier little by little and I think that development work is right up my alley!
