GENERAL INTEREST FORUM
Our beloved owner....
MACD started a topic Our beloved owner....
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/08/08/sports-moguls-estate-forcing-out-north-texas-lake-residents/88425076/
Sports mogul's estate forcing out North Texas lake residents
USA TODAY NETWORKPatrick Johnston, The (Wichita Falls, Texas) Times Record7:06 p.m. EDT August 8, 2016
(Photo: Patrick Johnston, The (Wichita Falls, Texas) Times Record News)
DUNDEE, Texas — It wasn't the mail Billy Butlerexpected to open on Friday for his birthday, even if he had a suspicion after seeing a notice on the Cara Blanca Park community board.
The letter, mailed from a law office he couldn't remember, put the nail in the coffin:
"W.T. Waggoner Estate, Inc., ... has decided to change the use of the land in Cara Blanca Park on February 1, 2017 and return the lake shoreline to its natural, uninhabited landscape to support and improve the microecosystem in and around Lake Diversion."
It meant that people who had homes on Lake Diversion in North Texas would lose them. The new owner of the historic Waggoner Ranch wants them gone.
"I heard about it the night before, so I kind of knew it was coming," Butler, a 17-year resident of the lake, said. "People keep asking me where I'm going to go and I haven't had a chance to think about it. I just don't know."
He'd watched his daughter, now 20, grow up on this lake and couldn't wait to raise his son, who was born a year-and-a-half ago.
Now, with a one-page letter, those dreams and the life he planned for his family were gone in an instant.
Great Lakes group backs Waukesha lake water diversion
"We do have pictures — thank God for that," Butler said. " ... I'm so devastated and still in shock. It'll probably set in next week. Right now, I just don't know. I mean, I'm losing my home."
He and a couple of hundred other residents are left to sort through what to do next — residents like Paul Appel, a Vietnam War veteran with several medical issues and a fixed income.
"I'm in poor health and will be 73 in three months," said Appel, who retired to the lake 16 years ago. "I can't do very much and will have to get some help somewhere to move everything."
While he has two adult children who live in Dallas, Appel is struggling to figure out what to do with a "lifetime worth of stuff" packed inside three storage sheds and a sun room.
His home — two mobile homes in an L-shape — could be relocated to new land, but he doesn't have the money for the transportation or the new property.
"I have no idea where I'm going to go," Appel said. "I have no money and I'm on Social Security and disability. I live month-to-month and can't afford rent anywhere."
Although Lake Diversion is owned by Wichita County Water Improvement District No. 2 and the City of Wichita Falls, it sits on ranchland recently purchased by sports mogul Stan Kroenke, owner of the National Football League Los Angeles Rams, theNational Basketball Association's Denver Nuggets and National Hockey League'sColorado Avalanche.
The Waggoner family, which had established the sprawling ranch 164 years ago, had offered leases on lakefront property on the north end of the lake. Over the years, some of those properties became permanent homes. When Kroenke purchased the ranch in February, he issued a statement saying he was "… deeply committed to continuing the proud legacy of W.T. "Tom" Waggoner, his family and his descendants..
Kroenke said in the statement, "We will continue to preserve and protect this uniquely American treasure."
That preservation will not include the homes on the lake, which was created in 1924.
Lessees must be off the property by Jan. 31, when the current leases expire. They may move buildings at their own expense, but those that are not moved will be moved and disposed of by Kroenke.
A message left with the Waggoner Ranch owner at his Kroenke Sports & Entertainment office in Denver had not been returned as of Monday afternoon.
MoonJoe replied
I tried to move this to the Lounge, but couldn't figure out how. Sam is looking into as well.
r8rh8rmike replied
Originally posted by Rambos View Post
Just wanted to make sure you heard Wal-Mart signed a $3.3 billion deal to buy web retailer Jet.com... they are trying to compete with Amazon.
Where's the "Business" forum when you need it.
Rambos replied
Originally posted by r8rh8rmike View Post
Where's the "Real Estate" forum when you need it..........
KoaKoi replied
Sorry, but this doesn't trouble me to any degree. Their leases are up. Not being renewed. This happens to tens of thousands of tenants every month in the U.S. It's also not "Rams Talk"y enough for my tastes. Maybe if Tre Mason was doing football drills on the front lawn of one of these mobile homes....? Now that's a story I could get behind.
Curly Horns replied
Is this Rams Talk? Is this forum now open to this kind of talk?
Sad deal, I don't know what these people were thinking, but you are taking a risk building permanent homes on property that is leased. The aerial view of this looks like a mess.
Yodude replied
Originally posted by gap View Post
Stories like this confirm what I already know about stan, and that he is an utterly shameful POS.
Now would be a good time for all residence of that location to start dumping all the used oil and antifreeze they can find, so stan has a huge environmental mess to clean up. That should put a nice dent in his wallet.
Great idea...lets kill as much wildlife as possible and damage a natural habitat so you can make a point.
RamsFanSam replied
...and the guy STILL wants St. Louis to give him tax incentives to build in Maryland Heights.
Perhaps if he were a human - with real human morals and values - he would learn that to be treated decently, you have to treat others decently.
gap replied
A great article on Kroenke
by Tampa_Ram
Found this over in another rams forum. Enjoy
The Most Powerful Man In Sports ... You Had No Idea, Did You? Stan Kroenke
SPORTS' ULTIMATE KINGPIN IS AN UNASSUMING REAL ESTATE TYCOON FROM CENTRAL MISSOURI WHOSE PROPERTIES, FROM THE NFL'S RAMS TO THE PREMIER LEAGUE'S ARSENAL, ARE WORTH SOME $4 BILLION. HE BOUGHT THEM FOR SHEER LOVE OF THE GAMES—AND BECAUSE THEY PAY OFF
L. Jon Wertheim
The Directors Box in London's Emirates Stadium gives new zest to the phrase luxury suite. Arriving on a private elevator, guests are greeted by an attractive hostess, shown to tables with floral centerpieces in the opposing team's colors, and seated in chairs upholstered in leather that has been dyed Arsenal red and embossed with the club's logo. They eat smoked fish imported from Scandinavia, burrata cheese from Italy and lamb from the British countryside, all washed down with champagne from France. As the Gunners' players and 60,000-plus fans, most swaddled in red scarves, brave a cold, rainy, heartlessly gray afternoon, the denizens of the Directors Box bask in warmth, comfort and conviviality.
The received wisdom that soccer truly is the world's sport is confirmed by the cast of characters in the box. British dignitaries mingle with soccer royalty. Sir Alex Ferguson, the manager of Manchester United, sits at a back table. A mere half hour before the English Premier League match between Arsenal and Queens Park Rangers kicks off, the Gunners' own manager, Arsène Wenger, a mystical Frenchman, makes an appearance, shaking hands with other guests, who include a marketing executive from Dubai, a knot of Russian businessmen and, improbably, DeMaurice Smith, head of the NFL Players Association. As if the theme of globalization and multinationalism needed further reinforcement, LED screens ringing the perimeter of the pitch flash a team diversity initiative, ARSENAL FOR EVERYONE, translated into various languages—Hebrew, Arabic and Korean among them.
As the game is about to start, the most important figure in this international barony walks through the suite doors: a lean man wearing a gray pinstripe suit that looks to be flannel, a white shirt, a solid black tie and cowboy boots, his ruddy face set off by a caterpillar of a mustache. His entrance could scarcely be less conspicuous—he's talking quietly to another man, who turns out to be his son—yet it causes an immediate drop in ambient volume. Enos Stanley Kroenke, a 65-year-old son of Mora, Mo. (pop. 491)—"The Ozark/Osage region," according to him; "about 16 miles south of Sedalia," according to Wikipedia—has arrived, bearing a complement of toothpicks in his breast pocket.
Kroenke soon grabs a black Nike ski parka and ventures onto the exposed terrace, where he can better concentrate on the game. His hands forming...
Channel: RAMS NATION TALK
McClellan: 'Befuddled' billionaire may yet leave us with an empty Dome
by MauiRam
By Bill McClellan
"We both knew people sometimes change, and lovers sometimes rearrange, and nothing's quite as sure as change."
— The Mamas & the Papas
Rams owner Stan Kroenke is something of a villain these days, but really, it's not his fault. He is only doing what the lease for the Edward Jones Dome allows him to do — and that is demand that the football stadium be brought to a top-tier level.
But we are not going to do that. We can't. We shouldn't. We won't.
Which means, we think, that Kroenke and the Rams might follow Albert Pujols to the left coast.
So we're starting the hate-fest early.
I do not intend to be a spoilsport. I am firmly behind the populist crusade to stop public money from going to a billionaire. Not that we have much choice. We're broke. So we might as well declare that we are acting on principle.
Occupy the Edward Jones Dome!
What's more, Kroenke has become a surly character. Not long ago, he talked about how he has put a lot of "jack" into this market. The implication was that we are not grateful enough for all that he's done.
He owns an NBA basketball team, an NHL hockey team, an MSL soccer team, and he has controlling interest in a soccer team in England. He owns the most upscale winery in Napa Valley, and he has ranches in Wyoming and Montana and the largest working cattle ranch in Canada.
That ranch is in British Columbia, and Kroenke is involved in a dispute with the locals. They claim that Kroenke has illegally blocked access to two public lakes that the locals have fished for generations. The ranch manager argues that the ranch has stocked the lake with rainbow trout and anyone who fishes them is stealing.
B.C. fishermen challenge billionaire ranchers for lake access - British Columbia - CBC News
Kroenke has become a hard man to like.
It was not always so.
I remember the day he was introduced to St. Louis. It was at a press conference on a Monday afternoon in October 1993. Our plan to get an expansion football team was unraveling. We had the stadium. We had the name of the team — the Stallions. But the potential ownership group had broken apart when James Orthwein walked away and took his money with him.
We needed a new Daddy Warbucks, and we needed him quickly. We found E. Stanley Kroenke.
Actually, Andy Craig found him. Craig was then the head of Boatmen's Bank and the chairman of Civic Progress.
If you want a trip down memory lane, savor the first sentence of a news story that appeared the day after Kroenke was introduced: "If some fine day, when the St. Louis Stallions are going bad and E. Stanley Kroenke asks himself, 'How did I get into this?' he can blame Andrew Craig."
The reporter who...
Kroenke Sparks NFL Chaos
by r8rh8rmike
Rams owner Stan Kroenke's plan to move the team to L.A. raises eyebrows
Originally Published: March 18, 2015
By David Fleming | ESPN The Magazine
THE FIRST PIECE of property Stan Kroenke ever cared about sits abandoned now, perched on the edge of an endless swath of farmland, sinking into the thick coffee-colored soil of central Missouri. Some of the original charm of Enos Stanley Kroenke's quaint childhood home in Mora (population: 424) remains intact. The green front door still features an old-fashioned brass and porcelain doorbell crank. The intricate wood detailing under the roof eaves has survived. But after years of neglect by the current owners, who converted the old water well into a TV antenna, any gust of wind can scatter giant flakes of gray house paint across the overgrown landscaping. "It was a beautiful little farmhouse at one time," whispers a neighbor. "It's not now."
Kroenke, the multibillionaire real estate developer and owner of the St. Louis Rams, once recounted how he used to sit on the narrow front porch here and, as the summer sun set behind the corn, soak in the faint, scratchy radio broadcasts of the St. Louis Cardinals with his father and grandfather. Alvin Kroenke so loved the Cardinals that he named his eldest son after two of the team's homegrown Hall of Famers: the hardworking Enos "Country" Slaughter and the quiet, humble effortless hitter Stan "the Man" Musial.
Today, though, the family's once idyllic front porch is full of gaping holes in its weather-worn floorboards. And Missourians fear that Kroenke's relationship with his native state is falling into similar disrepair.
Since January, the reclusive Kroenke, 67, has been maneuvering his NFL team west, out of Missouri and into what would be the crown jewel of his massive real estate development and sports empire: a proposed 80,000-seat NFL stadium in Inglewood, California, with a space-age retractable roof, open-air sides and a U.S.-record $1.86 billion budget.
Five decades after he left Mora, Kroenke has amassed a net worth of $6.3 billion, according to Forbes, and through his array of vineyards, ranches and strip malls, many of them anchored by Wal-Mart, he has become the eighth-largest landowner in the United States. All the while, he has collected sports franchises like vintage cars. Besides the Rams, he owns the English Premier League team Arsenal, valued at $1.3 billion, the Denver Nuggets, the Colorado Avalanche, MLS's Colorado Rapids, the Colorado Mammoth of the National Lacrosse League and Denver's Pepsi Center, where he maintains a 12,000-square-foot penthouse apartment on the top two floors, complete with a theater, a gym and pristine views of the Rockies.
Most of these, however, would become secondary knickknacks if Kroenke is indeed the man who brings...
Rams owner Stan Kroenke won more than just L.A.
By Dan Wetzel
DENVER – Stan Kroenke owns three major professional sports franchises in the Denver area: the NBA Nuggets, the NHL Avalanche and the MLS Rapids, plus the Colorado Mammoth of the National Lacrosse League.
When he is here to tend to their business, which is often, he lives in a spacious penthouse jutting out of one side and on top of the Pepsi Center, the 18,000-seat downtown arena he also owns.
It's an incredible home, spacious and brilliantly decorated, with multiple outdoor spaces and views of both downtown and the Rocky Mountains in the distance. Once inside, it feels like a standalone home off in some gated community in the suburbs, not something that is an elevator ride from a raucous arena.
"Convenient commute," Kroenke said with a laugh to Yahoo Sports on Saturday night while watching his Nuggets defeat the Detroit Pistons.
It's every young sports fans' dream – can't we just live in the arena?
"Sports and real estate development is a large part of what we do," said Kroenke, who Forbes estimates is worth $7.7 billion.
Sports and real estate. Real estate and sports.
It's how Stan Kroenke, despite lacking the big personality or high-profile of a Jerry Jones or a Mark Cuban, has emerged as one of the world's preeminent professional sports owners and, with construction set to begin on a state-of-the-art, 100,000-capacity, clear-roofed stadium in a 300-acre development in Inglewood, Calif., undeniably one of the most powerful figures in sports in this country.
The franchises here in Colorado are big, his other two are bigger. There is the London-based Arsenal Football Club of the English Premier League and its home arena, Emirates Stadium, the third largest in England.
Then there are the Rams of the NFL, which after approval this month from the NFL will leave St. Louis and return to their Los Angeles roots and into what is expected to be the envy of any venue in the world. It was Kroenke, who after two-plus decades solved the NFL's L.A. riddle, something many billionaires, businessmen, entertainment moguls, governors, mayors and so on couldn't.
"The NFL had a problem out there, I was on the committee [looking at relocation possibilities] for years," Kroenke said. "We never got anything done. It's hard to get things done in California."
Hard, but, it turns out, not impossible.
Kroenke, 68, grew up in rural Missouri, where as a child he served as a bookkeeper to his father, a small business owner. He later attended the University of Missouri, where he also earned an MBA. He focused on real estate and operates a vast array of companies and interests, although he still carries himself with a calm, down-home style that belies his immense wealth. His preferred drink is a very cold Coors...
Kroenke Speaks Out, But Not About Lease
BY JIM THOMAS
PALM BEACH, FLA. • For openers, Stan Kroenke got his obligatory "no comment" out of the way with respect to the stadium lease situation in St. Louis.
"There's a process," he told the Post-Dispatch. "We continue to honor the process. And we have agreed with the parties involved that we won't do any public commenting on this."
For Kroenke's Rams, that process currently involves putting together the team's proposal for "first-tier" improvements at the Edward Jones Dome. That proposal must be sent to the Convention and Visitors Commission no later than May 1.
When asked how involved he was in the proposal process, Kroenke bristled slightly.
"I'm the owner of the team," he said. "Unless you haven't noticed, I've been involved 20 years. I've put a lot of my life, not just my personal (finances) at risk for this enterprise. And that might be something good to mention sometimes."
For Kroenke that was more a general reaction to the perception by some that he isn't totally involved in the Rams' franchise. That he doesn't attend league meetings.
As for anyone who makes the latter assertion, Kroenke replies, "I'd say that's someone who doesn't attend league meetings themselves, and doesn't know much about league meetings."
Kroenke also pointed out that he's a member of the NFL's broadcasting committee and its NFL Network committee. And to the chagrin of some nervous Rams fans, he has been a member of the league's Los Angeles Stadium working group as recently as 2011. (There is no mention of that group in the league's current listing of committees.)
Not the sentimental type, Kroenke does take pride in helping to bring football back to St. Louis in 1995, and to the eastern side of his home state. But that doesn't mean he won't drive a hard bargain in the lease negotiations.
From a Rams perspective, the "first-tier" requirements were agreed upon by the CVC and the St. Louis negotiating team before the team moved to the Midwest in 1995. From the Rams' standpoint, St. Louis got a "mulligan" in 2004, the first milepost date when the stadium was supposed to meet "first-tier" standards as one of the league's top eight facilities. Instead, about $30 million in stadium improvements took place a few years after the 10-season milepost in '04. It doesn't appear there will be any mulligans this time around.
When asked if he had any message for the fans of St. Louis, Kroenke replied: "Tell them we're working hard to have a quality product."
But will he still be saying that in, say 2025, about the "St. Louis" Rams?
"Hopefully, if we're still around...