But we got ’em down to $2.2 million, and RK Mellon funded it completely. The whole amount. Sent me a check, it came in the mail, just the regular mail. We get the mail. My secretary, my assistant comes to me and she says, there’s a check from RK Mellon. Read More
She said, there’s a check from RK Mellon for $2.2 million in your box. Read More
I mean, what do you mean there’s a check from RK Mellon?… Read More
So now how much do we pay for it?… Read More
So I really like negotiation. I think that’s fun. I think it’s fun to go back and forth, either arguing a point or discussing something. People who know me know I like to do that. And so negotiation was fun. So they originally wanted $3.2 million, and by the time… Read More
And so they have a whole branch to do that. So I’m like, whoa, okay. But RK Mellon is one of the foundations that was upset in 1975. So I haven’t cracked that nut yet. So I don’t have a relationship with them that’s real good yet. I’ve gotten little… Read More
We called their land preservation branch and we said, we’ve got this idea, we wanna build this breeding farm. We wanna conserve this land. We don’t wanna change the land, we just won’t put animals on it. Keep making hay, keep doing all the things that are going on out… Read More
Very few people get to present to the RK Mellon board, but they let me present to ’em. So I presented to them, and then they came out to the, what was then the conservation center. Wasn’t the conservation center, it was Glenn Savage Ranch at that point. They came… Read More
Who funds that?… Read More
Wow. Lo and behold, the foundation there in the city of Pittsburgh is the number one funder of land preservation in the whole nation. RK Mellon. They buy more property and preserve it than any other foundation in the country. And what they do, generally, is they buy land, and… Read More
So it finally came across the idea, well wait a minute, what about land preservation?… Read More
So I started Googling that. Read More
What if zoos became involved in land preservation, in conserving land, and having it not become developments and all that kind of stuff, and keeping it natural?… Read More
Who wants to buy a hunting ranch, and manage all the animals, and manage all the infrastructure, and all the stuff that went with it, hay fields, everything?… Read More
Basically a working farm. And so anyway, it sat on the market, we kept fundraising. Read More
Most of the time I worked on figuring out how to fund a zoo, but I had to figure out how to make this happen. And so it took me almost a year, but I figured it out, and in the meantime, the property’s on the market, and they have… Read More
So I spent nights and nights and nights on the computer, Googling any kind of foundation, anything I could think of that could possibly fund this, that wouldn’t normally fund the zoo, right?… Read More
And I’m like, well, don’t give up yet. let me work on it, let me work on it. I’m like, how am I gonna, A, I gotta sell the board we ought to do this. B, I’ve gotta sell somebody to fund it, ’cause we don’t have the money for… Read More
So the hunting was actually out there in blinds. You had a blind, and you sat in there and you did hunting. But they made it as natural as they could with what would be considered, quote unquote, “a canned hunt.” Because they let the animals go, and the animals… Read More
We are not gonna find a place that has that many. But okay, we got the list. So we went out and looked at the facility, and we drove in the driveway, and there’s this big lake on the left hand side and this big long driveway. And here’s this… Read More