Chapter 8 - GRETCHEN’S PRICE
Gretchen wanted the sale badly.
Why?
Not only the $3.6 million consulting fee.
She owned fifteen percent of Norwood Access Services, the private road and utilities company serving White Pine.
Alder Crest would enter a twenty-year infrastructure contract.
Expected value to her:
roughly $7 million over time depending on performance.
Leland owned ten percent.
Stellan indirectly held five percent through a family partnership.
Conflict.
Disclosed to Norwood company board.
Not fully disclosed to White Pine trustee.
The Hart preservation covenant complicated the deal too.
Alder Crest wanted:
Road widening.
Tree clearing.
Ski-lift easements.
Modification of an old stone lodge.
Removal of public-access trail protections.
Not necessarily evil.
Development.
Tradeoffs.
My mother’s documents apparently required independent review before those protections could be released.
Gretchen wanted them released quickly.
Why would I object?
She assumed I would because I was my mother’s daughter.
Maybe.
I had not seen the full documents yet.
That was the point.
Consent before information is not consent.
The independent board ordered a fresh environmental and heritage valuation.
Alder Crest agreed to wait forty-five days.
Again:
No real emergency.
Gretchen’s urgency was personal.
Then she sent me a letter through counsel.
Callista,
I made a terrible mistake with Bodie.
First sentence good.
I was under enormous pressure because the family has depended on this transaction for years.
Bad.
I believed discipline would stop a tantrum from destroying negotiations that affect hundreds of people.
Worse.
Bodie was five.
Not a negotiator.
I stopped reading.
Naomi continued.
Gretchen offered to withdraw from contact for two years and give up her consulting fee if I supported the land sale.
“No.”
“What if the independent review says the sale is good?”
“Then I might support the sale.”
Naomi smiled.
“Correct answer.”
I was not going to oppose a transaction simply because Gretchen wanted it.
Review first.
Then decision.
That difference infuriated her more than a guaranteed no.
Then Caleb found another transaction.
Three years earlier.
White Pine Trust sold a seven-acre parcel near the lake to Norwood Access Services.
Price:
$1.9 million.
Retrospective rough estimate:
$3.1–3.5 million.
Gretchen’s company bought cheap.
Related-party transaction.
Who approved?
Gretchen as family steward.
Leland.
Hawthorne relied on an appraisal.
Who commissioned appraisal?
Norwood family office.
Potential self-dealing.
May you like
That became the first truly serious financial issue.
And suddenly Gretchen’s fear of retrospective review made more sense than her consulting fee ever had.
