Mirobo Breaks Gound at the Villages at Norris Lake

On May 15th, 2009 about 100 people attended the Ground Breaking Ceremony for The Villages at Norris Lake. This was a proud moment for the everyone who has worked so hard to make the recovery at VNL possible.

There is no doubt that Mirobo is the Partner that we owners had hoped to find in the midst of the real estate and financial problems facing the US economy. Since Mirobo acquired the assets of Land Resource they have done more in two months than LRC did in the last two years. Since their March 7 VNL Owners Meeting, they have successfully concluded a settlement with Bond Safeguard and re-bonded the infrastructure for Campbell County, addressed the needs of over 70 Phase 2 owners, sold over $800K in properties, opened a sales office with Tom Sturm's TN Home Finders in LaFollette, filed for a permit for the Marina and moved more dirt through the Spath Brothers than you could possibly believe.

Mr. Spath hunted me down at the ceremony to give VNL owners his personal assurance that the infrastructure had problems with prior work but that he was going to make sure that when it was finished in 2009, it would be perfect. I admire and respect a man that will look you in the eye, shake your hand and make a promise like that.

Rob Williams - Mirobo Partner - has submitted for the permit for the first 250 slip phase of the marina. This phase is pretty much automatic based on the prior existence of the old Rainbow Marina permit. Filing for a marina permit is a multi-step process that weaves its way through a number of approval levels at TVA to ensure that everything is in order. You may not be aware that the recent fly ash spill at Harriman, TN has bogged the TVA down with additional workload and they have had to move legal resources toward a resolution of that problem. That simply means that they could possibly take longer to do ongoing business such as approval of permits. The good news is that as a government entity, they take the opinions of their customers seriously. I may come back to you shortly for a bit of letter writing or email support to help make sure the TVA is aware that over 330 owners at VNL are ready to have a marina ASAP. More on that later.

I retired after spending 30 years in project and program management with a Fortune 100 corporation. I managed multi-million/billion dollar projects and I have never seen the kind of enthusiasm that Mirobo has shown on this project.

Last, I want to thank Jim Bell who built the first home at VNL. He took many of us through a tour of his home and you would not believe how great it looks. I will include more pictures in the next update.

Thanks,
Pat Perry
VNL CA Secretary