In 2016, my commercial investment properties on Main Street in Ellicott City were utterly destroyed by “a flood.” There is much debate over what caused this “flood.” Exceptional circumstances around events on my particular block had me in a legal battle with an insurance company. I may have been the only property owner that did…

There is a happy ending to this story. I’m sure. I just don’t yet have it to share. Almost 30 years ago, I fell in love with a charming and historic out-of-the-ordinary town called Ellicott City, Maryland. I bought my first home about 7 minutes outside the old city where I ran my graphic design…

When I began the permit process, a man at the permit office introduced himself as Adolphe Huriaux. When he pronounced his name, it was with a thick French accent. He insisted that he was my point of contact from that moment forward. He described a set of elaborate plans, not the sketch I had from…

This was not an easy construction project. After about 15 years of not seeing or speaking with a former real estate developer client, I showed up at his office unannounced the day after meeting the nearly 100-year-old structural engineer who said I needed to reframe the building with steel I-beams.  As he walked through the…

Note from the author: this excerpt was removed entirely from this blog. We have beefed up security and updated this blog to remove the repetitive and edited content on January 1, 2023, to be sure that all original content is restored to its original publishing. When I settled on my first building, in the interest…

A couple years after the first building renovation, my company had grown so much that I found myself walking up and down Main Street looking for a second building. Call me a glutton for punishment. I looked at a few places. None worked. I consulted with the old client, the real estate developer who had…