Marlin ex-mayor: Delusional or grifting over old VA? Shouldn't you be worrying about old city finances?

More than two years ago, within six months after Sterling Real Estate Development bought the old Marlin Veterans Administration hospital building off the state of Texas, it became QUITE clear it was trying to "flip" the site. At first, seeing former Marlin mayor Elizabeth Nelson and former Marlin city attorney Denny Lessman involved with Sterling's shell sub-company officially owning the site, I thought maybe there was something real.

The Marlin VA hospital in its glory days, or near them. The
shuttered facility was purchased about three years ago
on a promise of being re-opened while being re-purposed
for other veterans-related needs, yet nothing has happened so far.
Photo by Waco Tribune/Rod Aydelotte

But, within weeks after that, I had a chance to sleuthe enough to prove otherwise.

Sadly, Nelson is either delusional or grifting. She still is PR-fronting for them over Sterling's latest whackadoodle idea.

Sterling wants to make the old facility, which I assume has been TOTALLY untended since it bought it off the state of Texas and then couldn't flip it, into a COVID treatment site.

Former city attorney Lessman, who long ago saw the light and stopped stanning for Sterling, says "no way."

And no, Sterling, I don't believe your claims of your original plans for the facility. Just not credible. AND, I don't recall you mentioning them at the time, either, you know? And, I know that because I wrote about this in depth more than two years ago. Per that link, the website the then-Sterling sub-company shell that owned the facility (it has a different name now) created to put out news, that website is no longer operable. Shock me.

And, Nelson? It's time for people in Marlin to ask you to be honest. How much is Sterling paying you, even if you make it easy by being delusional?

Also, sadly? Although he focuses on oil, Chronic biz columnist Chris Tomlinson — along with Chronic biz writers — have never picked up the Helltown hometown threads of Sterling.

As for Sterling's original plans to also buy the Falls Hotel? Maybe they could partner with the Chinese who were kicking the tires a while back.

Or ... maybe, rather than planning to flip the property? There's some sort of deliberate tax write-off here. Something along Trumpian lines. I never could find a website for the parent company and still can't today. Or, maybe it's even worse than a tax write-off. In that case, Nelson, paid or Pollyanna, is playing the sucker to something nefarious.

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Instead of flaking for Houston real estate developers, mayor, you should be worried what District & County Attorney Jody Gilliam finds in her city financial impropriety fishing expedition.

At the same time, it IS Jody Gilliam, and yes, given everything in the story, it IS a bit of overreach. Nonetheless, if the numbers, discovered in the city's audit, are even halfway true, when did $300K, or the full $600K, go missing and why? The voided checks and changed names on accounts are also scary.

Marlin, the Veterans Administration and P Bush with petards for Houston real estate flippers

About a month ago, I wrote a piece about a Houston real estate development and investment group buying the old VA hospital in Marlin a little over a year or so ago, and questions I have. Full story is here, with edited excerpts and follow-up following in this piece.

The Marlin VA hospital in its glory days, or near them. The
shuttered facility was purchased earlier this year
on a promise of being re-opened while being re-purposed
for other veterans-related needs, yet nothing has happened so far.
Photo by Waco Tribune/Rod Aydelotte

As I noted then, I wasn't aware that the state of Texas had finally sold this, let alone that it was being reopened.

Well, per various news stories, the idea that Marlin may be returning to an Eisenhower-era or earlier golden age (for white people, at least) seem to be fading more and more. Perhaps the most recent hope shouldn't have been so spit-polished in the first place.

Let's try a more honest reality. From my figurings and listenings, and lack of being talked to by some people, like the former mayor, Elizabeth Nelson, this reality check is needed for some.

Houston's Sterling Real Estate Development appears to have bought the place to flip it. (It also tried to buy the iconic — and deteriorating, but that's being arrested — Falls Hotel, the eighth original Hilton built by Conrad himself. It failed on that, and it was not the only interested would-be buyer.)

If former mayor Nelson truly is clueless about this being a likely planned flip, she needs to wake up and smell the coffee. If she is not, then my next suggestion would be to have the integrity to join Denny in resigning from the oversight committee for the building, at a minimum.

That again leads to my original questions, with some follow-ups in italics.
1. What price did the Texas General Land Office sell the building for? (This is a state agency; if nobody told you at the time, it's time for an Open Records Act request. But that's not for me.)
Was the price lowered under "false pretenses"? (Put in scare quotes for legal reasons.) This certainly seems possible. And, if so, did anybody in points 5 or 6 aid this in advance?

2. What was the asking price at the time? (That may not be on any record, but somebody may talk.)

3. Does the Falls County Appraisal District have an appraised value for the site, both now that it's private property, but also when the state owned it?
It's on the tax rolls now, whatever its value is. That means the flippers have to get flipping quick enough, even if they have a fairly large portfolio. Maybe they'll put up barbed wire, run 10 cows out, and claim an ag exemption. And, the appraisal district, especially after it's on the rolls for more than a full year, doesn't have to accept P Bush's sales price as its appraised value.

4. If there's a significant difference between 1 and 2, above all, and maybe 1 and 3, why?

5. If something pans out on 4, how much did either state Rep. Kyle Kacal or state Sen. Brian Birdwell facilitate this price drop?

6. Related to 5, if you get names of principals at SRED, have any of those names made some campaign contributions? Had any lobbying-type visits to state House or Senate committees on which one or the other of those two gentlemen serve? FYI, Birdwell served this past Lege as chair of the Select Committee on State Real Property Data Collection; I'm sure this committee has interactions with the GLO. Sounds like a place to start right there. He was also on the Senate's State Affairs Committee.
This is for somebody else to ask, too. Given that the Waco Trib only really covers schools news in Marlin, and the teevee folks don't do investigative journalism out here to any great degree, it probably won't happen.
I still wish somebody from the Houston Chronicle picks up a thread on this due to the Houston-based nature of SRED. But, that's not going to happen, either.

The local paper in Marlin? Sorry. That's all I can say now on that angle.

And, no, I'm not being cynical. I'm just being properly skeptical on all of this.

People in Marlin have been critical of Chris Martinez for not doing more with the hotel. But maybe the reason the deal with the developer fell through is that he did more due diligence or exercised more scrutiny. And that may be not just with the Houston flippers, but with other offers he received.

And, now, it's reality check time.

For the Houston flippers? You're in a county that's still one of the poorest counties in Texas outside the lower Valley. Good luck with the flipping, because you're going to need lots of it. Marlin already has a hospital. The VA has been consolidated in Waco and Temple for more than a decade now. Marlin already has public prison units; a private prison is going nowhere. The state's juvenile prison system is a clusterfuck; it needs large-scale communal type facilities near larger cities, but it's nowhere near getting ready to do that.

Marlin as the home of a possible real estate frenzy sounds kind of funny. The home of a possible real estate bubble that collapses soon enough sounds, per Marx, like farce first, tragedy second. These people deserve better from anybody who has ideas of a real estate frenzy, whether the bidders are coming from Houston or possibly elsewhere on I-10.

Is latest hope for Marlin, Texas, fading again? With #txlege related pondering

The Marlin VA hospital in its glory days, or near them. The shuttered facility
was purchased earlier this year on a promise of being re-opened while being
re-purposed for other veterans-related needs, yet nothing has happened so far.
Photo by Waco Tribune/Rod Aydelotte

I had heard a few weeks ago that the old Veterans Administration hospital in Marlin, shuttered for a decade or so, was being reopened.

I wasn't aware that the state of Texas had finally sold this, let alone that it was being reopened.

Well, per various news stories, the idea that Marlin may be returning to an Eisenhower-era or earlier golden age (for white people, at least) seem to be fading more and more. Perhaps the most recent hope shouldn't have been so spit-polished in the first place.

The dream seemed to have hit high tide 18 months or so ago, when Houston's Sterling Real Estate Development made noises about buying both the old VA hospital AND the iconic Falls Hotel (No. 8 Hilton Hotel by date of opening) with the idea of redeveloping the old mineral waters and baths.

Well, it eventually opted to buy just the VA. But its plans to open a portion of that — 30 beds — itself remains behind schedule and drawing more scrutiny.

When former Marlin mayor Elizabeth Nelson, who will gold-plate as well as spit-polish about anything she can in trying to find a positive attitude, and is on a Marlin board representing Sterling's plans, starts making noise in public, you know something isn't right. Or certainly seems that way.

According to SRED subsidiary Operation ReLaunch, a vehicle created just for this, at least part of the VA was already supposed to be reopened months ago. And, that's ALL that's on the website. The website is set up for more, but that's ALL it has.

A Houston newspaper friend didn't have any additional details to report.

And, searching for "Sterling Real Estate Development" only returns one page of Google hits, and they're not all for that company, even. Also, none of the listings on that one page of hits is a company website for the parent company, vs. that single Operation ReLaunch page. Somebody's flying under the radar, and it looks like the state of Texas was so tired of a white elephant that it got rid of it, no matter what.

I find it more interesting yet that NONE of the news stories I have read mention ANY "principals" in SRED. Not a person from the company is quoted by name, or even indirectly quoted by name, in a single story. Nor is any reference made to why the state, along with state Rep. Kyle Kacal and state Sen. Brian Birdwell, made the decision to sell to this particular entity.

And that's not all on the news coverage or lack of.

Looking at both the Waco Trib and KWTX-TV, which has been the main teevee outlet on the situation, besides no names and no coments from SRED folks, we're missing the following:
1. What price did the Texas General Land Office sell the building for? (This is a state agency; if nobody told you at the time, it's time for an Open Records Act request.)
2. What was the asking price at the time? (That may not be on any record, but somebody may talk.)
3. Does the Falls County Appraisal District have an appraised value for the site, both now that it's private property, but also when the state owned it?
4. If there's a significant difference between 1 and 2, above all, and maybe 1 and 3, why?
5. If something pans out on 4, how much did either state Rep. Kyle Kacal or state Sen. Brian Birdwell facilitate this price drop?
6. Related to 5, if you get names of principals at SRED, have any of those names made some campaign contributions? Had any lobbying-type visits to state House or Senate committees on which one or the other of those two gentlemen serve? FYI, Birdwell served this past Lege as chair of the Select Committee on State Real Property Data Collection; I'm sure this committee has interactions with the GLO. Sounds like a place to start right there. He was also on the Senate's State Affairs Committee.

Ditto on these talking points if anybody from the Houston Chronicle picks up a thread on this due to the Houston-based nature of SRED.

The local paper in Marlin? It's behind a paywall, but since it hasn't even had a full-time, on-site editor for several months, probably has nothing on this.

And, no, I'm not being cynical. I'm just being properly skeptical on all of this.

People in Marlin have been critical of Chris Martinez for not doing more with the hotel. But maybe the reason the deal with the developer fell through is that he did more due diligence or exercised more scrutiny.

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I've contacted folks from both the non-Marlin papers, and the TV station, mentioned above. We'll see what, if anything, results.

Is Big Pharma dumping drugs on Iraq vets?

Yes, it’s the Washington Times,, but it’s still a real story. The Veterans Administration, throwing $30 incentive fees at veterans that are probably still waiting to get disability ratings, is testing about everything in the pharmacological kitchen sink as a possible PTSD treatment.

Distinguished ethicist Arthur Caplan gives the VA an “F” grade for this:

“When you’re taking advantage of a very vulnerable population, people who have served the country, and the agency that's responsible for their welfare isn’t putting their welfare first, that's a pretty serious breach of ethics.”

Given the combo of Chantix’s black-box warnings, including about it possibly increasing suicidal ideation, and some of the possible symptoms of PTSD, including possible suicidal ideation, it should have been a no-brainer to not use it.

A total of 21 vets out of 143 in the Chantix program reported some side effects.

And who makes Chantix? Pfizer.

That said, both the WaTimes and ABC fall short on their reporting. What all else is being used besides Chantix? Let’s start asking the VA more questions.

Questions such as:
1. What other drugs are being used in PTSD studies?
2. Had they been studied before for possible help in combating PTSD?
3. WHY was each of these particular drugs chosen, especially if not previously PTSD-tested?
4. What Big Pharma gifts have each of the particular doctors involved with the tests received?
5. What papers have they written on PTSD, and have they recommended particular drugs in those papers?

And, albeit while reserving the right to change his mind, Kevin Drum kind of gives the story short shrift.