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To: Robert Rose who wrote (120722)	3/17/2001 10:36:21 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Glenn, i know silicon valley isn't very representative of the rest of the country, but probably still worth noting..... even tho folks are getting laid off right and left around here, they're still getting hired right back, Rob, My area is not representative either in my opinion. Unemployment remain low due to the need of skilled tool and die workers. One firms lays off and another picks them up. More than 60% of the local population in my immediate area work in tool and die. We also are not representative of real estate costs. I enjoy it here but truly most people would prefer to live in areas more populated and with what most consider to be a better climate. One may buy a 3500 sq. ft. house made with nice materials, etc. for about $150K here and a 2500 sq. ft. house for about $95K. The shock for me was about five or six years ago. A super Wal-Mart located here and bought an old farm about one mile from the mall in which my store in Meadville is located. The land was bought by Wal-Mart in 1993 for $550 per acre. Wal-Mart typically leaves an out-parcel along side their store. They did in this case that had 200 feet of frontage on the main street and the balance faced the Wal-Mart store and parking lot. This parcel was 5.1 acrea out of the 100 acre farm Wal-Mart had bought. Wal-Mart had put a for sale sign on the out parcel with a number to call that is their real estate department. My lease here was up for renewal and negotiations with my landlord were not going the way I preferred. I thought I would look into buying this parcel, build a strip center with about 100,000 sq. feet and the parking lot would adjoin Wal-Marts. I could then locate my store there and lease the balance. To make this short, Wal_Mart was asking $5 million for this parcel but that amount was negotiable. Their argument was the buyer could tie their parking lot into Wal-Mart's and they had a number for the amount of cars that entered that lot yearly. Needless to say I had never expected the land to cost that much. That is likely the most expensive piece of property in this area by a long ways. Non farm land is about $1500 per acre that is closer to the city. I also found that Wal-Mart did this in every location. It is quite a nice trick to build a large store and not need to pay anything for it. The land cost Wal-Mart (all 100 acres) $550K. The building, parking lots, etc. cost Wal-Mart about $4 million. They did sell that parcel and they received $4.5 million for it from a much larger developer than I. Let's see build a Wal-Mart and the people will come. The peopl coming makes the adjacent parcel very valuable so they sell it and their store cost them nothing. These are very smart people.