Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories

ARE THERE ANY QUESTIONS?

Welcome.

I’m glad to see you all looking so alert, so eager, so prosperous this morning. I promise you that at the end of our little talk and tour, you’ll be even more eager, and potentially more prosperous, because you didn’t come here to be entertained. You came here to get in on the ground floor, and “ground” is a good word for it, of the most unique investment opportunity since the opening of the American West.

So let’s get down to the nitty-gritty, as my grandad used to say. We’re here to talk about something people don’t usually like to talk about. Even though there’s plenty of it around. Last year, in 1999, the average family in the New York metropolitan area produced 157.4 pounds of it in a week. This comes to 645,527 cubic yards of it a day, or—uncompacted—an Empire State Building every 16.4 days or a truckload every six and a half minutes.

What in the world is he talking about? Well, we all know, don’t we? You there, madam, on the second row. I can see your lips forming the very word itself.

But you’re wrong.

I’m not talking about garbage. Not anymore. I’m talking about real estate. I’m talking about land.

“Land,” my granddad used to say, “is the only surefire investment there is, because God’s not making any more of it.”

He was right about it being a surefire investment. But he was wrong about why. Because even though God’s not making any more of it, we at Eden-Prudential are. But I don’t have to tell you folks that. That’s why you’re here.

I see some of you are getting your calculators out. Good. Let’s look at those numbers again. 11,987,058 cubic meters of solid waste, and that’s what we can collect, process, transport, and place in a month, can, in the right hands, translate to a quarter acre of beautiful mountain view property, or sixteen feet of ocean front. Notice I say “in the right hands.” That’s where Eden-Prudential comes in. Even as you and I speak, EP’s trucks are running and EP’s barges are under sail. We have four fleets of 138 trucks apiece—all independent contractors, by the way; real mom ‘n’ pop types—operating from our catchment and processing center on Staten Island. Every eighteen minutes sees five trucks dispatched, three to south Jersey, and two to Montauk; all working around the clock to make America not only more prosperous than ever, but a little bit bigger. And more valuable.

But enough poetry. Let’s talk opportunity. What area produces the most solid waste in the world, per square mile of already existing land? The New York metropolitan area. And what area contains the world’s most valuable real estate? Or to put it another way: is there any other place in the world where land is in such short supply and where people are so willing—not to mention able—to pay for it?

Again, you just can’t beat the New York area.

A surplus of garbage. A shortage of land. Put those two facts together in the right equation, and you come up with what we at EP call IP, or Investment Potential. But it was only potential, and potential only, until the invention of the Eden Land Developer, the solid-waste transformer that turns ordinary garbage of any kind, shape, or origin, into quality, consistent, durable real estate.

If you will be kind enough to take one of the foil-wrapped souvenir samples Miss Crumb is passing around the room… Go ahead, open it. It’s going to make you rich. Don’t be afraid of getting your hands dirty because you won’t.

Does it look like dirt? Not with that attractive gold color, it doesn’t. It’s Eden Earth. Go ahead, sniff it. Taste it if you want to. My great-great-granddad was a farmer, God rest his soul, out in Iowa, I think it was, and he never judged a piece of land without putting a piece of it on his tongue.

No takers. Well, I understand.

You can take my word for it: what you hold in your hand is a piece of solid waste that has been not only recycled but reconstituted, not to mention eye- and odor-enhanced, to make an earth that is the equal to, and in many ways actually superior to, the earth that the Earth itself is made of.

Do I see eyebrows lifting?

Well, try to crumble it. This cookie doesn’t crumble. Dunk it—it’s water-resistant and therefore it doesn’t turn into mud. You’ll notice it doesn’t soil your hands or stain your shirt. Its epoxy polymer additives mean that smells and stains are locked in, and that once we put it in place it stays there—it doesn’t dry up and blow away like the Great Plains in the dust bowl, or wash away like the beaches of Long Island in a hurricane. Eden Earth is real estate, in the true, biblical meaning of the word, not ephemeral dirt and dust that is dependent on every caprice of Nature.

But people who know Real Estate—and I can see that you are all professionals in the field—know that the value of land depends on its location. We at Eden-Prudential not only collect and process Eden Earth by the tons every day; we truck and barge it to the areas where people want to be. The locations people are most hungry for and most willing to pay big money for. We’re creating the kind of real estate that is in short supply and high demand.

A home in the mountains. A home by the sea.

Eden-Prudential is making America grow, with two areas currently under development. In the no-longer-barren Pine Barrens of south Jersey, our environmental designers are right now putting the finishing touches on an attractive range of small mountains called the Crestfills. Miss Crumb, could we have the first video please? The magnificent peak in the background is Eden Peak. It soars to an elevation of 2,670 feet, almost a thousand feet higher than any other mountain in New Jersey, and over half again the height of Fresh Kills Peak on Staten Island.

Eden Peak’s lovely summit is a nature preserve. If you want to see the breathtaking view from the top, as we’re seeing it here on video, you’ll have to park your 4X4 and walk up one of our beautiful nature trails—the first trails I might add that were planned and built along with a mountain, not added as an afterthought.

Of more interest to yourselves, as brokers and developers, are the winding drives along the crest of Atlantic City Ridge, so named because it overlooks the lights of that great capital of chance only forty-five minutes away by car.

The three planned neighborhoods here—Eaglefill Estates, Hawkfill Glade, and Baronfill Manor—will be open to the public in October, and sold through selected brokers only. Our hope is that you will be among them.

The foundation for another quality ridge is even now being laid to the west, nearer to Philadelphia.

There will be those who will want to live in the Crestfills year-round, but for most these will be vacation homes, hideaways for busy executives who want to lay aside the world’s cares and communicate with nature. And here in the Crestfill Mountains, nature is at its best. Your clients will hear birds singing winter and summer. They are drawn to the Crestfills not only by the pleasant pine scent, renewed monthly, but by the fact that the mountainsides are warmed several degrees by the gentle internal action of Eden Earth as it ages, making the Crestfills a unique and precious winter wildlife sanctuary.

These pine-covered slopes, with their cunningly spaced “rocky” outcrops—there’s one right now—were created by a team of environmental designers who spared no expense, even dropping fill from container-copters to create those hard-to-reach spots that give wilderness areas their special appeal. Free-range deer and even an occasional bear roam the rugged slopes. There’s a deer now. Put it on “pause,” Miss Crumb, and let’s have another look. How many here are old enough to remember the original Bambi? How many took their children to see it? Their grandchildren?

Me too.

But suppose your clients and prospective buyers dream of a home by the sea? What if Fire Island, Cape Cod, Nantucket are the kind of names that fire their souls and loosen their checkbooks?

How does Bayfill Island sound to you?

If we may, Miss Crumb, let’s cut away to our second video, and another type of paradise—a rocky, fogbound New England-style island of the kind featured in so many romantic movies. How many of you have dreamed of the opportunity to buy and sell summer homes on one of these exclusive sites? Well, hang on—your dreams are about to come true.

Bayfill Island lies at the opening of Long Island Sound, between Montauk and one of the older glacial debris islands, Block Island. It is by comparing Bayfill with the rather rundown—geologically speaking—islands in the area, that we can best understand why we say Eden Earth puts standard earth to shame. Large areas of Nantucket Island are carved away by the ocean waves every winter—valuable real estate becoming silt and sand in the ocean deeps. Not so on Bayfill Island. Since Eden Earth is both salt- and water-resistant, it stands firm against the weather. Large areas of Martha’s Vineyard are swamps and marshes, filled with vicious insects. In contrast, there are no wastelands on Bayfill Island, where all the land is dry land and rain runs off as clear and clean as when it fell. Large areas of Block Island are out of sight and sound of the ocean, drastically lowering property values. On ingeniously S-shaped Bayfill Island, every property is ocean-front property; there are no “cheap seats” in the house.

But enough poetry. It’s time to go and see for ourselves. Miss Crumb has just signaled me that Eden-Prudential’s chartered airbus has arrived to take us on our tour of the two sites. We only have to walk a block to board. As you leave the office here, we’ll be crossing the East Thirty-fourth Street Extension. Watch your step; the ground is still a little springy.

Are there any questions?