Mom, are you listening? In the end your son is a doctor. Yes, a real doctor in a forward emergency room in the war, wearing a white coat and treating urgent international real estate cases even in the middle of the night.
Sunday is a day of rest in the international market, and I usually work in the office and enjoy the quiet. This week I chose to travel south to help farmers pick ripe tomatoes. While I was getting ready to set out, my phone rang and a call from “Unknown” appeared on the side - who calls at 05:59?!
Dark thoughts run through my head - that's how it is when you're the father of a young son in the army in wartime. I try to answer but I feel weakness in my legs and my hands are frozen.
Hello...
“Ilan, sorry for the hour, it's the developer. We finished the meeting with the city engineer late on Friday, so I'm only updating you now. The project was rejected by the city engineer; there's no approval for the plan despite all the promises and understandings. The mayor said that if we don't add green areas at twice the existing amount, we won't get a building permit. I sat with the Romanian architect, the project manager and the permitting architect until 23:30, and every drawing we tried to sketch led the project to economic non-viability. What do we do?”
We set a meeting at my office at 17:00, and I summoned my “hive” for Romanian matters - some would join by Zoom and some would come in person.
“Why 17:00? I want to submit a solution to the municipality tomorrow morning,” the developer asked.
Where are you? I asked.
Meet me at the Ashdod junction in 40 minutes and you and I will work on solutions as preparation for the 17:00 meeting. Does that work?
Yes, I'm getting ready to leave.
Come in shorts, a hat and work shoes.
Why?
Come. We're going to work on your project and help an old friend in parallel.
You've made me curious, see you soon.
We met and set out south, toward the areas at the heart of the war.
A lieutenant colonel and a major on the way south together to advance national and international projects.
We need to understand the implications: how many units drop as a result of the demand, what it means in terms of construction costs and expected revenues. After a few hours of tomato picking, discussions, going back to the drawing table and quite a few arguments, we shaped a solution, and also accumulated a stock of tomatoes.
I called the office and asked them to draw the solution and check the implications for presentation at our meeting in the afternoon.
A decision was made at the hive meeting at the office, and the appropriate instructions were given to the planning team and the project managers on the course that is desirable and preferable, from the developer's standpoint, for advancing the plan under the new constraints created by the authorities.
The updated paperwork was submitted to the municipality and this morning was approved to continue the process by the engineer and the mayor.
Every real estate developer knows the situation, but when you are initiating a project in a foreign country, with cultural gaps, insufficient familiarity with local regulation, language gaps and more... it intensifies the pressure and increases the difficulty.
A developer's resourcefulness is measured at this point: in his ability to be flexible, to change plans, and above all to rely on the accompanying team that will bring him to a safe harbor.
And at our home on Shabbat, the menu featured fresh tomato shakshuka for a hungry soldier who came home for Shabbat after 21 days in the war.
Stories are based on real situations, with identifying details changed. Not legal advice.
Translated from the Hebrew original. עברית