Land, capital and tenants are abundant. Power is a schedule. The county vote is the gate, and it is the one input a developer cannot buy.
One works between a developer and the county on that vote. Before a filing or a refiling, we sit with the neighbors, the people who organized against the last application, and the commissioners one at a time, and come back with a written set of commitments the county can enforce and an honest read on whether the site is worth bringing back. Led by a founder who has stood in front of a county commission with a rural rezoning of his own. Based outside Atlanta, on the ground wherever the site is.
The projects that fail do not fail on money or design. They fail on the order in which people learned about them. Officials hear first, under NDA. Neighbors hear last, from a handout at a packed meeting, and by then they have a Facebook group, a model ordinance from the last county, and four fears nobody has answered in writing: the power bill, the water, the noise, and what happens when it is done.
A public hearing is the worst room in the world for changing a mind. The work happens before it, in kitchens, fire halls and the development authority's office, and it produces something a commissioner can hold up on the night of the vote: a plan the neighbors helped write, with conditions the county can enforce.
A fixed scope with a written deliverable at the end. One engagement at a time, so the principal is the one in the room.
Structured, one-on-one conversations with the adjoining owners, the residents who spoke at the last hearing, the people who organized against it, and each commissioner individually. A written record of every conversation. We listen more than we talk, and we say plainly who is paying us.
Why the last application failed, or what this county would need to see before a first one. Who decides, who moves them, what they are afraid of, and what cover they need to say yes. A political screen with the same rigor as the grid study.
A commitments plan written from what people actually asked for: noise and water limits measured where they live, construction routes and hours, protection on rates, what happens if the site changes hands or shuts down, and benefits with an owner, a budget, a date and a way for residents to verify them. Drafted as zoning conditions and a recorded agreement that binds whoever buys the site.
A plain recommendation on whether and how to file or refile, including “not this site.” A public summary of what was heard goes to the county before anything is filed. If the answer is no, you hear it in month three, not on the night of the hearing.
Developers of powered land, mostly. Sometimes the county.
The six-month clock is running and the land is still under contract. The question is not whether to refile but what would have to be different, and whether the people who said no would say it again.
The parcel passes the physical screen. Nobody has modeled the political one. We score the county the way an engineer scores the substation, and tell you which gaps to close before disclosure and which sites to walk away from early.
A listening process residents can see, run by someone paid to report what was heard rather than to sell the project, with a public summary before the vote. The commissioners get a record. The developer gets a plan that holds.
A monthly retainer for ninety days, and a success fee per megawatt paid only at closing, and only if the approval in force includes the plan. For a first engagement we weight it toward the success fee. Third-party costs such as an acoustical baseline, a well survey or local counsel are proposed in writing with a cap and approved before they are incurred.
A one-person practice by design. You work with Bryce Galen, who has sat on both sides of the table.
A hundred acres before a county commission in Tennessee, arriving after the neighbors had already organized against it. Months of one-on-one conversations at Rotary lunches, cafés and churches, and a plan rewritten around what they said: buffers, access, a room for local events. A commissioner called it the best rural land-use proposal he had seen.
Real estate private equity at Fidelity Investments on a $1 billion value-add program, including a 300-acre district on the Potomac. He knows what a lender, a tenant and a buyer need to see in an approval before the land is worth dollars per megawatt instead of dollars per acre.
Two companies founded and run by asking what the customer actually wanted rather than what the industry assumed: banking without fees at Zero, acquired in 2021, and brokerage without a percentage commission at Landian. The same question, asked of neighbors and commissioners.
A 30-minute call. If we can help, we'll say how. If the site isn't worth bringing back, we'll say that too.
hello@talktoone.com →