From: Jeanne Marcus 
Sent: Saturday, July 17, 1999 11:17 PM
Subject: To Seekers: Loss of 1101 Pa.

To: Seekers Community
From: Contract negotiating team
Subject: Final report on 1101 Pennsylvania Ave.
July 17, 1999

     After talking with interested Seekers after last Sunday's service,
and with the core membership during their meeting last Sunday evening,
the contract negotiating team prepared a new offer to the owners of 1101
Pennsylvania Ave., SE.  The revised offer incorporated all the changes
discussed on Sunday, including:
    -an increased offering price of  $780,000;
    -a shortened study period of 45 days;
    -a streamlined listing of contingencies; and
    -a provision stating that if for any reason Seekers did not continue
to a final purchase of the property, we would forfeit $10,000 of the
$25,000 we had put down as a deposit on the property.
    After receiving Seekers' revised offer, the owner called our agent,
Kitty, on Wednesday, with a couple of new questions concerning our
offer.  His two questions were: Was it likely that Seekers could obtain
a parking waiver within the new 45-day period?  And, having heard
repeated rumors that Seekers intended to start a soup-kitchen at the
1101 property, could Seekers offer assurances that this was not the
case?
    The contract negotiating team believed that the owner's coming back
to us with these questions was a very encouraging sign of his interest
in selling to Seekers, and addressed itself to getting documentation
that would satisfactorily answer his questions. We asked for and
received a document from an attorney who has been assisting us that we
could indeed anticipate receiving a parking waiver within the 45 day
period.  And we drafted a letter to the owner that attested that we had
no current intent to establish a soup kitchen, and that explained more
about ourselves, our understanding of ourselves as church, and the kind
of outreach we are involved in.  These documents were forwarded to the
owner on Thurday.
    On Friday, Kitty called to inform us that the owner had made a final
determination to accept the competing offer from the hardware store as
the primary contract on 1101.  His final reasoning was based on a new
rumor in the community that a church at 1101 would negatively impact
parking in the neighborhood, and that community activists would attempt
to interfere with our receiving a parking waiver.  While all agree that
this kind of interference should not and probably would not interfere
with Seekers' getting the waiver, the owner did not want to risk any
further delays to his sale of the property, and so took the offer that
seemed most likely to proceed without problems. Kitty reported that all
partners to 1101 had signed the contract with the hardware store, so
that as soon as a copy was received by the hardware store, that contract
was finalized.
    Coming after such a hope-raising earlier response by 1101's owners,
the final rejection of our offer on 1101 comes as a major
disappointment. In the next couple of weeks, there'll be  a time where
all of us can do some post-mortem analysis. But at this point, it seems
that we might finally have been defeated by the rumor that we were a
church with a social conscience.
    We believe that there are important positives that have come out of
this process, and that will serve us well as we proceed with our search
for the space where we're supposed to be.  First, Seekers' responses at
each stage of this negotiation were timely and responsive to the
situations that arose: our efforts at streamlining our timelines for
response seemed to be paying off.  Second, the community meeting
identified new energy, especially around our sense of developing
call/mission in a new home; it also identified dozens of Seekers who
were willing to take a role in moving us to a new space.  Third, 1101
provided the impetus for us to get more deeply engaged in the
stewardship issues that the prospect of funding the new building
surfaced.   We believe that each of these have already added to the
liveliness of our church.  We'll carry these positives into the
continuing search.

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