Boonville Project and Oil Spill

The two gentlemen who gave a guest lecture on Jan. 28, 2013 were Mike Gentry and Dr. Harrison came to class on January 28, 2013. Mr. Gentry is currently a lawyer, and the one overseeing the legal issues for Dr. Harrison, the owner of the land in what was formerly Boonville.


The land that Dr. Harrison owns was inherited through his family, who won it in an early 1900's poker game. Part of the land is being developed into a hotel, which had a somewhat small oil spill underneath that had to be totally cleaned up. That took quite a while and a decent investment in order to clean it completely and have it ready to be sold for development.


Something else that I found to be quite interesting was when Dr. Harrison spoke of the tax laws regarding his property. I wasn't aware that you were allowed to have "ranch land" classifications with minimal amounts of cattle, costing pennies on the dollar to what the real tax would be for developing land. I was also surprised that when converted back to a zoned area, you'd have to pay back taxes on the land for a number of years, amounting to huge sums of money in order to prepare it for sale.