The Bellingham Herald reports today that scumbag developer/clearcutter David Syre has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. (Well, the Herald called him a 'developer:' 'scumbag' and 'clearcutter' are my words.)
Normally, such news would be greeted in northwest Washington State with a minimum of schadenfreude, if not outright glee.
Having fought this asshole in the 1990s, I read the headline announcing the Chapter 11 filing and wanted to dance. Then I read the details and wanted to scream.
David Syre is undoubtably the most 'successful' and most hated businessman ever to hail from Whatcom County.
He got his start as just another condo builder, but had his first major triumph when he found a legal maneuver that allowed him to turn a State tree nursery into the Bellis Fair Mall, and then selling it before it was even built. The 'Trillium' empire, as he called his corporation, was in ascendance.
Syre then proceeded to turn his attention to the forest lands of Whatcom and Skagit Counties, buying up big old trees on marginal timber lands, and selling the logging rights to Chinese companies such as Citifor and Interfor. A beautiful ploy, that allowed him to pocket the cash up-front, while at the same time pretending that HE wasn't responsible for destroying our natural heritage.
Before long, he had become the owner of large holdings throughout the west, including old Burlington Northern properties across many states, as well as chunks of downtown Denver.
Along the way, he built a resort on the sacred lands of Semiahmoo, bought mineral rights to seemingly half the county, and was the largest single personal landowner in a multi-county area.
At the height of his empire, he bought a huge chunk of the southern tip of South America - hundreds of thousands of acres in Chile and Argentina both - with a dream of turning these old growth Lenga forests into a "sustainable tree farm."
And that was indeed the peak of his empire. By 2002, it was starting to unravel, and a very unlikely hero - Goldman Sachs, deserves at least a hat tip in this matter:
The story of what is now known as the Karukinka nature reserve dates back to the 1990s when Trillium bought land on Tierra del Fuego - a cluster of inhospitable islands between Chile and Argentina - clinging to the southernmost tip of South America.
The company planned to use the land for logging and wanted to cut down the lenga - a type of beech tree found only in this part of the world.
Environmental groups opposed the project and it eventually failed.
That was when Goldman Sachs stepped in, buying up Trillium's assets, including the land.
"It's not often that you're in a position where you buy a security and learn that you have 680,000 acres of land in Tierra del Fuego," says Tracy Wolstencroft, head of Goldman Sachs' Environmental Markets group. http://news.bbc.co.uk/...
(Personal Cudo: I"m happy to say I did my little part in helping the project to fail. Working with Project Lighthawk and a local Audubon chapter, we did some overflights of our logged out landscape, took some pictures, and shared them with the Chileans, who used them to help expose the lie of 'sustainable forestry.')
So yes, we have been very happy to watch Trillium's empire unravel. In recent years, the corporation has had to sell off many of its assets, has had others foreclosed upon, and yet others re-possessed.
And so that is why I wanted to dance when I first read the headline.
But this is why I want to scream:
The filing is meant to give Syre financial breathing room as he faces an $11 million lawsuit from Polygon Financial 05 LLC.
In Syre’s case, filed Thursday, Dec. 8 in Seattle, Syre lists debts of about $70 million and assets of $170 million. Among his listed assets are:
- sole ownership of Trillium Corp., valued at $83.6 million;
- sole ownership in two Washington state sawmills, valued at $73.1 million;
- A $1.5 million certificate of deposit in American West Bank, Spokane;
- Rare maps valued at more than $600,000.
Read more: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/...
This man, David Syre, has $100,000,000 in NET assets. One Hundred Million Dollars in Net Personal assets. And he is filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.
I'd really love to hope that the court denies the filing, laughs in his face, and tells him to have a bake sale in order to pay off his debts, but I guess that probably won't happen.
'Bankrupt', with a personal net worth of $100,000,000. This is just so wrong. I may puke instead of screaming. I may in fact do both.
5:26 PM PT: Ugh. David Srye and I on the rec list together. We only met once, over the Tierra del Fuego situation. In his boardroom. He walked out of the room when he realized I was one of those who had previously fought him locally. Even small victories come sweet, sometimes.