Kathrine Alderman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
The Monticello Jefferson County Chamber of Commerce held its monthly Chamber Luncheon on Tuesday, April 6. The luncheon was catered by Rancho Grande, and many chamber members attended to hear the speaker, Scott McPherson, talk. So many members attended, in fact, that the meeting had to be moved from the Chamber office to the First Baptist Church.
After everyone had gotten their food and settled in, the luncheon began with a brief speech by the spotlight speakers: Joe and Lauren Burtoft, new owners of the Monticello Health and Fitness Center. The couple took the stand and told the gathered members a bit about what they've done and plan to do at the Monticello Health and Fitness Center. Joe, Laura and Joe's brother, Jim, have owned many gyms before, Joe having owned over 200 health clubs, so they are no strangers to this business.
Some of the changes they are implementing are bringing in new equipment, bringing in more equipment, renovating the building and having it open 24/7. They will also be offering small classes, personal training and nutrition counseling.
Generally, when they buy new clubs, Joe says they shut them down for about 30 days to renovate. However, as this is a small town and they didn't want to disrupt anything, they kept it open for regular hours while they renovated. They're pretty much done with the renovations now, only needing an entrance door at the time of the luncheon. So, they are currently moving to be open 24/7.
Along with the gym, they also opened another business called Three Cords Wholesale. They sell things such as furniture, tools, appliances, etc. and then donate 10% of all their profits to a charity, generally a Christian charity, which they select every month. So if you know of a charity you think would be good, let them know, as they were still looking for a charity for April at the time of the luncheon.
After the Burtoft's were finished speaking, Chamber President Sean Vickers came up and introduced the main speaker for the evening, Scott McPherson. McPherson is an investor, developer, entrepreneur and restorer who has purchased a few buildings downtown and other areas of Jefferson County. He came to the meeting to talk a little bit about himself and his plans for the properties he's bought.
McPherson took the podium and first told the gathered crowd a bit about himself and what brought him to Monticello. McPherson originally grew up in St. Petersburg, Fla., and has spent the last 20 years in the residential property management business. His wife has done it for 30 years, and they own a successful business in St. Petersburg. "We rent homes," McPherson said. "That's what we do by trade." But about 12 years ago, they decided to finance their business model, and they now have offices throughout the United States.
Eventually, they started looking for a place to settle down, take it easy and figure out where they would spend the next half of their lives. That's when they came across Monticello. About five years ago, McPherson and his family were on a tour of the Southeastern United States visiting different small towns. As they came down U.S. 19 kind of by accident, they happened upon Monticello, stopped, ate lunch at the Brick House, McPherson admired the downtown streets and then they headed to Tallahassee to find a place to stay. "On the way there, we passed all the crepe myrtles in bloom," McPherson recalled. "It was absolutely beautiful. And my wife looked at me and said, 'what's wrong with this place?' So, that started the quest."
As the McPhersons began to find a place in Monticello, they met Steve Walker and then found a small farm just outside of town. When they first came here, that was all they really wanted to do. They wanted to find a small farm where they could live and keep their horses as his wife raises them and his daughter's competitively ride. So they were just looking for a place to build a barn and let his wife raise her horses.
That was the backstory for them. Once the McPhersons found a place here, they started buying some rental properties and slowly moving their investments from the south up to the north. "Throughout that process," McPherson said, "Steve Walker kept saying to me, 'you know if someone would just build a house in Crooked Creek, I could sell it.'" This led McPherson to ask what Crooked Creek was, and they drove out there to look at it. McPherson was skeptical, as there were a lot of lots. Nevertheless, they thought about it for about two years. McPherson said he'd come through town, Walker would update him and, eventually, McPherson decided it was time to do something with it. "I told him I didn't know how it was going to work out," McPherson recalled. "We always need to have a contingency plan. So we're going to start out with small homes. Minimum square footage we can build in Crooked Creek. We'll build two of them, and if we can't sell them, I'll rent them. Nothing lost. Nothing ventured, nothing gained." This decision was made in 2018, and McPherson went to work figuring out the costs based on how much Walker said he could sell it for. They ended up having to change the price some, but they built the first two homes in 2019 and sold them. The final profits weren't enough to really satisfy McPherson for the time he spent away from home to do the project, so something would have to change before they continued.
However, before getting into all of that, it was essential to the McPherson’s that they loved Monticello. "How can we help it, keep the nostalgia, help it progress a little bit, finish this subdivision and not change the dynamics of the town," McPherson said. "Because that's why we were coming here." The first thing McPherson decided was that they had to use local people. He wanted to use local people to build these houses so that they could put the money back into the local economy. During his speech, McPherson had anyone in the audience who had helped work on the houses or buildings he's bought downtown stand up, and many members in the crowd stood to some applause. "In 2020, we did about 85 percent of the work with local people," McPherson shared. They did have to outsource some things, but he did his best to make sure most everything he could do locally, he did. So, in 2020, they put just shy of $2.9 million into the local economy. This year, McPherson ventured to say, conservatively, that they'll bring close to 7 to 8 million, though he didn't want to say for sure, that was his guess.
They only have three lots left to sell in Crooked Creek, and then it will be built out and completed. However, Crooked Creek isn't McPherson's only project. He's also come to own a few buildings downtown, which he has made plans for as well. Originally, McPherson's wife wanted him to have a shop where he could sell some of his woodworking creations, as that is a hobby of his. On their quest to find a shop, Walker brought McPherson an opportunity to buy more than one. So, McPherson ended up buying all the properties downtown that had belonged to the Jackson family. "So we took that project on," McPherson explained, "really before I was ready to do anything." The buildings are quite an undertaking, as they date back to the 1900s, maybe older.
As they go about repairing these old buildings, McPherson wants to maintain and preserve as much as he can. He keeps anything he has to remove for the sake of stability in case he can do something with it, such as the hand-hewn, pine nails in one of the buildings. "It's important to me to maintain what's there and preserve what we change," McPherson explained.
So far, they've replaced the roofs of all the buildings they have downtown. Their next step is to get the outside of the buildings looking nice and painted at least by the Watermelon Festival. They had a walking tour with the Historical Society on April 19 that will be published. McPherson hopes they'll be happy with the progress and that they'll give him the go-ahead on new windows, which will take care of the worst of it, making a huge impact.
After fixing up the buildings, what does McPherson plan to do with them? Well, the top floors of the buildings on Dogwood Street, he's already started renovating into apartments. For those apartments, he's building two bedroom two bath apartments with washers and dryers. The buildings on Jefferson Street, he plans to turn the upstairs into loft-style apartments.
As for the downstairs, they plan to renovate them to a point where they can bring new businesses to town and have people that are in town be part of starting new businesses in a refreshed way. "If you keep doing the things you've always done," McPherson said, "you're going to get the same results you always have." So McPherson's goal is to make sure everything is fixed up and ready to go before he lets anyone into the spaces.
There are a few other buildings they own as well that they hope to maybe do other things with, but it's still in the works, such as possibly turning one into a restaurant and turn the other into a new shop that someone can rent.
So, that's McPherson's vision, keep it local, inject money into the local economy, keep the town's nostalgia and fix up what we have. "We have a beautiful town here," McPherson said. "There is so much that can be done. I'm not a developer. If anyone has heard rumors that I'm a developer going through cow fields putting up houses. That's not what I do, it's not even the way I think. It's not the way I see." McPherson's primary goal is to help Monticello grow and thrive while keeping the feeling of the town and what's important to those who live in it.
The projects he's working on now aren't his only thoughts. McPherson has many ideas he hopes to work on to help revitalize Monticello and help it thrive. With a few closing statements and answering a few questions from members, McPherson left the stage to a round of applause and the April Chamber Luncheon was brought to a close.
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