La Divina Commedia

Schadenfreude is rude, but it is not inappropriate to note that the federal bankruptcy filing by Brandon Barber's Lynnkohn LLC this week listed a debt of $5.13 million for the 1.5-acre lot on Dickson Street in Fayetteville that was to be home to his little lamented orphan, the now abandoned Divinity Hotel project.

It is unfortunate that Barber sunk $5.13 million into that lot. He should have been as smart and as politically connected as John Nock and Richard Alexander, who got the City to create a Tax Increment Finance District to acquire and clear an even larger lot for $3.7 million and sell it for a mere $300,000 to their East Square Development Co. LLC. Barber could have had his own blighted mudhole by now.

Barber probably could have bought the Fayetteville High School campus instead of the Dickson Street lot. Steve Percival, Howard Hamilton, Susan Heil, and Bobby New might have been ready to sell off the school property for $5.13 million and title to Barber's property on Deane Solomon Road adjoining their preferred site for the new mega high school.