While reading over the contract which I’m going to sign with the realtor this morning, I’ve discovered that they’re asking a minimum down-payment of $48,000.00. A number, I was surprised to realize, that with swingland‘s offer and my “escape the country” savings of $10,000, we’ve already got half of. It says, farther down, that will mean paying $3,500 a month in payments, with brings monthly rent/bills to something close to $6000. A number I’d already had assumed and was working the maths for. I’m surprised, I was expecting them to be insisting on more. This is good news. This is manageable. Even if we don’t find a patron before December 1st, in having the theatre, we’ll have extended our fiscal time-limit considerably. We’ll have time to fundraise seriously, hire a grant writer and apply to as much as we can. (Not only do I tend to fit 90% of the requirements for that sort of thing, being young, female, and starting my own business that’s also a cultural venture, I hear NIKE and The Gap are trying to make up for past evils with social and cultural grants).
If the paperwork goes as quickly as the people at the Small Business Bureau promised, Heart of the World Productions Inc. will be making an appointment with a lawyer to properly set up share contracts and etceteras within the next week. Our website, being put together by the lovely and talented Adam Abrams, (the man in the grass skirt in this year’s Fringe Festival advertising), should be up and running by then as well, giving everyone a place to gather and point interested parties to.
A final draft of the pitch will be hopefully finished tomorrow. Willing to send it to your entire address book? I’m hoping for it to be posted to blogs, websites, newsletters, forums, anything. The farther and stronger the word spreads, the more chance we have.
(Watch me wonder if they mis-placed a comma. They must have missed a zero, right? Right. Maybe. If I sign it does it mean they can’t change it after?)
EDIT: Ah-hah. Turns out that the $48,000.00 is a deposit. This makes far more sense. The realtor didn’t send the contract to me until five minutes before I had to leave the house to go meet him, so in my skimming, I missed a paragraph. Ah well, so it means we’re close to the deposit – that’s still pretty damned good for not having yet put out the business plan.