Tag Archives: business in Dickinson North Dakota

Old St. Joseph’s Hospital In Dickinson To Be Used For Mental Health Services

On February 1st, I read an article in the Dickinson Press Newspaper about the old St. Joseph’s Hospital in Dickinson being purchased and renovated, to be used as a location for Mental Health Services.

The buyer of the old St. Joseph’s Hospital property is a man named Andres Mejia, who is currently employed at the new St. Alexius Hospital in Dickinson as their director of risk management and quality. I wasn’t certain that Andres Mejia was going to be the actual owner of the property, or if he was acting as an agent for some branch of Catholic Health Initiatives.

I looked up Andres Mejia in Dickinson, and I read that in August of 2018, Mejia Property Management LLC was registered in North Dakota with Andres Leonardo Mejia-Fuentes listed as the agent, and his home address was used, so this does appear to be a personal undertaking of Andres Mejia, not Catholic Health Initiatives.

I believe that Andres Mejia was led to believe that if he created a space for Mental Health Services in Dickinson, that the Federal Government, North Dakota State Government, Southwest North Dakota Health Services, Catholic Health Initiatives, corporate medical group health care providers, and private practice health care providers would all participate in providing funds and paying rents, because there is a huge gap in Mental Health Services in southwest North Dakota.

Andres Mejia may believe that it is almost certain, that if he purchased the old St. Joseph’s Hospital, performed the necessary renovations, and subdivided the space at the old St. Joseph’s Hospital according to what each health care provider tenant required, that the rents he received and the appreciating value of the property would make him successful in the long run.

When I read the headline and the first paragraph of the Dickinson Press Newspaper article about this plan, I had a great deal of doubt that this was a good idea. I began to think about what would happen to me if I tried to do this, even if I was able to purchase the old St. Joseph’s Hospital for just $1.

If I started out by purchasing the old St. Joseph’s Hospital for just $1, with this property sitting vacant like it is right now, here is what I estimate my ownership costs would be:

Yearly property taxes………………………………………….$5,000
Yearly insurance for property damage & liability……………$5,000
Yearly electric costs, heating in Winter……………………….$12,000
Snow removal and grounds maintenance…………………….$5,000
Interior routine maintenance……………………………………$1,000

Subtotal $28,000 per year, while vacant

With an old building like this, you could expect to have to have to perform roof, plumbing, window, or heating repairs:

Add $10,000 for normal repairs per year, while vacant

Because I am not Catholic, and this is Dickinson, I could be sure that the Fire Marshal, Building Inspector, the Health Department, and local contractors would all get together at their Knights of Columbus meetings to come up with a plan to try to financially break me which would include:

Citations for asbestos, asbestos contamination, and required removal.
Citations for lead paint, lead paint contamination, and lead paint removal.
Citations for mold, black mold, mold contamination, and remediation.
Citations for elevator, and elevator required retrofitting.
Citations for fire escape, and fire escape required retrofitting.
Citations for electrical, plumbing, and boiler not being up to code and required renovation.

For me, there would never be an end to the Fire Marshal, Building Inspector, Health Department, Property Tax Appraiser, other Government officials, and local contractors trying to come up with schemes to financially break me:

Add another $2 million, for the cost of Corruption in Dickinson

To top everything off, if I had personally purchased the old St. Joseph’s Hospital in Dickinson, for even just $1, I would probably not be able to find a buyer who was willing to pay me $1 for it, because of the awareness of the ownership costs that I listed up above. If I did sell it, I would probably later be sued by the buyer for non-disclosure of my knowledge that the building was haunted.

Even if Andres Mejia didn’t face the $2 million cost of every Government Official in Dickinson trying to find something wrong with this building and force him to correct it, what if the owner of the large new vacant retail building in the Menards shopping area suddenly makes a large donation to Catholic Health Initiatives, and they start liking him and his new building, more than they like Andres Mejia and his old building?

What if Andres Mejia begins making renovations to the old St. Joseph’s Hospital building, spending several hundred thousand dollars, and meanwhile there is a change in leadership at Catholic Health Initiatives, Southwest North Dakota Health Services, or a corporate health care provider that had previously stated verbally that they were committed to occupying his building once the renovations were completed?

What if Governor Doug Burgum shows up suddenly out of no-where, and convinces the Federal Government, North Dakota State Government, Southwest North Dakota Health Services, corporate health care groups, and private practice health care providers that Bismarck is more centrally located and more easily reachable by everyone in North Dakota?

I would not want to be in Andres Mejia’s position. The cost of ownership of this old building is high, and it is to be expected that there will be expensive routine repairs needed, even when this building is vacant. There is also the potential that the Fire Marshal, Building Inspector, Health Department, and local contractors could financially ruin this project and Andres Mejia by creating renovation costs that will never be able to be recovered or overcome.

There is also no guarantee that the verbal enthusiasm Andres Mejia has heard about creating a health care facility to provide treatment for Mental Health, Drug Addiction, and Rehabilitation will materialize into anyone actually becoming a tenant.

Andres Mejia may have had good intentions, but hardly anyone else in Dickinson does. Dickinson is an area where people have so little opportunity to get ahead, that they have become accustomed to helping other people to fail so that no one else can get ahead either. In particular, they like to encourage people to buy property here, spend money to make improvements on the property, financially ruin them, then scoop up their recently improved properties for very little money after they have financially bankrupted them.

Mental Health Services that could soon be offered in Dickinson:

I Want To Beat The Chamber of Commerce In Dickinson, North Dakota

I want to beat the Chamber of Commerce in Dickinson, North Dakota. I want to get to you, before they do. I want to tell you the truth, rather than have you listen to lies and bullshit.

The individuals in the Dickinson Chamber of Commerce may not be bad people, but they have a job to do, and that job is to lie to you about Dickinson.

When I first wrote this blog post in November of 2015, the housing prices in Dickinson were very, very high. Extremely high. This was the result of greed, lack of human decency, and stupidity. There was this lie going around that everybody in the oil field was making $100,000 per year. In the five years that I have lived in Dickinson, I have only ever met three people who made over $100,000 per year in the oil field.

The Oil Boom was over in western North Dakota by the end of 2015, due to the price of oil falling from over $100 per barrel down to $40 per barrel. Many oil field jobs went away, and many out of state workers returned to the states where they came from. Once the apartments, manufactured home parks, and trailer parks in Dickinson became less than half occupied, the rents throughout Dickinson dropped greatly.

During the Oil Boom, the people in Dickinson were not friendly, not helpful, and not cooperative. Now that the Oil Boom is over, the people in Dickinson are even meaner, in part due to increased competition for fewer jobs, and also because they want people to leave Dickinson.

The people in Dickinson dislike people who are from someplace else, and they also dislike each other. Anything you say to people in Dickinson, will probably make them dislike you more. If you arrive in Dickinson now, you are better off staying away from people. Remain in your hotel, or your home, there isn’t anything to do or anywhere to go anyway, and you will likely be followed and stopped by the Dickinson Police.

There is a shortage of women in Dickinson, and a lack of attractive women. The ratio of men to women in Dickinson is probably 3:1. The Dickinson Police Department try as hard as they can to not allow prostitution in Dickinson, though it is needed. The Dickinson Police create fake advertisement for women wanting to have sex, and then arrest people when they show up.

You can not safely go out to bars or restaurants in Dickinson at night, because the Dickinson Police try as hard as they can to arrest people for DUI. In Dickinson, the Police are so eager to arrest people for DUI or other charges, that they will follow you and stop you for any reason that they can think of. The Police try to encourage people to leave Dickinson.

In Dickinson, all of the restaurants have employees and servers that don’t like their jobs. All of the restaurant employees think that everyone else is making over $100,000 per year, and they aren’t, and they are mad about it. The servers are disappointed and can’t understand why people don’t spend $50 per meal and leave them a $20 tip, like they all heard about. How are they ever going to make $300 a night at Applebees like they planned?

There is not a lot to do in Dickinson. It is cold and grey from about October through April, at least seven months of cold weather.

The oil field work has been reduced by about 80% over the past several years. Most of the oil field workers who lost their jobs went back to the states where they came from because housing prices were so high here, the people are unfriendly, there is a shortage of women, you can’t go out to bars or restaurants at night, the restaurants have terrible service, there is not a lot to do, the Police encourage people to leave Dickinson, and it is cold for at least seven months of the year.

The people in Dickinson, and the employers in Dickinson, hate people with an education. The employers in Dickinson would much rather hire someone with several felony convictions, than someone with a college degree. In Dickinson, your supervisors and co-workers will be people convicted of robbery, theft, assault, and drug charges. Perform a Google search and look up your company owners, managers, and personnel on www.ndcourts.gov/publicsearch/default.html before you accept a job with a company in Dickinson.

What do I want? I want the truth to be known. I had thought that Dickinson could change, but once the Oil Boom was over, the local people in Dickinson became ever meaner. I had not realized that the local people in Dickinson were on their best behavior during the Oil Boom. All I can do now is warn people what Dickinson is like.

More About The Dickinson Mafia

February 18, 2015Uncategorizedbusiness in Dickinson North Dakota, cost of housing in Dickinson North Dakota, Dickinson Mafia, doing business in Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Masonic Lodge in Dickinson North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, oil boom in Dickinson North Dakota, relocating to Dickinson North Dakota, who controls Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

The first time that I wrote about the Dickinson Mafia was in my previous post, “The Dickinson Mafia”. I stated that the Dickinson Mafia was a group of local business owners and city leaders that had decided among themselves what they envisioned for Dickinson, that they tell themselves and each other that what they want is for the betterment of Dickinson, and in the best interest of its citizens, but what they want happens to coincide with making themselves richer, controlling citizens for their benefit, and helping them maintain power.

In my previous post I gave two examples of the endeavors of the Dickinson Mafia. Business owners can join the Chamber of Commerce to express their views about what they see for the future, and try to get other business owners to share their view. Business owners can express their views at City Commission/Council/Zoning meetings. They can write Letters To The Editor of the “Dickinson Press” expressing their opinions on issues. They can join the Golf Club, the Eagles Lodge, or the Elks Lodge in order to talk to other business owners and community leaders about their ideas. In my opinion, when business men want to get things done in a more unseen way, they join the Masonic Lodge. The Masonic Lodge holds their meetings in private, and they do not publicize who their members are, the rank of their members, and what things they discuss. The Masonic Lodge is very similar to the “Good-Old-Boy Network”.

Like the “Good-Old-Boy Network” in the South, a newcomer to a city who starts a construction business might be clueless as to why he seems to be having so much trouble, with everything. The newcomer who started a construction company might know why he is having so much trouble if he knew that his main competitor is the Grand Master of the local Masonic Lodge, and that the lumber company owner, the concrete company owner, the building inspector, the city engineer, the mayor, and the chief of police are also members of the local Masonic Lodge. Though the Masons publicly claim that this is not the case, their primary purpose and reason for existence is to have an organization of men that secretly gain power and control, and then exert their power and control. Men that are mayors, chiefs of police, bank presidents, attorneys, real estate agents, and insurance agents do obtain information that is private and confidential, to share some information would be a violation of ethics and illegal, however this information is shared among Masons to allow financial gain, business opportunity, and to undermine, control, and manipulate others. In the case of the Dickinson Mafia, I do not know yet whether they ever worked within the local Masonic Lodge. It appears to me that the Dickinson Mafia is able to achieve the same things on its own: having people gain positions of power, using that power to further enrich themselves, using their money to further increase their power, using their money, power, and influence to control what is done in Dickinson, and to control people in Dickinson. The people in Dickinson are somewhat aware that this is being done. They think it and they feel it, but they are not always able or willing to verbalize how they are controlled by some of the wealthy business owners in Dickinson.

The way that the Dickinson Mafia want Dickinson to be, is that they want to have mechanisms of control in place so that they can control what is going on in Dickinson during the oil booms that come and go, so that they can also have control when the oil booms go away. It does not matter where you are from, have you ever seen more vacant barren land anywhere than what there is outside of Dickinson? There is vacant undeveloped land as far as you can see, and beyond as far as you can see. There is no scarcity of vacant land. The cost of housing in Dickinson, and the shortage of housing in Dickinson is something that the Dickinson Mafia want. Though quick, affordable housing was something that was needed starting back in 2010, the Dickinson Mafia didn’t want that. They didn’t want out-of-state workers to come here, make a lot of money, send money back home, pay off their houses back home, get ahead financially, the Dickinson Mafia wanted the out-of-state workers to be taken advantage of, just like they have been taking advantage of the workers in their own businesses for the last thirty years.

One more thing, if you try to look up the “Dickinson Mafia” on the internet, the first six results of your search are an exact match for “Dickinson Mafia”. You can go and look at each of these six matching websites, web addresses, or links, and they really don’t contain any content that is relevant to an entity or activity that would or could be called “Dickinson Mafia”. It is like someone had the expectation that people would be trying to find out information about the “Dickinson Mafia” and they wanted to make sure that your internet search would be sure to turn up their six websites, that contain no information on the Dickinson Mafia. That is one way to try to keep people from knowing about the Dickinson Mafia.