"I guess it ended up to be a deal too good to be true," Steven Ingersoll said, referring in an April 23, 2001 Traverse City Record-Eagle article to the deal his Smart Schools Management, Inc. struck with a developer on behalf of the Grand Traverse Academy.
That developer, Nashville, Tennessee-based Floyd Schechter, agreed to build the charter school in exchange for rent that would come from the operating funds the school received from the state.
Under the original agreement, Schechter would lease the building to the Grand Traverse Academy for 18 percent of its annual per student funding.
And it worked...until it didn't.
The developer went bankrupt, and the project ended up costing the school an additional $2 million dollars.
Could history repeat itself at the Grand Traverse Academy?
Miss Fortune has exclusive details about the potentially lucrative development deal former Grand Traverse Academy board president Mark Noss (now current management company head) nailed down during a special meeting with the charter school's board of directors on February 2.
Full report coming soon!