The article is about “Amermin,” which might be the worst name for a company I have ever heard. Who knows how much of this article is actually true and how much is bullshit. Because one thing is sure – they do NOT have a “main processing facility” in Lampasas, Texas.
My immediate gut reaction is that this is another bullshit, small-time operation with a con man or two involved who are already talking about BIG plans when they have absolutely nothing really going on yet. They SURE as hell don’t have a “main processing facility” here in Lampasas yet. Sounds like a bullshit press release to try and raise funds.
So what’s the plan, LEDC? Bring in a “recycling processor” who promises dozens of jobs 5 years from now, but for now we need a big open space to dump our junk waiting to be “processed”? Oh, and we’ll pay the sorters a whopping $15/hr, which is pretty much what everyone else pays now – so you are basically violating the LEDC Prime Directive of “high-paying” jobs already.
Then again, the LEDC is extremely desperate to get ANYONE in there and Misti Talbert has all the negotiating skills of a quasi-retarded border collie.
There was a tiny nugget of info in the latest LEDC packet on page 5 (item IX) and buried in the minutes from the February 21st meeting. Naturally, it was discussed in super secret “executive session” so the plebes couldn’t hear what was going on.
According to the packet:
“Discussion and possible action regarding Workspace business concept at the Lampasas Business Park and terms of engagement with the company.”
So it’s clearly a typo by the secretary. Or she doesn’t understand proper nouns. Most likely the latter.
I can also find nothing on any company called “Workspace” except for this one located in the UK.
What this kinda sounds like to me is yet ANOTHER level of scammers trying to insert themselves between the taxpayer, the LEDC and the end user.
For instance: perhaps it is a (as-yet secret and unnamed) company that specializes in the “shared office space” business model. A model that is rife with grifter scumbags and morons like WeWork’sAdam Neumann. A model that is doomed to huge failure especially now, as office space across the U.S. sits unused in the wake of the Covid scamdemic.
I can see the LEDC falling for something this stupid. They would give this “workspace” company a bunch of free stuff and land so they can build some office space there that will likely sit empty forever. Think of that Twisted Oak building right down the street…then multiply by 20.
If the office space never gets filled, the “workspace” company walks away with very little lost.
If it by some miracle makes a ton of money, the workspace company cleans up and LEDC gets nothing.
Speaking of retarded deals and the LEDC, it looks like Eco-Turd is maybe packing up and vacating that building over there by Lampasas Beer Market. They look to be disassembling that awful, shitty demo fence that has been there for a year or two now. The fences that were marketed at almost $100 per linear foot…
“Five foot nine? I didn’t know they stacked shit that high!”
I drive by there all the time and it NEVER looked like anyone was “manufacturing” jack shit, to me. Either way, there are literally ZERO cars out front now and some new signs on both doors that say “Authorized Personnel Only” as if maybe, just maybe, Mike Cour got the boot and is not welcome back.
If any birdies want to sing about Eco-Strong leaving town or moving into new digs – you can reach me at lampasshole@protonmail.com
Related: did you know the LEDC has a Twitter page? Yep. Hasn’t been updated in 2.5 years, however. Such a hard-working group. Thank goodness we have them in charge.
Eco-Turd again? I am really wondering who is dumb enough to pay $90 a foot for a fence. Seems pretty much impossible to me. There must be other parties buying products. Maybe a government or “polluting” company that needs to burnish their “green image” so they buy overpriced crap from Eco-Turd.
No matter. My lawyer is on the job again and we will leave no stone unturned. Be assured I’ll remind the LEDC of all their rules about who they can and cannot hand tax money to.
In honor of Eco-Turd, I’m going to go through my piles of old LEDC stuff and find all the emails I have between Mandy Walsh and Finley discussing the Eco-Turd a couple years ago when they were strung along by Mike Cour.
This is the SAME guy who wanted some free stuff from the LEDC for this Eco-Turd company. I asked him at the time why he needed free land from the taxpayers if he had 200 acres himself?
He didn’t like me asking those questions.
Anyway, the deal fell through and I hear the would-be buyer walked away from a $100k deposit on the place (this is just what I heard – I have not seen any documentation). THEN, the property was re-listed almost immediately at $5 million. Ouch. Immediate 17% haircut!
So close!
Well, looks like Mike is trying to shave off chunks of the property to raise some cash. Not only do you get 11 whole acres, but you get the apparently-failing “Equicare” business and the included buildings with it…
Trying to keep the Eco-Turd afloat until the LEDC throws some free stuff their way? Guess we’ll soon find out!
Well, the LEDC is certainly throwing caution to the wind and ignoring ALL the past skulduggery with Mike Cour, Alan Champagne and the Eco-Turd plans. They are doubling down and risking looking like complete idiots when this all blows up in their faces AGAIN.
They even have a video up over at the LEDC Facebook page showing TJ Monroe and new council member Davis Keele touring the “plant”. LOL.
Unfortunately for scumbag duo Alan Champagne (Eco-Flex) and Mike Cour (Eco-Strong), I’m smarter than them and when I get hold of a bone, I’m not going to let it go until it’s all chewed up.
Since City council and the LEDC read here, I’ll give you a few big leads to check out and questions to ask these serial con-men:
#1 – According to all their presentations and Internet material, Eco-Flex is a tire recycler in Legal, Alberta – a dying town in very northern Canada:
But according to the website for the Alberta Recycling Management Authority, there are only three tire processors registered with the ARMA: Alberta Environmental Rubber Products (AERP), Crumb Rubber Manufacturers (CRM) and Liberty Tire Recycling Canada, Ltd.
So Alan Champagne and his fake “tire recycling” company are just one of many, many outfits that get crumb rubber from those three REAL tire recyclers and turn it into “green” products. There is nothing “innovative” or special about Eco-Turd. Crumb rubber is a commodity like gravel or sand or aluminum. All this shit has been around for a looooong time.
#2 – In the LEDC video, it shows some guys prepping crumb rubber to be stamped into a mat or a wall or something. So, since Eco-Strong is the “distributor” for Eco-Flex in the U.S., I have to assume that all that crumb rubber comes ALL the way from Eco-Flex in the town of Legal, Alberta – which is a 2,200 mile trip ONE WAY. Considering the high price of diesel here and even HIGHER price in Canada ($8.65/gal) it seems to me it must cost a small fortune to ship all that crumb rubber here just to stamp it into a mat.
There happens to be a very REAL and very BIG (12 million tires per year) tire recycling plant in Houston called Genan. Genan has SIX factories that recycle 54 million tires between them. Houston is only about 180 miles away. The cost to acquire crumb rubber from them would be a fraction (less than 10%) of the cost of having that idiot Alan Champagne send it 2,200 miles from Alberta, right?
You might want to ask Mike Cour about that. Genan also produces all the same shit everyone else does – mats, asphalt replacement, etc. Again – nothing special there.
Pretty sure “Eco-Flex” comes between Coastal and FABA in the alphabet
Wanna know what I think? This is just my OPINION, but I think this Alan Champagne douchebag gets some kind of highly-subsidized deal for crumb rubber. Canada is very socialist and HUGE on handing out “free” stuff to “save the environment”. It is run by people even more greentarded than AOC and Clayton Tucker combined.
Maybe Alan gets taxpayer-subsidized crumb rubber so cheaply that it makes sense to ship it 2,200 miles to a fly speck on the map named “Lampasas”. Why do I think this? Because in the shitty Power Point Mike Cour presented to the LEDC two years ago, I found this nugget:
“Developed a program with the Alberta government“. Sounds like free shit to me! Notice there isn’t a WORD about him actually recycling a single tire – just “controlling” and “managing” the program.
This guy is a serial grifter, in my opinion. Only a serious grifter douche nozzle would put a picture of himself standing next to a private jet to project a false sense of success. I also wouldn’t be shocked if this dildo also legally changed his last name to “Champagne” for the same reason. I had some email exchanges with this anus 21 months ago, and he can barely string a sentence together – not to mention the completely amateurish Power Point piece of shit they presented the LEDC two years ago.
Anyways – there it all is for the LEDC to read, go over and ask the proper questions of this clown horn. I guess they didn’t learn their lesson the LAST time these charlatans tried to rip them off and spew lies:
40 million little piles of bullshit
Remember that time in 2020 the LEDC believed that these idiots were going to recycle FORTY MILLION TIRES in Lampasas when their Alberta plant only does 5 million? I pointed out how ridiculous that was back then when I wrote:
Also, your existing Canadian 35,000 square foot plant recycles 5 million tires per year, but in your bullshit PowerPoint you gave to the LEDC, you are going to recycle 40 million tires in Lampasas with 22,500 square feet. If anyone believes THAT nonsense I have some land to sell you on south 183.
…but I guess Mandy Walsh and Misti Talbert suck at math and logic.
Mike Cour and Eco-Strong are the turds that just won’t get buried. For some reason, the idiots at the LEDC think this scumbag is a legit prospect and cannot wait to hand the taxpayers’ money to him – despite the fact he is selling HIS OWN 199.93 acres for $5.95 million. The property he is selling is literally RIGHT DOWN THE ROAD from the Business Pork project (he is at 15500 S Hwy 183):
Note the “Equicare” signage – despite Zillow trying to hide address
Just to recap:
#1 For the last few years, Mike Cour owned 199 acres literally right down the street from the LEDC Business Pork. He runs what appears to be a failing “Equine care” facility there.
#2 That is MUCH more acreage than the Business Pork land (199 acres versus 150 acres). Yet back in 2020, he didn’t want to use his OWN land for his genius business idea of turning old tires into other other garbage (Eco-Strong).
So the guy sitting on 200 acres and a supposedly “can’t miss, brilliant business idea” went with his hat in hand to try and bilk the LEDC out of 5 acres of land AND another $1.75 million to basically pay for the entire thing for him.
Wow – what a deal! The taxpayers take all the risk, and if it pays off, scumbag Mike Cour gets the payout!
So Mike Cour is about to pocket almost $6 million for selling his land on Highway 183 for nearly $30,000 per acre, and he is STILL slutting around the LEDC and angling for some kind of hand out? That’s how it looks from the latest LEDC packet (see page 11)
Eco-Strong has supposedly rented that brand new warehouse over on Pecan Street just south of Brown’s Feed:
Zero manufacturing going on…
I just happened to be over there the other day and took a few photos. It’s definitely the Eco-Turd product out back there:
I predict that the second part of Cour’s scam is to sell this “green” bullshit to moron cities like Austin who are flush with federal money to “save the environment”.
According to the LEDC packets, Eco-Strong is “temporarily manufacturing and shipping from their warehouse on Pecan Street“. I can tell you that at least half of that statement is complete horseshit. There is ZERO manufacturing going on there. The inside of the warehouse doesn’t even look complete yet.
My SUSPICION (and this is not fact, just my guess) is this: Cour will pocket that money he made from the land sale (minus any liens he has on it), he will then rent this warehouse for a year to look “legit”, and at the end of the year when the Business Pork is supposed to be JUST getting finished, he will AGAIN go to the LEDC and try to get a bunch of free shit – including FREE LAND just down the street from his OWN LAND that he just sold for $29,900 per acre!
My opinion is that the ludicrous overpriced-land boom has bailed this asshole out of his crappy Equicare biz and allowed him some breathing room while he tries to scam the LEDC again. Again, this is my opinion – not fact. Only time well tell if I’m correct.
It also proves AGAIN that the best move the LEDC could have made is to sell their shitty 150 acres for around $4.5 million and be done with it. After all, that’s what EVERYONE around here with any big chunks of land is doing right now: just sticking it up the ass of these morons dumb enough to pay $30k per acre.
While I love the idea of libtarded Austinites getting face-raped at these prices, I detest the idea of those same libtards overrunning this town.
The final irony will be when Cour’s 200 acres is chopped into a 400-house subdivision, thus giving us the exact same pile of houses that Talbert says was a bad way to go with the Business Pork land in the first place.
Irony and stupidity abound. Mike Cour and the LEDC are right smack in the middle of all of it.
More to come on Mike Cour and Alan Champagne and and all their lies.
We saw in Part I how Alan Champagne and Mike Cour were spinning lies and webs of bullshit for months trying to keep the LEDC and Mandy Walsh on the hook before they foolishly asked for $1.85 million dollars of tax dollars for their “privately funded” project.
I ran across a hilarious fuckup by Mike Cour when he sent Mandy Walsh the “rough draft” of the press release he was about to send out on May 7th:
SO many lies!!! They had NOT relocated corporate headquarters and they were NOT scheduled to break ground anywhere!
Mandy emails him back and asks why it says CITY in there instead of Lampasas! LOL!!
Mike emails back defensively “Does it matter?”. Ummm, yes it matters, moron. You are SUPPOSEDLY going to put your plant HERE…and not anywhere else.
Also, your existing Canadian 35,000 square foot plant recycles 6 million tires per year, but in your bullshit PowerPoint you gave to the LEDC, you are going to recycle 40 million tires in Lampasas with 22,500 square feet. If anyone believes THAT nonsense I have some land to sell you on south 183.
But Mike Cour and Alan Champagne (despite their protestations to the contrary) are all about GRABBING THAT FREE MONEY!! They can’t be bothered with silly details like square footage or job creation or how many tires will be recycled! You can smell the desperation in these emails below.
I gotta tell you Mike, desperation is a stinky cologne:
Grant money! Grant money! Ask her about it! Ask for more! Money money money!! Grant money!
Just a reminder to those of you who actually earn your money out in the real world by getting up and busting your ass: “grant” is a fancy word for “free tax money stolen from someone else that you never have to pay back”. Not a loan. Not an “investment”. Just free shit thrown right into the wallets of scumbag con men like Alan Champagne and Mike Cour.
When I started asking a few questions about Eco-Flex and Eco-Strong and their weird press releases last year, CEO Alan Champagne could not keep his stories straight.
Oh! Lookie there! In an email dated May 7th, good old Mike Cour is still working on his press release – which will hit “around Monday”. Monday would be May 11th. VERY close to the May 12th date I insisted was the ACTUAL release date.
Alan Champagne lied last September and told me:
“The press release was issued late February , I dont feel I have to explain myself. With the boarder closure which was supposed to be temporary and now will probably be closed to the end of this year. This is a private company which is not using any government funds or such.”
[It’s spelled BORDER you absolute moron]
Oops. Guess it wasn’t issued in February after all….was it, scum bag?
Also, the BORDER closure did NOT prevent Alan Champagne from traveling here to Texas to make his pitch (a lie he told Mandy Walsh over and over). The REALITY is he could have come for business if he wanted to. Canada and U.S. only closed their BORDER for NON-ESSENTIAL movement. This is from a press release on 3/21/20:
The border remains open for essential travel, which includes the transportation of goodsand travel for work, in order to not hamper trade and the supply chains between the two countries.
It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if the REAL reason Alan Champagne couldn’t come here is that (1) he has an ankle monitor on for being a serial bullshit artist in Canada OR (2) he knew this project was a giant pile of feces and couldn’t get through the pitch with a straight face.
His THIRD lie in just that one paragraph is “this is a private company which is not using any government funds or such”. Mike Cour ALSO repeated the exact same lie to me in a separate email, saying “we intend for this to be a private effort.”
Uh huh. That wasn’t my accusation, Alan. You might not CURRENTLY be scamming any government funds in Canada, but my accusation is that you were LOOKING to grab some free stuff down here in Lampasas and screw over our local government and LEDC. I was right about that too!
When I FINALLY got my hands on the pathetic Eco-Flex/Eco-Strong pitch that looks like an 8th grader did it, I got to see what they were REALLY asking for from the LEDC and the City:
How can Lampasas help? Just hand us $1.85 million dollars, suckers!!
Yeah. We don’t want anything! Totally private effort! Oh, besides the five acres of free land AND another ONE POINT SEVEN FIVE MILLION DOLLARS to build a plant! Besides that, we’ll handle everything!
Are you fucking kidding me?? This moron reminds me of Jerry Lundegaard in the movie Fargo trying to get his rich father-in-law to hand him cash in this classic scene:
“He’s saying we put in all the money and HE collects if it pays off!” [50 second mark]
I’m guessing Mandy and the LEDC were ready to hand over the land. Why not? They have 152 acres of it sitting there. They were also prepared to waste another $1.9 million on “Phase I” (really Phase II) construction. This is on TOP of the million they blew running water and electricity to the site in 2015.
But handing these retards $1.75 million?? That was a bridge too far. Only TJ Monroe would OK a ridiculous waste of money like that, and thankfully she’s not in charge. It’s my belief that Eco-Turd asking for such a ludicrous amount of money is what ultimately blew up the deal. I also think Mandy was starting to suspect this guy was a shit bag for other reasons and was maybe stringing her along. We’ll get to that in Part II.
Like a guilty cat burying a stringy and malnourished turd under the sand, so doth the LEDC quietly and unceremoniously dump Eco-Strong as a “business park prospect”.
So now it looks like they are back to square one. I would like to think my tireless exposing of Mike Cour and Eco-Strong had something to do with this. Don’t worry Mike, I have zero doubt you will try and run your scam again in another town. Best of luck!
According to the LEDC minutes from Feb 24th:
“Mandy Walsh (Economic Development ‘Director’) discussed with the board the options of the Business Park. One being the possibility of applying for the standard EDA grant contingent on a business prospect. Second option is to request an updated loan proposal from Bancorp South to fund development of Phase I”
Looks to me like they no longer have any “business prospects” for their goat pasture ‘business’ park. Which means Eco-Turd must have been flushed down the toilet. Finally.
[That would be the “standard EDA grant” that Langford was supposed to have done WAY BACK on July 31, 2020. I’m guessing that in order to complete the grant, they needed to show they had a viable business prospect. Despite SIX YEARS of trying, they STILL don’t have one]
Oh, they tried mightily to polish the Eco-Turd and pin their hopes on Mike Cour – but that was a sorry joke. I have detailed Eco-Strong HERE and HERE and HERE.
Also, it is NOT “Phase I” as they continually lie about in public. Phase I was actually back in 2015 when they pissed away over a million bucks to make the ‘business’ park ‘shovel ready’. That was a lie then and it still is today:
Hey! There’s TJ Monroe smiling about another one of her many screw-ups! I hear she’s running for mayor now! Yipeeee!!
So – now they are mulling the options between finding another “business prospect” to hand a bunch of free shit to in exchange for dubious promises of growth. OR they go back to the bank and try to borrow the money to put themselves even deeper in the hole in this idiotic project.
I suggest a third option, which I have suggested for about 8 years now: sell the piece of shit and get out of the entire thing. It is and was a doomed project. Putting the likes of TJ Monroe and Cathy Kuehne in charge of millions of tax dollars for “economic development” is a recipe for disaster.
Just remember TJ Monroe’s colossally terrible prediction about the weed patch ‘business’ park almost SIX YEARS AGO to the day:
“Mrs. Monroe noted the Lampasas Economic Development Corp. is working with the business park south of town on U.S. Highway 183, and she said she hopes the site will attract good employers to Lampasas. [Council member TJ Monroe] – April 14, 2015
Well, score one for the taxpayer and the little guy.
Despite JC Brown and Finley’s best efforts to stymie me, the “impact study” the City had conducted for Eco-Strong as a viable candidate to be a “business” park tenant is now in my hands.
I think this is the first time the Attorney General has sided with me. The score may be something like 4-1 in favor of City attorney JC Brown and Mayor “Transparency” Talbert, but that’s ok. It’s nice to finally win one.
I started perusing the docs yesterday and I can already say, it looks like a whole lot of numbers pulled from asses. I will post more detailed analysis over the next week or so, but there are a few tidbits below. I figured the taxpayers of Lampasas would like to know what their City is considering getting into:
“A 35,000 square foot facility that will recycle 500,000+ tires per MONTH”.
By my math, that is 16,600 tires EVERY SINGLE DAY moving through the “business park”. Sounds like absolute horseshit to me. Assume you had a truck big enough to carry 1000 tires at a time (a random guess by me). That means a truck pulling in there every hour between 5am and 10pm. Every single day. Forever.
I don’t buy that shit for a minute.
“The firm will initially have 30 workers – the initial average annual salaries of these workers will be $33,000”
Wow. Those are some high-paying, high-tech jobs there, Mandy! Shoveling tire crumbs into a furnace, or however they do it, for about $16/hr. I think I’d rather work my way up at Wal-Mart to $16 in a year or two, but that’s me.
Has anybody given a moment’s thought to JUST the massive amount of traffic required to transport 500,000 tires worth of material into and then back out of the property every month? The pollution?
I doubt it.
There is much, much more. We’ll be back soon with all of it.
